Working In The Arts

Take Care That Mural Isn’t Destroying Instead Of Revitalizing

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I was walking through a building lobby when I noticed a table with a pamphlet discouraging people from painting murals on their brick buildings. My first thought was that this city department was undermining community beautification efforts. But as I read more closely, I realized the brochure was warning people about some very real issues associated with damaging the structural integrity of buildings.

If you are a member of the arts community trying to cultivate a more creative environment in your city, you don’t want to have your beautification efforts responsible for hastening the decline of the very neighborhoods you are trying to revitalize.

I recently wrote an ArtsHacker post citing some of the issues raised by the brochure I came across.

I mentioned the following among the things to consider, but there are more details in the full post:

Many of the issues painting brick structures creates are related to trapping moisture in what is normally a relatively porous, breathable material. Temperature changes causing expansion of that moisture can undermine the structural integrity of the brick and mortar.  The paint can obscure the development of these issues until the damage becomes severe and repairs more costly and extensive.

[…]

Keep in mind that geographic location should also be factored in to the materials and process chosen. The guide linked to here is calibrated to the conditions of cold, snowy winters and glaring summer sun at elevations exceeding one mile. Murals will weather differently in the relatively warmer, more humid climes of the southeast and drier, hotter deserts of the southwest, as well as the mix of annual weather conditions across the rest of the US.

 

 

Don’t Be Too Quick To Paint That Mural

Secret Lonely Lives Of Arts Loving Kids

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Artsjournal.com linked to a Hudson Review piece by poet and former NEA Chair, Dana Gioia, talking about how he became entranced by opera and classical music as a child, but realized it was not an interest shared by adults and peers in his life. Granted, his younger brother Ted is  a noted jazz critic and music historian, but their shared adult affinity for arts and culture probably was not apparent when Dana was in elementary school.

Gioia’s piece evokes the bittersweet feeling shared by so many who fall in love with forms of creative expression but perceive themselves alone in these passions unshared by those around them. This is not to say that his family didn’t have an appreciation of such things. He talks about his mother reciting poetry when they did housework. He also admits to being a snob and turning his nose up at the popular music of his youth. But he did see record collections of deceased a uncle sold off with only a couple classical music albums saved. Likewise, he managed to assemble a collection of opera records before his mother cancelled their subscription to a record club after two months.

Gioia discusses his furtive attempts to grab fixes of classical music after school when the apartment was empty and on other occasions with such evocative language, I am afraid the excerpting I am about to do is going to ruin its impact.

At the same time, I feel I may have pasted too much text below to hold some readers’ attention.  But I feel like so many of us have experienced these dismal, lonely feelings about experiences that enliven and energize us, that cutting much more would deny readers the realization of a more broadly shared experience than they might have recognized.

My conniving continued and worsened. When I was eleven, my school was given four free tickets for a Los Angeles Symphony youth concert featuring selections from the Ring. I had already gone the year before—… but I asked the sister who taught me piano if I could go again. She was appalled. She told me I was impossibly greedy and advised me to confess the sin. I knew she was right. My desire was selfish and disgraceful. I left her office embarrassed. On Saturday morning two hours before the concert, she called me. One of the chosen kids had decided not to go. While the other kids and parents sat bored beside me, I had the most thrilling musical experience of my young life….

In the car home, I wanted to talk about the concert, but I knew it would be a mistake. Everyone else had already forgotten it. It was best to hide my enthusiasm. I had already been exposed as greedy. Why add weak and weird to the list? Many children lead secret lives. Mine was simply more elaborate than most….

Keeping my mouth shut in the back seat of the car was an important moment. I knew the practical people were right. To treat art as anything but a brief diversion was dangerous. It made everyday living more difficult. Beauty had an effect on me I didn’t understand, but I recognized it made me cultivate a vulnerability that everyone else suppressed. There was no one to ask for advice. I could only wait and watch….

What Other Dwindling Skillsets Threaten Arts and Culture?

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Last August, I called attention to the dwindling number of qualified piano tuners posing a threat to arts organizations’ ability to host concerts.  Along those same lines, Artsjournal.com posted a story last week about the shortage of engineers posing a threat to the continued operation of public radio stations. Where radio stations used to have 4-5 engineers in their employ, now they are lucky to have more than one according to Dave Edwards, the author of the piece.

The United States is projected to require 5,100 broadcast engineers over the next decade due to the retirement of 6,200 existing professionals. This anticipated shortage is particularly pronounced in the RF (Radio Frequency) knowledge domain. Factors contributing to the absence of new entrants include:

  • The allure of competing technical fields offers higher pay and more straightforward work conditions.
  • Broadcast engineering requires a broad knowledge base.
  • There is a need for more awareness among major stakeholders.

Among the things Edwards suggests are breaking out the skillsets required into more specialized areas. For example, making Radio Frequency (RF) engineering, Internet Broadcast engineering, and Office Internet Engineering into separate roles versus seeking someone versed in Radio and Broadcast Internet or Broadcast and Office Internet to fulfill a single role. Separating these broadens the pool of qualified people and ensuring people don’t get burned out trying to juggle too many tasks. Likewise, some of tasks can be outsourced while leaving internal staff to concentrate on crucial work only someone who knows broadcast regulations and troubleshooting specialized equipment can perform.

Reading stories about diminishing numbers of piano tuners and broadcast engineers makes me wonder what other important, but overlooked skillsets readers have identified as threatened?  Many of these roles don’t seem replaceable by AI. In some cases, these are the guys making sure the AI is functioning.

Artists, They Aren’t Making The Community Any Worse

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Title of the post today is intentionally leveraging a statement in a study conducted by Jennifer Novak-Leonard and Rachel Skaggs for the National Endowment for the Arts of public perception of the arts during Covid. It was the topic of an interview/post with Sunil Iyengar who heads up research and analysis at the NEA.

The full quote is:

Nearly two out of three respondents shared the opinion that, quote, “Artists who work or live in their area make it better to live,” and roughly one third affirmed that it doesn’t necessarily make communities better, but artists certainly don’t make them worse.

The encouraging takeaway is that people have a positive view of the artists across all demographics:

In 2022, however, over half of adults expressed the perception that artists uniquely contribute to U.S. communities healing and recovery from the pandemic. Fifty three percent in open-ended responses offered specific ways that artists promote that healing and recovery. I will say, Jo, that one of the surprises of the study to me is that it found virtually zero differences in social or demographic characteristics as playing a factor in the likelihood of respondents to identify positively with artists.

As the authors say, quote, “Most adults in the United States across its many socio demographic groups and perceptions of artists, roles, and communities view artists as being able to contribute to the healing and recovery of communities directly and positively from the pandemic.”

Another interesting takeaway from the research is that people are equally likely to view artists as hobbyists (30%) as they are to perceive them as wage earners (27%). I may have to seek the report out to discover what the perceptions of the other 43% are. Perhaps a combination of some hybrid perception and/or not having any opinion on the matter.