At the Source

My first intensive weekend class at Lesley University perfectly exemplified the source of my passion and of community art: the sheer amount of creative energy that can accumulate from a group of inspired and inspirational individuals. This energy can be created within any group, but over the course of the weekend I experienced the powerful potential of a group of people who have already chosen to dedicate at least part of themselves to Community Art, and it left me breathless.

Everyday I left the class with an extra spring in my step, hoping that the ridiculous grin on my face didn't make me look like I was jumped up on something and yet not caring if it did. Isn't that just the most wonderful? When you can't help but smiling, when even thinking about what happened involuntarily curves your lips, turns your cheeks into red apples and your eyes into what would be described in a children's book as twinkling stars? That. That is the power of Community Art.

We watched videos from RAW Art Works, made by teenagers not much younger than myself, which left me silent and serene, tearful and disturbed, generally moved in any numbers of directions. They made me rethink my relationship with the little sister I rarely get the chance to see, the father I've only recently started growing close to, the homeless man on the street who I didn't step to listen to, and the shy child who I didn't have to time to reach out to. I heard stories of transformation that brought tears to my eyes and the heavy weight of empathetic sympathy across my brows. I laughed, connected, and created with the people around me, helping to develop a potentially life-altering educational festival with only my companions and the city we were in as inspiration.

Even the moments of theoretical and practical conversation opened my eyes to what already exists and what can exist. By acknowledging the difficult realities of our dreams, we connected the blind, bubbly passion of conception with the intense, driven necessities of implementation. This underlying theme both named our course, Ideas into Action, and grounded us, showing us what can be done when we leave the mental drawing board and reach out to grab what life has to offer.

Now I am, obviously, an inspired romantic optimist, but that doesn't mean that all of this isn't true. Community Art connects people at all levels, from their most superficial projections of themselves to the inexplicable depths they may not be conscious of having; being around creative, supportive, and open people inspires the huge amount of intrinsic motivation necessary to enter into the world of creating Community Art; passion doesn't need to be checked and tempered to join reality, only directed and funneled through the correct channels. With these truths in mind, I know that, though they may change form along the way, my ideas will become my actions.

The Term Itself

As I began my foray into the actual theory and thought of the existing community art world, I encountered a discrepancy at the very entrance: no one knows exactly what to call this field. Arlene Goldbard sticks with Community Cultural Development while Tom Borrup chooses Creative Community Building. These are just two examples of the rampant terms that exist within the field.

At first, deep in the sway of the incredible writing done by each of these practiced community artists, I was simply agreeing with whoever's pages I was devouring at the moment. At the very beginning of her book, New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development, Goldbard addresses this issue in a section titled "Naming the Practice." She identifies five current terms: community arts, community animation, community-based arts, cultural work, and participatory arts projects. (Her term, Community Cultural Development, she files under this last heading.)

Goldbard chooses not to use Community Art as her key term because it can be, and has been, also "used to describe conventional arts activity based in a municipality" pg 21. Personally, although unlike Goldbard I have barely dipped a toe into this fantastic arena, this association doesn't bother me. This may be because I am approaching the field from the background of visual art and willingly associate myself with "conventional arts activity," or it could just be because I am unseasoned. I'd prefer to think that my conclusions are based on the former, but only time will tell.

Whatever the reason, despite my early infatuation with these authors terms, the more I read the more I feel that sticking with Community Art is most appropriate for me. There's something to be said about simplicity. Even though it may not be as encompassing or accurate, Community Art is a more accessible term than something like creative community building. While the term still needs to be explained, its more immediate. What is community Art? It's art that takes place within and around the community.

For overly intellectual, abstract and theoretical thinkers (or for people pursuing graduate studies) this definition isn't enough - that premise indeed is the base of this blog. Defining a term with its components? That's not deep thinking! But for work within a community, its the right amount of thinking. (Not to say that general community members aren't or wouldn't be interested in the wonderful thinking put into the other terms). Anyone interested can delve into the more specific terms, but Community Art allows the people to take the term, field, and all that goes along with it at face value.

This is all, of course, personal opinion and interpretation coming from someone who considers herself an artist. Going from an artist to a community artist seems much more manageable than becoming a creative community builder or a community cultural developer. It also keeps the person more accepting, accessible and approachable. I'd be much more interested in talking to a Community Artist than a Community Cultural Developer, wouldn't you?

The First Step

It's about time for me to mention the woman who first introduced me to the world of Community Art: Claudia Bernardi. I've already alluded to her once or twice because, as the woman who opened this world to me, she often comes to mind when I think about it.

I first met Claudia in my sophomore year of college. She was designing a ten day spring break trip to El Salvador to do art. Being an artist, mildly fluent in Spanish, and country-bound since the time I was five, this idea naturally appealed to me. In the months leading up to our trip I, along with the rest of my fellow travelers, read books about the history of El Salvador and its neighboring countries, particularly about the many civil wars and the massacre of El Mozote. This heavy material was interspersed with language studying and descriptions of the projects that we were going to do.

For the actual trip we went out into the mountains of Morazon, El Salvador to a little town called Perquin. Claudia had already been there several times, starting an art school that then grew into its own self-supported organization. The telephone poles of the town, which in the rest of El Salvador were constantly changing between the colors of the two strongly divided political parties, were decorated with landscape scenes painted by the local children. Murals turned up around every corner, as colorful, frequent, and pleasing as spring flowers. The town center held a spectacular double sided mural on a stage-like area were children and town members would sit throughout the day.

During our stay, we went to a local community called 10 de enero (10th of January) and had the honor of adding to this beautiful collection of murals, painting on the wall of the cinder-block, one-room library which housed a single bookcase. The content was decided by the community members, the design approved by them, and the artwork partially created by them. Our role was that of artistically trained tools, coming to show our support, interest in, and willingness to help the community that already existed there. Children came to paint a mural on canvas inside and the telephone poles outside while their parents and grandparents came to help or watch us paint. Despite the language and cultural barriers, the members of the community were conversing with us as we all collaborated to create what turned into a beautiful mural.

Our time in El Salavdor also found us visiting neighboring towns, going to El Mozote, and to museums which held artifacts from the civil war that had ended only sixteen years previously. Everywhere we went there was art. Colorful, vibrant murals paved our path through the mountains of Morazon and back to San Salvador, the capital, enlivening the communities with their constant, cheerful presence.

When we returned to the States, I immediately noticed the absence of these colors and the lively community that they embodied. Having already seen the possibilities, power, and uses of communally made art in El Salvador, I knew that creating the same sense of connection was something I could dedicate my life to as I finished my degree and moved into life beyond.

Communities of Artists

So far I've been focusing mostly on communities creating art, which makes sense when trying to define Community Art. I've listened to musicians, read about museums, and researched as much as I can before I get distracted by my next big idea. But there is another important way that community art can be created; along with the idea of a communities creating art, there is the sister idea of artists creating communities.

This brings to mind, for me at least, a mental image of a grainy gray picture with a group of wealthy, white Europeans sitting around a tea table talking about the wide world. (Either that or scantily clad 60's hippies). While both can technically fall under this notion of a community of artists, I'm thinking on a broader, vaguer scale.

The first way I began to think about a community of artists, because of course there is always more than one way, was when I went to the MFA in Boston and saw an exhibit of the Rouen Cathedrals. In this room five original Monet paintings of the Rouen Cathedral face five Lichtenstein silkscreens inspired by those paintings. The dialogue created, not only between the paintings themselves but between the artists and their separate contexts, made me consider the fluid contemporary and historical community of artists.

Artists, like everyone else, do not live in a vacuum. They see things, read things, experience things, and this effects what they create. One of the most interesting parts of my collegiate level artistic education was when I realized that I was becoming a part, no matter how insignificant that part is, of the continuous community of artists that has existed as long as the human race.

Although artists are often thought of in the romantic light of a solitary genius, and indeed many fit that description, there is always a community of which them (we) can be a part. The solidarity of creative solitary-ness; the rich history which we come from and create. That is my first, grand scale, appropriately vague description of Community Art being a community of artists.

The second is much simpler and everyday. It is the interaction between fellow artists; the dialogue that takes place in a communal studio or in a classroom critique. Artists coming together to create a community and from that community creating better art pieces, inspiring each other, pushing each other forward. As any artist who has worked within a close-knit group knows, the frustration and agitation that come from working with a bunch of wired, creative, free-thinkers is balanced by the energy of creativity that flows around any such group.

A truly incredible experience is when the two separate definitions of Community Art (communities creating art and artists creating communities) crash together. Then we get the splendid debacle of Communities of Artists creating Art. While far from the ultimate or best definition of Community Art (because I doubt there is such a thing), this image definitely brings to mind the incredible realm of possibilities that open to us when people collaborate in creation.

A Second Wind and a New Book

For the past month I've been in a whirlwind of everything happening very quickly interspersed with moments of absolute nothing. Neither of these states has encouraged my writing here, although I have scribbled in notebooks while familiarizing myself with the local bus and train system. But once I get home I want nothing more to sleep and on the days when I didn't leave then I just never got enough rolling.

But enough of that.

My brain has been roiling back and forth with thoughts of Community Art and art in general always on the crux of the wave. The first really momentous piece was when I was offered a job in the community art department of a local museum. This spurred me into a flurry of movement. I organized my life around my new job and my creative mind started clicking away as I considered all the new possibilities.

This new step prompted me to make up my mind about what to buy from New Village Press. Although because of a bit of confusion with the shipping the book took a month to get to me, I have started reading Museums and Civic Dialogue. So far I've almost completed the first segment on a exhibition put forward in 2002 by the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. The exhibition was called Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, and explored the implications of the then recent completion of a "rough draft" of the human genome.

Having little background in science, reading about this exhibition taught me just as much about the science of genomics as it did of the art that was used to contemplate the field. This is a perfect example of what the exhibition was trying to achieve: an inter-disciplinary approach to learning and understanding. By combining artists of all kinds with scientists, librarians, public speakers and more, the Henry reached a much wider community at a much deeper level.

As I read, I thought about how fundamental the inter-disciplinary approach to art is to Community Art. Because communities often aren't focused around art, a community artist has to enter into the community by understanding and working with whatever is fundamental. In this case, the general interest and concern about genomics in Seattle, a city with a large investment in biotechnology, was a perfect way to bring art to the rest of the community. It also gave the community a different and deeper way of thinking about genomics.

The New Village Press

I've been haunting the New Village Press website recently, wallowing in indecision about whether or not to buy one of their fantastic books. On one hand, I would love to be able to sit down and plow my way through everything that has been put forth by this wonderful publisher, but on the other I have reading supplies coming out of my ears and less and less time to do anything about it. Reading about the press in and of itself has proven to be interesting however, because the places that support community art are a vital part of the effectiveness of community art.

Its also been useful to see how a publisher which puts forth so much writing on community art, and other community projects, describes itself. The 'about us' section starts of by saying "New Village books serve the interdependent fields of social justice, participatory planning, community building, ecology, and community-based arts. The Press crosses boundaries between professional, academic, and informal education with books that engage practitioners and community activists working together to rebuild neighborhoods."

I found it interesting that community art was lumped with so many other fields that somehow manage to coincide perfectly. Recently, I have begun to think more seriously about the applications of community art. Each of the "interdependent fields" that the Press mentions in their 'about us' section could be seen through the lense of community art. Indeed, as the word interdependent indicates, most of the fields overlap. Personally, I was introduced to community art hand-in-hand with community building and social justice by a wonderful woman named Claudia Bernardi, who I will write much more about later.

The books published by New Village Press range from ones solely on art to ones solely on the environment, but the ones I find most appealing involve both or more subjects. While I keep telling myself that if I find the money to spend I should get a book completely about community art, seeing as that is what I am going into, I keep drifting towards the environmental community art books. This stems from a recent reawakened interest in the uses of community art to better the environment.

Only time and the amount of money left in my account will tell what I end up buying and reading from New Village Press, but whatever it is will undoubtably make its way back here.

Clearwater Festival

Today I'm taking inspiration from a different venue: from live performances instead of sitting alone and reading. Don't get me wrong, reading the theory and the experience of others is important and it leads to better understanding and greater appreciation of community art, but participating in live community events can trump almost any amount of late night reading.

This weekend, for instance, I went to the Clearwater Festival in Croton, NY. The festival displayed a different type of community art than what I have been focusing one. Although it is the main direction in which I am going, visual art is far from the only community form. Music, theater, dance, writing, and any other number of other, less generic, art forms are just as important and Clearwater, with a heavy emphasis on music, managed to use many of these forms.

Now I've been going to folk festivals my entire life, although I grew up in the hills of the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival myself, and I always heard the music and enjoyed the community atmosphere, but not until recently did I really think about the connection between the two. However, if there was ever an embodiment of an innately community art experience it's at a music festival.

As I listened to the musicians over the past two days, I realized that they, of course, already knew this. Billy Bragg, a wonderful British musician whose set I randomly stumbled into, spoke about how in the 60's singer-songwriters thought they were going to change the world. In reality, he said, it's not the performer but their audience who make the change. By performing, the musician brings a group of like-minded people together and sets the stage for them.

Janis Ian followed and switched the discussion from music as politics to music as art. Music, she said, is the one art form that cannot be destroyed. In a purely literal sense, this is quite true. Sound cannot be burned like books and paintings and can never be completely silenced. Janis Ian continued that as long there is one person willing to sing a "we shall overcome" then the tradition of music would live on.

Both of these musicians, who have already dedicated much of their lives to music, showed me what a community artist really does; we bring people together to open their eyes. The community artist him- or herself may not change the world, but they change the people within the world and depend on them to continue the changing chain. Billy Bragg’s songs may not actually bring down the debt or create peace, but he will inspire the people who hear him to do so.

Although unlike the music that Janis Ian was talking about visual art can be destroyed, the reason that the art was created cannot be. There are and always will be artists out there inspiring and creating in the face of destruction and a community ready to come together and listen to or view their work. Sitting amongst a hillside full of people who had contributed to Pete Seeger’s dream of cleaning up the Hudson river and were putting up with the heat, bugs, and crowd just to hear the music that meant something to them reminded me just how powerful a community drawn together by art can be.