The Harwood Perspective
photo courtesy of harwood.org
Jessie Rogers and her colleagues at Harwood Art Center are pretty amazing. Not to spoil anything, but in this week's Alibi print issue, you'll receive a little crystal ball perspective on Albuquerque's visual arts in 2010. In order to offer said perspective, those in the artsy know had to be asked what it is that they know about the coming artsy year. Rogers and her peeps provided a remarkably thoughtful response to my five relatively unremarkable questions. I think they deserve to have more than a couple of sentences quoted, and I think you might be interested in what they had to say:
Hi Julia,
Thanks again for including The Harwood among your "Looking forward" arts
voices. I presented your questions during our most recent staff meeting
and the following thoughts are the results of that conversation. I hope
you find them helpful, and not insufferably long winded. Of course feel
free to follow up with us if you want any clarification.
Considering your questions about the promise of 2010 - our hopes,
apprehensions, and pride about the coming year - we noticed a lot of
parallels between our own work at The Harwood and trends we're noticing in
Albuquerque and even nationwide. (Ah, the perspective that Twitter brings
to the table.) So forgive me if I dance between comments that are
Harwood-specific and more broadly arts/community organization focused.
----------------
As one of countless arts organizations in Albuquerque, I think it's safe
to say that we are all driven to increase the national awareness of
Albuquerque's arts. We've lived under the shadow of Santa Fe's infamous
arts attraction for a long time, and just now it is starting to feel like
Albuquerque's artists and arts organizations are mobilizing to make our
presence known.
I spend quite a bit of time learning about other arts entities around the
country through Twitter's addictive soundbytes, and it turns out that
Albuquerque is doing just as innovative and exciting work as Philadelphia,
San Francisco, Austin, etc. One of our biggest issues has been the lack of
organization among arts and cultural entities here. But hopefully things
are shifting. Not only is the organization formerly known as the
Albuquerque Arts Alliance (now Albuquerque Creative) refocusing its
mission on providing better coordination and services to the city, so are
we arts organizations connecting over and developing new program
initiatives. Lastly, but certainly not least, we have new political
leadership in town, and we are extremely interested in learning how Mayor
Richard J. Berry plans to support the area's arts and cultural
institutions. With solid resources (esp funding) and focused leadership,
Albuquerque is en route to announce its presence on the national scene.
Toward the goal of improving upon and projecting Albuquerque's art fever,
we are busy at The Harwood preparing for our own exciting programs -
making the existing ones smarter, and bringing new ones in to the mix. Our
gallery programs are showcasing increasingly experimental and innovative
artists; our education programs are developing as creative tools for
individual and social transformation, especially for young folks; and our
relationships with community partners are continuing to develop in to some
of our strongest assets.
The Harwood galleries are jumping feet first in to the new year with two
fantastic exhibits by local artists David Leigh and Cheryl Dietz. Not only
are they both important voices within New Mexico's arts community, they
are also incredibly talented and boundary-pushing individuals. Directly
after their exhibits, Suzanne Sbarge, the powerhouse behind downtown's
brilliant 516 Arts and the recent state-wide LAND/ART project, will also
be exhibiting in our galleries. While we are quite proud of our commitment
to providing dedicated exhibition spaces for emerging and youth artists,
we are always excited when our lineup includes such well known talents as
the aforementioned artists.
Another exciting gallery event in 2010 will be our 3rd annual juried
graduate student exhibit: CROSSING. We launched this program in '08,
leveraging our own visibility in order to benefit ground-breaking new
talent. The first year featured graduate art students from among the
southwest's major universities. In 2009 we extended the jury to include
all graduate artists west of the Mississippi River. And this year we are
SO excited to put the call out to students across the entire United
States. Not only does CROSSING provide a welcome spotlight to artists
stepping out from the safety of academia, it also brings amazing work in
to Albuquerque. For UNM graduate art students, it also presents the
opportunity to be juried alongside national peers.
Because The Harwood is a nonprofit arts organization with bills to pay,
the global deficit is definitely a scary phenomenon. But when we flip the
story around, it's also an opportunity to tighten our game, and to become
much better at articulating our mission and the values behind the work we
do. Every organization and individual artist is going through the same
thing right now, asking themselves how they can rise above the anxiety of
the market and come out on top.
A particular challenge that arts non profits face at times like these is
really defining our importance and relevance when so many other
cause-related organizations are also asking funders and individuals for
support. The arts face the stigma of being frivolous and elitist, which is
akin to stating that baseball is only for the pros. We look around and see
artists supporting themselves through their creativity; we see see lives
changing because of the arts; we see folks from very different communities
coming through our doors and connecting over art - their something in
common. Breaking down that barrier that defines "the arts" as something
for folks with excess time and money is extremely important to us. Because
when people are left outside the door, they lose out, we lose out, and our
communities lose out.
A hopeful trend in the arts is the incredibly self-expressive attitude of
today's youth. Youth are creative by nature, of course, but with all of
the rapid advances in web and digital technology, it seems that more young
folks are finding the tools that suit their particular styles.
Albuquerque youth seem extremely hungry for creative outlets, and we hope
they continue to seek out arts organizations to develop their voices. We
run an Art Camp in the summers and after school arts programs during the
school year. We encourage talented teen visual artists and poets through
intensive studies and mentorships during the school year. We train and pay
youth artist apprentices each summer through one of our favorite programs,
the Arts Summer Institute. And we just received the go ahead to develop a
rehabilitative arts program for struggling youth. (Very excited about
this, but I don't have much detail to offer.)
We are hard pressed to think of anything more exciting than encouraging
and supporting folks to explore their creativity. Amazing things come of
it. Creativity breeds connections and innovative problem-solving. It
values and promotes self-expression, which is a fundamental human need. It
communicates across cultural lines. It challenges perspectives. It tells
our stories and keeps track of history. It simply inspires people. And it
feels good.
As I mentioned earlier, we also put a great deal of stock in our partner
organizations and cultural community allies. Like other business models,
arts orgs thrive when we are in touch with our surroundings. We succeed
when we have allies, and when we understand our value in relation to
others. This particular arts community is smaller than in other cities,
and thus we overlap quite a bit.
One recent example of mass collaboration would be the LAND/ART project
that occurred throughout NM this past summer and fall. All across the
state individuals and organizations participated in this well-orchestrated
project that drew national attention to NM. A recurring state-wide example
would be the Women and Creativity events that are coordinated every March.
At The Harwood we regularly partner with numerous individuals and arts,
cultural, community, and education organizations. Here is a sampling of
developing examples:
- Right now we are holding regular meetings with members of the poetry and
performance communities in order to develop our youth poetry mentorship
program for the spring 2010 semester.
- For several years The Harwood has managed a local community celebration
called the Carnuel Road Parade and Fiesta. Because of our long-standing
history and creative capacity in the communities along Mountain Road, we
were invited to participate in community dialogues that led directly to
this Parade and Fiesta. This past year was the first time that we hosted
the event on our campus.
- We have just started meeting with other key arts organizations in
downtown Abq to set the groundwork for future city-wide open studio
crawls. This particular initiative sprang entirely from conversations that
we (arts entities) started over Twitter, and is putting us in touch with
organizations that we have not worked with much before.
To wrap up this lengthy response, I feel that in the year to come the
Albuquerque arts communities are going to be forced to tighten up our
game, and work closely with one another to get through some challenging
times. Lucky us, one of the blessings of a creative community is its
wealth of adaptive and out-of-the-box thinking. Since national trends are
always a little bit late in hitting this city of ours, I hope that we pay
attention to what's happening and respond ahead of the curve.
Albuquerque artists have much to offer beyond our state lines, and we also
have much to contribute to our very local communities. The Harwood looks
forward to being part of that momentum.
Best,
Jessie Rogers
