Creative Capacity
What is our maximum occupancy?
The concept of creative capacity sort of baffles me, but as a community effort of gaging the potential of a city with so many creative folk and its concerns, the time is never better than right now to kick start something new. The effort of last night’s townhall forum shows, from the outset and by example (guest speakers) strengths and weaknesses in the universal, yet multilingal voice of today’s art community. The strategies of unlocking the potential of a growing community was posed as being in the best interest of those you may not usually “do business with” - structured within best political practices by example and pitfall. There was a slight “art for dummies” undertone here - but lots of passionate smarts exchanged in the open dialogue segment of the evening. Given the bubble flowchart distributed last night one could easily misconstrue this imperfect, overarching sense of splinteredness in what is perceived to be the various extensions of the creative community. In the macro-view of genres and subgenres of creatives what surfaces is the capturing of vast and inexplicable linkages to big business in this particular corporatized model. With fields as far-ranging as “grounds keepers” to “art supply stores” to “servers” one can’t help but try and fill in umpteen potential blanks…perhaps baristas (with our plethora of them) are also, in fact, “creatives”. This scope surely provided a barely leveled surprise to some in the crowd. Yet, in our current climate, which is dominated by corporate development, we are really continually rebuilding the old mold.
Commish Sam Adams held the first of a proposed series of citywide townhall forums (see PowerPoint presentation) on Portland’s growth in the marketplace, gathering a range of feedback from artists, educators, administrators and concerned citizens. What a good feeling to be in a room of people who sounded so passionate about their concerns and those of the broader ebb and flow of the culture herein. But words are airy without action. It may be seen as a “first step” - and I believe he is doing a good thing gathering up to nearly 300 people in the Gerding Theater last night to openly express problems and potential solutions. But to get there, as a community we really need to continue to rally for the necessary support of statewide efforts like the CHAMP reinvestment package reveiled only a short six or so weeks ago, still on the docket (get involved). Trickle down theory doesn’t really cut it in a climate where there is a growing number of artists and lesser opportunities, setting up a growing competitive nature within the arts, which is not generally customary for most natives.
There is work to do….Join us, or “go your own way”. 
June 13th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Hi there,
I was at the meeting too and was intrigued to say the least but came away feeling that Sam knows where he’s taking this. He will need the total support of the creative community to make this work and that will no doubt be moderated somewhat by his overall political intentions….much work to be done.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
TJ-
Great to meet with you yesterday! Thought I would take a minute a put down a few of the points and such that we talked about, knowing that your blog reaches a considerable base. Unfortunately Erik was out of town,and I errored the date, so I missed the meeting. So here goes.
My partner, Erik Schneider and I moved here about a year ago. As many of you know, he opened Quality Pictures. After looking at other cities of similar profile (Memphis, Cincinnati, Austin) we were head over heels on our way to Portland. Many factors contributed to this, but overwhelmingly we felt this city had the potential to become a world wide destination for the creative arts.
What will it take to make this happen?
- Corporate and civic involvement, most likely;
- A change in the attitude that “money is the root of all evil”, without question;
- Embracing a competetive atmosphere that illuminates the highest achievements of individuals and the community at large, through critical media analysis, definitely;
- A setting down of individual needs and working for the empowerment of the whole, by recognizing the market place for what it is, even if you don’t benefit directly, essential.
- Grants and hand outs are necessary on some levels but they are not sustainable solutions. Far too much energy is spent on trying to squeeze it out of institutions, corporations and civic bodies. By embracing the market place for what it is, opens up potentially millions of avenues of support, on all levels. From the artists on Alberta getting what they want for their works, to the Nike exec. who can afford the $5 million painting and donate it to PAM.
-It seems that provincialism (hippie isolationism) served Portland well over the past 50 or so years, but as the the O pointed out a couple of weeks ago this city is going to double in population in the next twenty years (and not because Portlander’s are going to procreate like rabbits). Without some evolution of this provincial attitude, it could easily become the wet blanket on Portland’s “Creative Capacity”. And then whats left to civic pride, giant sports corporations, that dangle ever larger golden carrots, and get the public to fund it. Then tout themselves as community leaders.
So lets conclude with sports. The teams are taking the field, Portland is up first, will we send somebody to the plate that will swing for the fences, or will it be somebody who hopes they don’t throw the ball, unless on their terms, and then fully expect to win the game anyway?
June 15th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
You can tout the “market place” when discussing “collectible” art, but it does not apply to the performing arts - to pay for any single night of any of the productions in which I am regularly involved, you’d have to sell 100 tickets at $100 each. People will pay $100 for a first rate meal and wine, but not for a first rate performance, unless it’s given by a celebrity, and then it doesn’t even have to be first-rate. People will be paying that and more to see Bariznikov even after he’s too old to barely walk.
In all honesty folks, American’s don’t need art, they only need celebrities. They don’t need voices, trained for decades to produce the most exhilarating sound imaginable, they only need American Idol. They don’t need dancers, trained for decades to execute the most exhilarating moves imaginable, they only need Dancing With The Stars. They don’t need there children to be educated to the sublime nuances of Mozart, they only need them to get the “Mozart Effect” so their stimulated intellectual development will carry them through medical school at the head of their class and enrich them beyond all expectation, thereby positioning them to support ma and pa lavishly in their old age.
And voi-là! There it is. Finally we have arrived at a tangible economic raison d’être for supporting the arts. Exactly what we’re being told we have to do. NOT support the arts because they sublimely nurture our humanity. NO, support them for the “Mozart Effect,” and how rich it’ll make your kids. In the Capitalist Paradise it’s all fundraising all the time.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Hey Blog Dog - While I grimace at your comment with a monalisa twist - I kinda see your point - and I realize its with a vestment of sharp sarcasm….but it does underestimate an audience that expects more. And they are younger n’ wiser these days. It’s the general audience vs. the knowledged audience. Sure, we hope that in the process of creating anything that it would possibly have universal appeal, but then you can easily water down your own imagination. And in my own way I am often creating for a type of audience that can read the work on an explicitly dual level. Otherwise, as creatives, why wouldn’t we have hung up the phone many moons ago? Poo poo to the “been theres and done thats”. Many of us don’t even own TVs.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Further Blog dog…..
It may help you to read Candide by Voltaire (a very short novel).
The glass is half full.
June 16th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
At my age, if I made the effort, I could compile a life history as sweeping as Candide’s, traversing numerous continents and myriad types of work, though never encompassing so many coincidental convergences, or life-threatening encounters - if one reflects on the lowest points in his life, usually the present is better, so the glass-half-full analogy is one that can rarely be wrong.
Try this one: when I’ve become really frustrated with, say a megalithic corporation, for example, and I can find no way to break through the empass, I simply close by politely informing them (them being usually personified by a public relations person of some sort), first that on their best day they’re about as good as the government, and then that even though I’m an impoverished artist, that compared to their exorbitantly overpaid CEO, whose life work, on the day after he’s laid to rest, will most likely be run through a paper shredder, my life work will outlive me by decades, perhaps even centuries. For me, at that point the proverbial glass does measure, at least slightly over half full.