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Hi. I am an artist (Canadian, living in the Greater Portland Area). North Americans, either due to the pioneering history or the fact that many immigrants came from backgrounds that were lacking in education or cultural awareness (ie. poor, hoping to make a new life in the New World), or as some think, in America anyway, the Puritan influence, don't seem to value fine art, or they seem to class it in the same way they think of groceries or consumer items, which are factory made. Perhaps people think it is like churning out mass produced goods, which, due to industrialization, can put items on shelves cheap enough for almost everyone. Fine art is about quality, involving the vision, talent, and hard work of the artist. I don't think non-artists realize how much work is involved in creating fine art, how much thought, how much problem-solving, how much craft (skill), and how you cultivate your sensibility and your skills, and that this all involves spending a lot of time doing it. We don't educate our children in school about art either, so I guess that says a lot about how much we value it.
People are now realizing with the writers' strike, tv and film start with writers...without the written screenplays, stories etc., the actors have no material and no jobs, the directors have no material and no jobs, etc.etc. But they still don't realize this also goes for visual and fine arts too...Everything you enjoy culturally that makes life more than just survival or a scrabble for a living, comes from the creative efforts of artists, performers, musicians etc. The fabric and clothes we wear, the books and magazines, the furniture we use, the music we listen to, the plays and films we watch all, the paintings we hang or the sculptures we place around the house come from artists.
Historically, artists in Western civilization (look to Europe) have been supported or hired by monarchs, the Church, the Pope, governments (good and bad, for propoganda or purely aesthetic purposes). Travel to England and the Continent...art galleries and museums are everywhere, supported by the state and open to all at affordable rates or free.. Rich and poor can and do wander the Louvre, the National Gallery - they value the arts in a way that North Americans do not. For the government here to shrug it off is ignorant and backward, as if it revels in the idea of being a hick about culture. Producing visual art or performing arts productions is not the same as selling gasoline, stocks and bonds, manufacturing steel, or making computers. Neither is educating our children, which seems to barely rank above art in this culture. Once you have the basics for survival, the soul needs art, the mind needs educating.
I also think we need corporate support as well, as they benefit from the community in a huge way, and they like to advertise a healthy cultural life in their location to attract people to work for them, or move to the communities where they are based.
On a personal level, I'd ask people to think about how much they spend on coffee drinks at Starbucks, how much they spend on knick-knacks, entertainment, books, magazines, alchohol, eating out etc. and then look at how much it would cost to buy a piece of original art. If you spend several hundred dollars on those things, is it worth it to you to spend a similar amount on a painting, a sculpture, a drawing, a print?

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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