As a child, I always enjoyed the portion of the math test where story problems were presented.
With the mind of a young artist, I would dissect the facts of a train traveling down the tracks at 75 miles per hour to arrive at a far-off city reported to be 600 miles away, but I also imagined what the people were wearing as they dined on gourmet meals with sparkling glassware in this posh setting.
Call it the symptom of my childhood AADHD (Artist Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Dreamer), but I really loved these scenarios because of their possibilities.
The week, immediately after ArtPrize ends, is when the organizers of this annual arts event will gather to begin discussions on what worked and what didn't as they prep for their return in 2011.
And while plenty of people via my email box or over bar stools have offered a range of opinions on how to improve ArtPrize, from extending round one's voting period to making the down vote actually count, to exploring even more ways to pump up the neighborhood venues, I have spent the last few days trying to solve a story problem based on this event.
But every time I begin to work on the creation of the scenario, I find one puzzle piece is missing in the equation: the cost to the artist.
We already know that for the second year in a row, visitors descended upon the city to look at art all the while wandering the streets lining the pockets of our area restaurants, shops and hotels with plenty of gold.
ArtPrize enabled again, in its second year, the breaking of many sales records for area businesses.
This is something I have been proud to share about our community in that it was not sporting event nor a car show, but the arts that brought about this record-breaking moment in our city's history.
And while nearly 20 artists publicaly benefited in a financial way via the closing awards ceremony, the mystery of the story problem I attempted to create lies in how do we compute what impact this event has on the artist participating in ArtPrize?
Plenty of places track the number of rooms rented, lines outside packed restaurants and even parking spaces filled when reporting back on the success of the event, but where is the study or numbers about the artists outside of the award monies?
I think it is easy to take the shin-kicking route of beating up on ArtPrize saying they have a responsibility towards the artist when in fact, according to their mission, they are merely here to facilitate an arts festival that most importantly creates a platform for the creation of community. Their purpose, in a nutshell, is to create fertile ground upon which news ideas can organically rise up from the streets, and there is not a better background for this out-of-the-box thinking than art.
What I do know from being in the arts is that art is a business and just like other businesses, if it does not see dollars flowing into it, it will shut down.
This is not to say that the people or businesses of West Michigan are not supportive or generous in the arts, but rather it is me reminding us as we take a breather from the marathon 18 days of looking at art that we need to continue this dialogue within our community all year long.
Innovation is what has propelled this region for decades, but it will take even more effort to keep the momentum going forward if we want our artists to be successful, too.
I may not be able to fill in here what the benefit is to the artist exhibiting at ArtPrize because there truly are many variables to take into account. But I can say that if you have benefited financially because of ArtPrize, then please seriously consider spreading a portion of the windfall in our arts community.
The path to this goal can be met on many levels, from welcoming art into your business by purchasing it from an artist of this region or contest or making a generous donation to an arts organization or underwriting one of the many other events that focuses on the arts.
It is not my intention to use the pen like a cattle prod to tell you how to spend your money, but rather to take this joyous moment as you prepare to close the books on ArtPrize 2010 to think about how we can pay it forward to those who made ArtPrize possible: the artists.
When we started G-Sync's editorial in 2008, the conversation contained here was about how to head off the potential closing of many of our arts organizations by preaching that the arts are worth preserving in our community. I have always encouraged you each week to lead with your dollars by purchasing a ticket to a performance or attending a music show.
We weathered the financial storm of that period because the people of this region do love the arts, but the challenges to the local artist are still there.
So as we head into a season of art openings and artists' markets, I challenge you to once again open your hearts as well as your wallets so you can welcome art into your lives, not just for a few weeks each year.
When we complete this portion of the story problem, we will know we have finally arrived as the city we dreamed we would one day be.
Pencils down.
The Future Needs All of Us (to welcome art in our lives)
Tommy Allen, Lifestyle Editor
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