MixedMedia

This past weekend I spent a couple of days in Ithaca, New York at the invitation of someone who runs something called ‘The Level Green Institute’ – which appears to have several offshoots, among them something called “Arts at the Heart of a Sustainable World.” Anyway, the symposium, titled “Greening the Arts” was, though poorly attended, was able to pull in a really interesting group of panelists.

Though I am pretty open to working with just about anyone when it comes to the arts, I am particularly eager to meet artists and critics whose work intersects with development in some way. Which is what drew me to the gathering: while I am not, and do not really consider myself a “green artist” (even the “artist” label is questionable, since I rarely show my own work) I was interested to learn how my work as an educator overlaps with artists whose work takes some kind of stand with regard to human impact in the natural world. And there were some great folks there:

• Steven Siegel is a New York artist working and living in the lower Hudson Valley whose work incorporates detritus of the material world. The forum made little room for us to get to know each others’ work, but I found out more at http://www.stevensiegel.net and was both struck by the range of media and its familiarity via my own friendships with artists like Jeff Spaulding and  Greg Hannan.
• Victoria Romanoff is a preservationist and mixedmedia artist whose work has had a greater impact in her home town than any other artist I know. She restored her first 19th century barn in the 1970s and has since then become an advocate for local preservation. She shared with me a wonderful manifesto-like publication she co-authored on New York’s business façades as we toured her studio-office-home in a former fire station she and her partner restored. Her vigor reminds me of the work of the Canadian duo, Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe.
• Sam Bower runs something called the greenmuseum.org. Himself an artist, Sam is leading an effort to promote works that raise awareness about the environment through the creation of an online museum. I can’t speak to that too much – yet, as its all new to me… but hopefully more to come.

Okay, so a few words about the meeting. First, I found myself in profound disagreement with two of the driving assumptions, which weren’t really clear to me before I arrived. The first is that somehow the arts are absent from the sustainability movement. A quick google of “arts sustainability” should put that argument to rest and encourage something more proactive than griping. Related, however, is the need to get in touch with many of the groups and individuals behind these efforts – reach out and build bridges that help fill in the knowledge gaps around what’s taking place around the world – whether through broad international institutions like UNESCO or modest individual efforts engineered by artists themselves.

Second, folks seemed to share the outlook that there is some kind of unusual – even crisis-level – “deficit” or reduction in the level of arts resources available in schools today. The basic line of reasoning was that due to “funding cuts” under the “No Child Left Behind Act” of the Bush Administration, arts-based instruction was falling off the map.  Three rapid-fire points to clear things up:

1. A quick look at federal spending trends of the U.S. Department of Education shows that arts education funding through the federal government has increased steadily since 2001.
2. No Child Left Behind includes  – ie it does not remove – the arts as a “core  academic subject” of learning.
3. State arts agencies are doing pretty good too. Federal arts appropriations to state arts agencies increased by $9.5million – or 2.7 percent – in FY200.

Not to say these aren’t hard-won battles – but I think artists looking to build coalitions and “do public work” need to get out of this antogonistic, adversarial relationship with the world around us – or at least gather facts – before coming together for meetings like this where we are trying to create, as Joseph Campbell would have said, some “myths to live by.”

I said something like, “I don’t think the arts have ever been more a part of the sustainability movement and public education than they are today” and could see the eyebrows rise. One participant asked me, “Then where do you think this perspective comes from among artists?” I didn’t have a good answer so I said something a bit snarky, like “Maybe they got burned at one time.” Sam Bower, a bit more thoughtful than I am, observed that perhaps its a stance that needs to be taken to better advocate for what is needed or desired. That made sense to me, and I also think there are some folks who ground themselves in what I can only call (thanks to my friend Tom Munnecke) a “deficit discourse” rather than an asset-based discourse, since grousing is part of the mindset they need to produce their work in the world.

Whether and how to shift that is something I’m not too clear on – since contexts certainly vary and its not what I’m good at. But as long as the conversation stays open perhaps ways of working jointly will emerge.  But what I do feel is that there is a risk inherent in starting with a deficit discourse, which is the risk of alienating those who see opportunities and find a negative focus a bit deflating, even debilitating.

Something else I thought was interesting about the meeting: lots of focus on talk, big words like “respect,” “empowerment,” “diversity,” “authenticity” etc – which you’re likely to find at any lefty, progressivey movement-building effort in the U.S. These days – and I really hate to admit it, because I’m not exactly proud of it – I find myself checking out when the discussion heads in that direction. And especially with regards to the arts. Couple of thoughts:

• This is a well-beaten path in a great big circle. I rarely find that “commitments” to these broad “principles” gets anyway other than a laundry list “busy work” items like “reach out to diverse networks.” I guess my perspective is that if you’re really doing this work, and if its of any importance, you’ll both be reaching out while others reach in, because – and this is the most important bit – groups of many interests and orientations will see the value of the work to their constituencies.
•  A discussion can begin to sound like participants reading from a script. These articulate, well-reasoned statements and rebuttals that come right out of college course work on cultural pluralism, etc. It becomes so central to the discourse – and some participants needs to be heard, even “experienced” – that the actual subject (in our case art) gets gutted.

At the end of the day, if I look at the meeting objectively, it was enormously unproductive and didn’t really justify the 16-hour round-trip drive. But, as is always the case, the individual participants were fabulous, inspiring, smart – all that, and well worth the time away. So I’ll look forward to keeping in touch and contributing as I may from Vermont, where I hope the arts will continue to be a part of a way of life up here.

[Image 1: Randy Jewart, friend and former colleague, founder of Austin Green Art, "Happy Family" accretions.

Image 2: Victoria Romanoff, Ithaca preservationist and self-described recycling fanatic, "Caribbean Spice Rack"]