Arts Advocacy
We would like to use this site to discuss the art needs of our local community, to have indepth discussions, pass on new and urgent materials and make our community aware on the local/state and national level of the needs /benefits of the arts.
thanks
thanks
7 Comments:
I had to become really creative in finding funding and finding materials for what I do. Suddenly I have too many organizations that want me to do work for them and too many budgets that are tight.
I have had to change my approach, my equipment is very industrial power intensive, most places don't have the facilities for me to plug into, so now I own a industrial duty generator that I wrote a grant request for, and I got it. Except I wrote the same request to 28 places. This can be frustrating, but the April issue of Fortune Magazine and the Internet let me zero in on good possibilities for funding.
I am now looking for materials on the commodity markets, because I use steel, copper, tin, aluminum, brass and other metals in to the hundreds of pounds. My next wall sculpture will be about 4,300 pounds.
Thats the high price end of my studio, here is the other side, I sold a painting for $100 last week, took me a while to do it. I enjoy painting, have given many away, now and then one sells.
Do we have a place to post images, I have an excellent diamond that I cut a few months a good and got good reviews on the cut.
Jerry
By Jerry Smith, at 4:55 PM
This Blog is a little clumsy to navigate.
Jerry
By Jerry Smith, at 5:08 PM
The concept of funding is a strange one these days, just because it is art doesn't mean that money will come pouring in. There is one chunk of money out they some where and lots of people are asking for a piece of it. I have found under OAC that I can only get about $4,000 from them. Which is really not that much if you really are a prolific artist.
Where the money should come from is the community, not necessarily from the city government but from civic groups. Money from the Arts Festival should go into community artists, not some operating fund. But then the artists of the area have to stand up and say I need $250 to do this project and be able to explain how it will cause Social Improvement and improve the Common Good of the community. Money has to be accounted for, and most artist are not known for their talents as CPAs. So I highly suggest this website: http://www.score.org/ SCORE has guidelines, templates and other useful business tools, plus they give help, all without cost. There are many other organizations out there that can and will help, such as EnterpriseWorks, Phone: 614-228-1043. The economic develop people are now starting to see the need for community art as a Social Improvement and a Common Good Issue. We the artist of the community have the talent to make our home a place that we can be proud of and a place of interest for visitors.
I think we as a community of artists need to have act together to go over some these resources for current and future funding. This is not how to get a grant, this how to figure out what you need in the way of a grant.
My current project is $110,000 of private funds, and I have to account for every penny. This is foreign to me, because in the past it was done when the money ran out or it was scramble to finish up with what was left. This time it's the big league.
I am already starting on grants and work for 2007. This year I hope to conclude work started in 2003 and get my 2005 mostly done, then regroup and analysis everything in 2006 and see what direction we want to take. Currently I am cutting gemstones, but inexpensive and ver expensive during the winter to fund new things and expand that market. We did a lot of butterfly jewelry finished them in March and ship first week in April, for the summer season in Italy. But that money gave us some freedom to work on other things leading in to out "mission oriented" art work, Social Improvement.
By Jerry Smith, at 8:50 PM
Here is some that may help the PC folks, it's a spell checker for Internet Explorer
http://www.iespell.com/
It works, I just have to remember to use it.
Jerry
By Jerry Smith, at 8:54 PM
If we coop our efforts, we could buy things cheaper and get block grants as single unit, instead of individuals grants. I think Renee is trying to do this at present.
A neat utilty for those of you using windows Internet Explorer is IESpell, you can find it at:
http://www.iespell.com/
It's a spell checker, which I forget to use, but it does help with doing online type of work.
Jerry
By Jerry Smith, at 9:08 AM
I do enameled jewelry and find that everybody likes to look, but nobody spends any money. One person said they can get my type of jewelry for a lot less. I would like to know where. I was trained in Paris and am willing to train a couple of people here, but every body seems to want to learn an art that doesn't take much time. My art work can take from a few days to make a piece to a few weeks to make a piece. In the mean time I made copper and silver bracelets for quick money. If people want fine arts in their community, then they have to buy something once in a while.
Mindi C
By Mindi, at 3:05 PM
Well the time has come, I found a nice place way out in the country with lots of land, a nice house, a big garage, barn, hay shelter sitting on 2.4 acres of land. For $70k.
In Westerville and Metro Columbus, I can not find affordable space to do my work, when the art districts and art communites are established, the space costs goes thru the roof. In Columbus and Zanesville, what was a few hundred dollars a month for a small place is now a couple of thousand a month. The city of Westerville has the Art Barn, so why aren't they setting up for artist to do work there? Can musicians practice there, are there clay classes or theatre groups getting the use of the space?
Artist are pushed behind sports, but if Westerville is a sports town, so then where are the sports? I think the Rugby team is gone, so what else is there?
As that the rec center is setup for sports and to compete with the athletic clubs, so why isn't there space for artists to do their thing????
People want the arts, but they aren't willing to pay for them, and just some basic space is all that is needed, not a giant complex, but then again a giant art complex would make Westerville world famous.
If you think big and see the future, you will see what will truly benefit a community. I have seen this in many other cities and countries.
Jerry
By Jerry Smith, at 8:07 PM
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