Daily Art Nag for June 5, 2011

Shawnee Barton, contributor to the UT's Sketchbook blog, published a recent article on how she was taking steps to become a better arts patron.  While her efforts are certainly admirable, I came up with a few of my own that I believe might have a longer lasting affect within our community.  Here they are:

1. Open a gallery or alternative exhibition space, commercial or otherwise.

2. Buy a piece of artwork. Get your FB friends to buy artwork. In fact, get everyone who lives in your apartment complex or on your block to buy artwork. Prices for work in SD are extremely reasonable and affordable.

3. Buy art supplies for an artist. Sponsor an exhibit or installation. Help stretch a canvas. Buy a frame.

4. Take a friend to a museum or gallery, and then buy them the catalog.

5. Take a collector to lunch (if you know one). Introduce yourself as Delacroix and hand them your wet paint brushes (to paraphrase Larry Rivers & Frank O'Hara).

6. Start an art publication, a real one, on paper - not a blog. Newsprint is still cheap and so is Kinko's.

7. Write about art, no seriously, write about it. Trust me on this one.

8. Buy a building, property, an empty warehouse, a tool shed if you have to. Stake a claim, build your empire, and invite other artists to join.  Live there, invite others to live with you, make lots of art.

9. Instead of sending an email to your local city council, become a city council member yourself.  You can affect change from the inside - it's warmer. If this isn't possible, protest, take to the streets, throw bricks. Kansas is going to end up biting us all in the ass if we are sitting on ours.

10. Make the best art you can and get rid of the rest. Become an arts editor, your own.

11. Get educated. Knowledge is power and history is good but art history is better.

12. Yours?