Eating Art Blog for Summer 2006

Eating Art has always been a true accounting or diary of our lives as artists in the Adirondack Mountains .  So many changes have occurred in the past six months, strange changes, but ultimately good ones.

  I'll just say that as a result I will no longer get involved with groups.

  I've worked with and started groups of people on all kinds of projects.  I've been on the Arts Council Board, the Library Board, the Planning Board, was instrumental in making my town one of the few Bi-Centennial of the Constitution towns.  I was a founding member of  MANY and helped run a very successful arts co-op for several years.  Sue and I helped the local PBS station to get an arts auction organized, 20 years ago, which is now very successful, and we started two juried craft shows over the years, one of them is a major juried show in northern NY now.

  I was very instrumental in organizing and running a successful artisans studio tour, which I requested someone else to run this year, no one stepped forward so there is no studio tour this year.

  Sue was very instrumental in getting an arts program in the local elementary school, which didn't have one.  Both of us donated much time to work with kids either in school or in our studio with both public and home schooled kids.

I guess I'm just laying out some information, probably for me mostly, to show that I was able to work very well with people in all kinds of projects for very long periods of time.

I've worked in groups, always enjoyed groups of people and the special energy that comes from it.  I've always enjoyed a studio setting, where creativity was being explored and nurtured and happening.  Group energy was always something I loved.

I was donating my web expertise and time to a non-profit and gave them a wonderful idea and they took that idea and hired a person to execute that idea and to also take over the web site that I started for free for them.  So essentially, they took my work and gave it to someone so that that someone could then make money from it.  I guess they thought I wasn't worthy of it for some reason.

That didn't sit well with me.  Especially when business in the gallery over the winter was just terrible.

My most treasured accomplishment though was in helping to create JEMS.  But over the last three months I have become very discouraged and disappointed.

  I was probably not a perfect team player either, but I know I tried to stay abreast of every aspect of the organization.  I was Treasurer since its inception, 19 years ago and did an incredible amount of work to bring music and the arts to my town.

  There's no way to put it nicely.

When a member runs the organization without regard or consideration of other members viewpoints and needs then that member has to go.  That happened and we lost a major member and friend.

Then while I was meeting with a contributor, (who was about to write a check for a very substantial amount of money) the contributor told me that he just met with another  member who told him he never wanted to have the theater and wasn't going to be involved with it. 

This was a major member of the group and I felt like I was being sabotaged in my efforts to build this theater, and when this same member started hassling me about putting up posters when I did all the work to get a winter music series going, handed out posters to members, who apparently never put them up, that was the last straw with him.  I resigned the Treasury and I didn't even wait for a replacement.

Shortly after that a whole other member come to me and tells me she just sabotaged an event I was in charge of and on top of that she informed me that the play that I was involved in, American Buffalo would never be allowed in the theater.  Wow…..this is the same theater I worked weekly on over the very cold winter, hammering and ripping out walls.  Putting in time like a second job to make sure we were getting the job done.

And now the play that I've been putting so much hard work into wouldn't even be allowed in the theater I was busting ass to get built.

I don't think any of these people understood the vision of where we were going, it was very disappointing to think that this wonderful project was coming apart for me.  One member considered the theater his own private project, one member was sabotaging and complaining about the project and one member wanted to censor what went on it there………

This was like a bad dream.  I was so burnt out, I knew I could argue my points but I thought why bother…….I just didn't have the heart to do it, for I knew that in my heart I had the creativity to continue without this group.

I spent as much or more time in that building, working and dreaming as anyone.  I saw many wonderful events that would have come about.  I was fully prepared to make it happen, and I was very excited to believe I was a part of it.

I'm out now.  I won't help anymore.  I gave the theater a year of my life, other people can build it now and run it too…..I don't even want to go inside it anymore.

I guess I'll never figure out the events and why they happened, of course people have their ways and their opinions, I just couldn't work with these people and their ways and opinions any more.

I'm 58 this year, I've given over 23 years of community service and I feel really good about that.  I'm looking out for myself from here on out.

The changes have ultimately all become very good for me.  Mostly I have a lot of time and I've portioned out the time for work and play and I'm making the most of it all.  I'm glad to be gone of all the headaches that occur when you deal with people. But I'll truly miss the group energy, that is when it was positive.

This was a very unproductive winter for me, no creativity in the arts that I use to enjoy, other than helping to build a theater.…..I've delved more into the graphic arts and web design and making good income from it, so I will continue this way.

Now that American Buffalo is over I feel totally re-energized creatively, Sue and I have a show in a gallery and we are going to be showing a lot of new work, that is in August.  So it's nice to have a deadline like this one, it's lit the fire under our butts to get out some new ideas.  On top of the show they've asked us to do the New Digs Performance.....and Sue and I are also working on that now once a week.