A New Way of Seeing
June 2nd, 2009 by Julia Taylor
Like most human beings I tend to measure ideas out against my personal experience and some universal perspectives–generally gathered in my post college years. This pic goes right back to a childhood of cows, farm equipment and that rural mess of equipment (the junk heap lot). This is where my life view began.
When I was a wee one, my most poignant memories are of art classes–in the lines, out of the lines, construction paper and awkward scissors, oil paint., clay, and color circles. Then I got a camera early on and all was lost. I LOVED sketching and photography. Two years into a college Arts Major degree, life intervened and I decided during one of those infamous down economic cycles to go to a more marketable major. There was this implicit promise that one could provide for our family needs through commercial means and support our artistic desires on the sides. I did buy in and I still do. I love photography, fine arts and performing arts. I understand the talent, the discipline and the sacrifice that artists need and make to survive on the side today. I also understand the mix it takes in a community to create the economic engine that drives all the cultural economies. It it is a two way innovation economy. Fortunately, I enjoy all the dimensions of regional economy . You need a very robust metro area to sustain artists economically on the strength of their art and there are probably three market areas in this country that can provide that type of catch-net. Given our strength as a second tier market, we have remarkable resiliency including the largest and oldest performing art fund in the country. It’s quite remarkable and we can say it because we have so many regional and global companies who passed 50, 75, 100 and even 150 years of accomplishments and have always supported the arts.
Its been a great business plan but now we need to fast forward to how we grow our market for innovation and creativity. We know that exposure to creativity can throw the switch for a innovative talent to grow. How do we keep our big tent of the arts open to all those children and young people to learn a new way of seeing, how to create and bring this talent to our everyday world of work and play.
Somebody else paid the entry ticket for us. They didn’t know us. They just paid forward.
It’s time for us to pay forward for each of those 400,00 children in our region that don’t even have the experience of of creativity outside of a TV set yet. They need the chance to learn a new way of seeing.
Keep the arts giving forward and thank someone who believed in each one of us without ever meeting any one of us. Invest in your future and region’s well-being.
Pay it forward.
http://cli.gs/UPAF
3 responses so far ↓
1 Christopher // Jun 2, 2009 at 10:58 pm
My grandfather was a farmer, so my father could go to college and become a teacher. My father was a teacher so I could go to grad school to be a business man. I am a business man so that my son can grow up in a world filled with art.
Art is one of the highest expressions of achievement in a society and is made possible with an unbroken foundation of support over the generations.
Please support UPAF.
2 Christine // Jun 3, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Thanks, Julia. Very artistically said!
3 Michelle Sieg // Jun 5, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Beautifully written. I also grew up on a farm, where our imaginations meant everything. As an adult, it’s so cool to see imaginations at work on stage. Live music is by far my favorite expression (to see/hear, not perform!) but through working with UPAF, I understand how much more there is to it. And what the effects are off the stage and out in the community. Thanks for the reminder to all of us.
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