The design of GIA's 2007 conference is based on one used in 1993 for a conference in La Jolla, when papers published as the book Alternative Futures fostered lively discussion. We've invited back two authors from that 1993 publication, consultant M. Melanie Beene and conductor Michael Morgan, to revisit themes from their earlier pieces. We reconnected these two particular writers with their shared story in mind.
For decades the prolific Jack Loeffler has attended to the sounds of New Mexicosounds from nature, conversation, song, and storytellingwhile also hanging out with its legendary iconoclasts and characters. Loeffler's extensive recordings, chronicles, and transcriptions have contributed to the revival of the traditional music of New Mexico. We invited Loeffler to steep us in the place through his medium of sound.
Early in our research on New Mexico, we were encouraged to look at its crops and cuisines for insight into how different cultures in the state have both come together and retained distinct traditions over centuries. In reading, we came across Ancient Agriculture, a text by Gabriel Alonso de Herrera that first appeared in Spain in the sixteenth century and later traveled from the old world to the new, influencing how agriculture is practiced in New Mexico today.
As conference co-chairs, neither of whom has lived in New Mexico, we were told that the story of art in New Mexico is a story of place, that the regionits landscape, its convergence of cultures, its sacred spacesdefines what and how art is made. We turned to a number of New Mexico artists and writers to give us their inside views of this remarkable region. Among them is Chrissie Orr, a transplant from Scotland, who makes work informed and formed by New Mexico's physical environment.
I remember a small artwork I made called the House of Tears. I am sitting with my daughter when I think of it. I wonder if I was feeling sad when I drew it? I don’t think so.
My memory flags. The picture isn’t called House of Tears. It’s called House of Waves.
New Year's Day, 1980, found Arlene Goldbard living in Washington, D.C. monitoring and reporting on our nation's de facto cultural policy. The fact that Arlene was doing this says a lot about the leadership role that many of us were counting on the federal government to play in leveling the field so that our many U.S. cultures would have an equal chance to express themselves, to develop, and, inevitably, to cross-pollinate. It was a substantial and beautiful vision then, and remains so today.
Artist Rene Yung's presentation of this paper generated lively discussion at a forum of the Arts Loan Fund of Northern California Grantmakers, in October 2006. It was written just as Arlene Goldbard's new book, New Creative Community, was published. Although Yung refers to an earlier publication (Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development, by Don Adams and Gold-bard, 2001), she touches on many of the same themes discussed by the authors of "The Art of Social Imagination" (page 27 in this Reader) and reveals how the ideas have been adopted by an artist in practice.
When we visit our physicians, we naturally assume they bring a bundle of knowledge and insight to the meeting. For one thing, we expect them to bring a broad and nuanced understanding of human physiology, and how its many interconnecting systems (circulatory, respiratory, muscle, nervous, lymphatic, and so on) influence our health and well being. We also expect that they know how and where to look for indicators of our health (taking our temperature, testing our blood pressure, checking our blood for chemical balances).
