AC Discussion | DIY or Don't: Artist-Run Spaces and Cultural Institutions
On November 17th, Sarah Lynn Brown, Kyle Laidig, and Joelle Sandfort came together for a virtual discussion about how independent, alternative, DIY, and artist-run spaces can question and queer institutional hierarchies through collective ownership, community-informed decision making, and horizontal leadership. Together with moderator Lillan Snortalnd, they thought through ways some of these models might be scaled to decentralize wealth and power in the cultural sector as a whole.
Watch the full conversation, or read through the transcript below to find links to additional resources, and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Title of Discussion: DIY or Don’t: Artist-Run Spaces and Cultural Institutions
Panelist 1: Sarah Lynn Brown, Theater Maker, Educator, and Founder of the Leavenworth Space
Panelist 2: Kyle Laidig, Founder and Director of Baader-Meinhoff
Panelist 3: Joelle Sandfort, Artist, Educator, and Founder of Fleabane Gallery
Moderator: Lillian Snortland, Writer and Manager of Advancement Communications at Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Date of Discussion: November 17th, 2021
List of Acronyms: [SLB] = Sarah Lynn Brown; [KL] = Kyle Laidig; [JS] = Joelle Sandfort; [LS] = Lillian Snortland; [PF] = Peter Fankhauser
Transcript
[PF] Welcome everybody. My name is Peter. I'm the program director here at Amplify Arts we're excited to have you join us tonight for our Alternate Currents panel discussion ‘DIY or Don't: Artist-Run Spaces and Cultural Institutions’ with panelists Sarah Lynn Brown, Kyle Laidig, Joelle Sandfort, and our moderator, Lillian Snortland. I want to take just a minute to thank the Hitchcock Foundation, the Mammal Foundation and the Nebraska Arts Council whose support makes programs like this possible.
If you are new to Amplify, or if you haven't joined us for a discussion like this before, Amplify's mission is to promote unity innovation and progress in the cultural sector and one program that helps us do that is Alternate Currents. Alternate Currents is a three-prong program that includes a blog, a discussion series, and a working group of 10 artists and culture workers who come together to help shape the program and move it forward. Lillie, our moderator, is a member of our 2021 Alternate Currents Working Group and I just want to take a quick second to say thank you to her for all of her incredible work this year. She's moderated a bunch of these discussions, she's contributed some amazing work to a forthcoming publication, and her insight and thoughtfulness and care has really helped shape the content of our discussions this year. Lillie, thank you. You are incredible.
Our panelists are also incredible. We're thankful to have them all here and to learn from them. Sarah, Kyle, and Joelle, thank you so much. This is just one panel in a year-long investigation of the future of our cultural institutions and how we can make our cultural institutions more equitable and more just. Our panelists will be in conversation with one another for about 40 minutes, after which we'll open the floor to questions. If you have thoughts or questions before that, please feel free to enter them into the Q&A or the chat. Both functions will be active throughout the discussion. A video and a transcript of our conversation tonight will be available on that the Alternate Currents blog in another week or two. Please also feel free um to revisit the discussion, leave your comments, and help us keep this conversation going. There is one more thing I wanted to mention briefly: applications for our Alternate Currents Working Group for next year, 2022, are open now through November 28th. You can find more specific information about the working group and Alternate Currents on our website anytime. It's www.amplifyarts.org.
Thank you again for being here. We really appreciate your support and your participation in critical discussions like this. With that, I’m going to hand it over to Lillie.
[LS] Thanks so much, Peter. I want to start off with brief introductions, just a couple of minutes each. I can go quickly, myself. I work in the nonprofit arts development world. I'm a writer on the side so this conversation is talking about both sides of my life and how we can shape those relationships between those groups. I'm a member of the Alternate Currents Working Group and that's been an opportunity to link my social practice and my creative practice. I would love to pass it off to Sarah. You're the first on the corner. Introduce yourself, what your background is, what you do now, which is a really broad question but answer it as you like, and why do you do it.
[SLB] Hello everyone! Sarah Lynn Brown. My pronouns are she/her/hers. I have lived in Omaha most my life and worked as an artist and educator in Omaha. I got my bachelor's degree in theater performance at UNO, and I got my master’s from the University of Northern Colorado in theater education. I've worked, either as freelance or a staff, with a lot of nonprofits in Omaha, maybe almost all the theater and performance related ones. I worked primarily for the past two decades with Nebraska Shakespeare and created a touring education program with them and also a program for gender exploration. Now, I work as a freelance artist educator. I’m on the Nebraska Arts Council teaching artist roster. I work with a lot of high school and middle school students in the realm of gender performance and storytelling.
At the beginning of March 2020, I leased a small micro theater called the Leavenworth Space on 50th and Leavenworth. I was determined to do small, intimate theater and then the rest of the year happened, so it was empty. I cried inside of it a lot, but then I found a new life for it and now it houses visual artists and is a platform for new artists and writers to create their own pieces of performance and writing. That's me.
[LS] Joelle, do you want to go next?
[JS] Sure. Hi everyone. I'm happy to be here. My name is Joelle Sandfort. I'm originally from Lincoln. I graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan with a degree in art and education. I taught high school art classes for two years and then I moved to Omaha around the time when the pandemic was starting. Since then, I’ve worked with the South Omaha Mural Project, I’ve done some private art lessons, and I started a DIY space in my garage called Fleabane Gallery within the last few months. I’m also a facilitator with the Naturalist School where I lead poetry and art workshops.
[LS] Kyle, you're up.
[KL] Hi. My name is Kyle Laidig. My background, I grew up just outside of Philadelphia. I received my BFA in photography and aesthetic theory from Rhode Island School of Design and since graduating. I’ve worked as an administrator in arts nonprofits on the east coast and as an arts writer for a variety of publications. I moved to Omaha about two and a half years ago sort of on a whim and about a year ago, almost to the day, I started an art gallery here called Baader-Meinhoff. My work at the gallery is focused on curating a program of artists outside of the Midwest to create bridges between our local cultural economy and those abroad through the gallery. Beyond its exhibition program, I also operate a room and board residency. I invite artists to come from all parts of the world stay here make work and give them a place to live and access fabrication resources, again in an effort to connect artists from outside and the local community in an integrated ecosystem of cultural productivity.
[LS] I'd like to hear more about your experiences with independent, alternative, DIY or self-run art spaces. You've all, in your introductions, talked about either starting one or having worked in one and so I’m curious to know how you feel about them.
[SLB] I can start. Independent, alternative devised work is where i cut my teeth. After I graduated from UNO, about 17 years ago, there was this culture in the theater community of self-production. There were artists working on writing their own work, producing their own work, a lot of drive towards devised theater, and I feel like, although I didn’t get my master’s in theater performance, in that work after my undergrad, I really learned a lot of what I would have learned in a master's program. I looked towards starting the Leavenworth space and starting that relationship with the community because I haven't seen that lately. A lot of the theaters that were creating independently closed. A lot of artists that were doing some of the grassroots production of riskier theater left. It isn’t really happening in Omaha right now. I’m trying to use this small space as a easy and affordable way to allow people to workshop and navigate and curate their own artistic voice because within the past decade or so, we have fewer platforms that allow young artists, new artists, or people who want to explore there's a venue for that. That’s how I cut my teeth and I don't know what type of artist I would be if I hadn’t had those opportunities. I’m looking towards offering those to other people as well.
[LS] Joelle, did you have something to say?
[JS] I feel like, similar to what Sarah was saying, in Lincoln, I was surrounded by a lot of people who were starting their own DIY projects of different sorts. There was one project that was in an old church. They would host music events and sometimes there would be exhibitions and it was looking at those experiences and wondering if I could do something like that myself. One of my friends at the time, who I was also living with, we were talking about how we wanted to eventually start some kind of space. We thought, “Why do we have to wait? We can just do this now.” So, we found a studio space and started renting it out and going from there, but it really was inspired by seeing a lot of the other DIY spaces in Lincoln and other places that I had visited. One time in Minneapolis, I was with a school group there and we ended up going to someone's garage gallery show. That's where I was like, we can show art pretty much wherever. It doesn't just have to be in this white cube space. I did work at my school's gallery during college as well, so I gained experience there and took brought it with me into the DIY scene.
[KL] Philadelphia has a long history of renegade, or ostensibly punk, or off-kilter exhibition spaces. Growing up, I took a lot of cues from alternative art spaces across the country. I’m going to drop a few links into the chat so that we have a common point of reference. One based in New York, which started out as an alternative space and ended up becoming a little bit more institutionalized, is a now defunct project called Real Fine Arts. I’m posting a link to a sort of curated selection of their projects. That was a space that engaged with more a horizontally leveled tier of artists in that they worked with emerging artists, and also displayed more institutionally validated or verified artists’ work. They were able to create a really unique social ecosystem there.
Another space that I’ve been very inspired by is a space in Portland, Oregon called Yale Union. This is a non-profit sort, maybe a little more institutional in its scope. It was run by this artist Flint Jamison, and they did an incredible job of maintaining a sort of renegade spirit about their program, showing work from Japan and a lot of relevant work from off-the-beaten-path artists in the States. I think we'll end up getting here eventually, but in terms of queering institutional strategies, they recently ceded their land to the local Indigenous people. So, now Yale Union is no longer, but the space itself that housed the nonprofit is going to be a museum for the Indigenous cultures in Portland. I think that not only did they show a pretty expansive and exciting way to look at curatorial programming, but also an ethical community-based presence. Those are just two examples of spaces that I find interesting.
My own engagement has always been curating shows at different spaces, whether it's nomadic curatorial projects like Proxy in Providence, or just doing stuff my freshman year at film school in Philadelphia in my living room, which I guess is not so different from what I’m doing now running a gallery out of my home. That’s a brief summation of my engagement with alternative spaces.
[LS] I think both Joelle and Kyle mentioned starting from your own living room and wanting to invite people in. My first interaction with a DIY space was my friends putting stuff up on the walls, kind of jokingly, but creating a full gallery experience out of it. It was a bit of a joke, but they went through the effort, and it made me realize that it was as much fun to me as walking into a gallery because it was about the people. It wasn't just about what we were looking at. I started looking more into that and found this really lovely gallery I unfortunately did not get to see before it closed called the Nook Gallery. It was a space that was literally just two benches, a table, and the idea of coming together in a very small-scale to address art and life. I think that that is, for me at least, where DIY spaces and independently run spaces can do what institutions can’t. I think that work outside institutions touches on the human part of the art experience, and it can expand it further in a really nice way. It's not just consuming art, it's expanding what it means to be human and what it means to have a connection with another person.
Kyle also made me think of a certain question we can dive into. Talking about how self-run spaces can question and queer established institutional hierarchies, Sarah, you mentioned the idea that if people are not fully professionalized, and they're just starting out, just learning, just experimenting, there isn't really space for them. I think that this is a great place to start the conversation because professionalization can lead to weird hierarchies and a top-down style of governance. You'll have your executives on the top, you'll get down into the managers, trickle down more into the artists somehow falling at the bottom of the pyramid, which is weird because they are the ones who are really forwarding the mission of the institution. I was curious if we could talk a little bit about ways to overwrite those institutional hierarchies. That might happen in a self-run smaller space, but if you want to be imaginative, how can you see that expanding into the whole cultural ecosystem? What would happen if that got shaken up?
[SLB] I think if this pandemic has taught us has taught us anything, seeing what happened with institutions having to go dark, for the most part, the people who were cut loose were the artists. The people who had to go on unemployment were the artists. Of course, organizations were cutting and slashing everywhere but the higher-level administrative positions were the ones that were protected and kept around. I do understand, having worked for nonprofits that structure is important. If that isn't in place, then the organization isn't going to hire the artists. But I feel like the whole structure of nonprofits, from what we could see this last year, is kind of opposite. It should be tilted in the direction of giving ownership and leadership to the people who are providing the reason why the building is there and the reason why the administration is there. There are a few theaters I've noticed taking that opportunity. I’m not sure if this is happening in other art forms as well, but there are few theaters, American Shakespeare Theater is one of them, that are taking their artistic director position, which is usually one of the top positions at the organization, and they’re splitting it amongst multiple artists who have been with the company for many years. They're experimenting with allowing that high-level position to be run by artists, people who have had the experience of being in lower-level positions. They’re giving it to multiple people so it's not just one artist that shoulders the position. You're still a cog in this organization and it's very hard to do any sort of change if you don't have the support of the people around you, but I think I’m seeing sparks of it happen because of this past 18 months where we started to really see the inequities between arts and administration in nonprofits.
[LS] Kyle, you brought up Yale Union and their approach to working through those hierarchies. I was wondering, are there others on that list? I’d love to hear about them.
[KL] I dropped a few other links into the chat. It’s not a comprehensive list but just a couple of different alternative projects. One is a project called, Bed-Stuy Love Affair, by an artist named Jared Madere. He drove his RV around Brooklyn and curated the work of emerging artists with a specific anti-institutional take, whether through materials or content that was a little less “white cube.” Similarly, I also added a gallery that an artist Aaron Graham, a former student at Cooper Union and incredible artist started. He bought a U-Haul truck and ran exhibitions out of it. He would park it in Chelsea, in arts districts, but also in strange parts of the city in New York.
To piggyback on what Sarah was saying, if there's one thing that I’ve noticed, or a change I’ve observed in cultural productivity coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's this sudden emergence of alternative spaces not just nationally, but internationally. I think people are seizing upon what was already taking place and what varying degrees of quarantine and social isolation reinforced and pushed across the threshold, which is the leveling or horizontal flattening of space meaning you don't need to be present necessarily to be engaged in a cultural discourse. Subsequently, artists and people who want to organize art to be seen didn't need physical bodies in the way that historically art exhibition has demanded. I think instead of being oppressed or stifled by these frustrating social conditions, it gave it gave us a landscape in which to seize unique spaces that are accessible, whether because it's financially feasible or it's available in in some other capacity and gave us an opportunity to realize projects in spaces that might have otherwise not been considered. That's been exciting to observe and see these spaces not only be taken seriously, but really thrive and something that is temporally relevant to us, but also an exciting model to move forward. Perhaps yeah, the field of dreams, you know, “if you build it…” It could be in your garage, or it could be in your living room, but they will come in one form or another.
[JS] Going along with the idea of more accessibility in these spaces, I think of emerging digital art spaces like Ghost, a digital gallery that Ian Tredway started, which is no longer functioning. It's not the same experience seeing artwork online as it is to go to a physical space but trying to get those images out and make them more accessible to people is another way to engage with queering institutions. Something that I’ve thought of, and I don't have any examples of any institutions that are actually doing this right now and that might just be because I haven't done enough research, but I would love to see a curator in an institution reaching out to community members who aren't experienced with curation and really working with them to come up with an idea for a show that connects with the community or engages local artists or bridges local, regional, and national artists. I think that would be really an interesting way of queering that kind of space.
[LS] That seems like an advantage that maybe a an independently run organization has over a museum or larger gallery. I’m wondering what other advantages do you see in those self-run spaces? I would also love some more specifics from a financial standpoint. Is there any financial gain or benefit to being smaller? Are you able to be more nimble? Are you able to have more connection to the community? Can you get around some of the pitfalls that nonprofits encounter?
[JS] That's a good question. I'm going to think on that for a second.
[KL] I can maybe speak to those questions. I think generally or more broadly speaking in my opinion, self-run spaces are better equipped to manifest individualized support in that they're more immediately able to address specific needs of artists in a way that's plastic or empathetically flexible. I think through this kind of individualized interpersonal connection there's a distinctly human experience of space and a locality that can create a bond and serve like a bridge to the local community and culture. Also, in some ways, we have a couple different models of residency programs locally, but I think that when spaces can foster an intimate connection with artists and the locality, there's more potential for a continued relationship and one that can combat the kind of transitory or temporary participation that sometimes plagues larger institutions and residency programs. You know, resident artists are here for a couple of months and then they're gone.
There was a project a while back where Theaster Gates came to North Omaha and built a project to engage and enrich the local community (Carver Bank). That was funded through non-profit collaboration but the building that was utilized now sits vacant. The project was really important at the time but without continued investment and participation with people who come into a space from the community, it's hard to gain traction. I think self-run spaces are uniquely privileged in their ability to foster and maintain those connections.
[SLB] To piggyback off that, keeping yourself low to the ground helps you focus on the art and on the artists. I feel like the larger you get, the more the more budget you need for all of the other things. Being self-run, being your own entity, you are so much more flexible. You're able to adjust to the needs of the community or the needs of the artist. I feel like there is obviously less overhead and things like that, but also fewer people to answer to. You don't have a board. You don't have a staff that you have to run everything through so everything can happen much quicker. You can be pushing the envelope a little bit more because you don't have to go through all of the chains of command you would with a nonprofit. You're just a bit more nimble especially when you're talking about art and artists. That's where the good, the important, the challenging work thrives when doesn't have those types of restrictions placed upon it.
[LS] That's a great pathway to another part of this conversation. I think about those barriers that you are alluding to, Sarah. There's a particular reference that we all have from the Union for Contemporary Art, their Radical Hearts program. We looked into that a little before this conversation and the idea of like radical hospitality. It moves beyond visualizing art and providing services virtually to connecting art and community in ways that have a ripple effect like growing and distributing food. I think that independent spaces, because they have that connection that locality like Kyle mentioned, they are really in touch with what the community needs as human beings. Art for art's sake isn't particularly interesting without human connection, in my opinion. I would love to hear about other examples of similar ripple effects you’ve seen and talk more about why they’re important.
[SLB] I think the experiences that I have had within this past 18 months of not being able to do a ton, but trying to do what we can, are important ones. The Leavenworth Space has created the ripple effect of mentorship or the idea that this is a space you can come to and find someone to help you figure out how to self-produce or what the next step is. It also works to support the idea of continued training outside of the university or outside of the professional status. It helps people looking for something that can supplement their education in a much smaller, intimate one-on-one sort of relationship. Because it is so small and has smaller financial needs, you're able to look at each individual person who walks through the door and what you can do for them rather than having to figure out how you're going to have a class for 30 people because you need to get the tuition. It allows you to keep that human connection intact. That's something I was surprised to find really interested people and this small building kind of started to provide those opportunities.
[JS] I think especially with the pandemic and how we were prevented for so long from gathering, just being able to host events now and have people come and be together and share space, it feels like a celebration. So, having food and making sure that people are comfortable and feeling welcomed in a space is something that is pretty rare in a bigger institution, I think, where the focus is more on how many people are walking through the door. Having a smaller space, you can really focus on connecting with someone. For the last show I had at the Fleabane Gallery, Jasmine Purcell was the artist. She's a filmmaker based in Lincoln. I invited the neighbors, which I hadn't done for the first showing and I was really glad that I did because one of them showed up and he had never been to an art event before, but he was grateful to have been invited and to be able to connect with his neighbors and he really enjoyed the experience. Now I feel like we're connected. We’ve lived next to each other for a year and hadn't even really spoke until that moment so that was really special, and I think pretty uncommon in larger spaces.
[KL] I might not have anything radical to add but Joelle, your comment about engaging with your neighbors is something that I find quite resonant. Seeing that like the gallery is run out of my home, I do live in a residential neighborhood, but more generally and broadly speaking, I think some of the most profound and frankly the most interesting conversations and experiences that I’ve had around art have been with non-practitioners, people who aren't artists, who don't elect to go to art exhibitions, who may not even be particularly like culturally engaged in the traditional sense. I think there's often this dynamic, which maybe ties into the discourses around cultural productivity, which is that uh learned perspectives or perspectives that come from a specific and specialized knowledge set are often privileged. We are talking here about this because there is some type of pedigree. We're involved in alternative spaces. We run spaces. We're engaged with arts in the community. But I’ve found the most inspiring conversations to be with my neighbor across the street, an 85-year-old woman, Mary who runs a food bank and is deeply engaged in the community in a way that's extremely self-defined and inspiring. She's not an art critic, or a theorist, or an artist proper, but her insights on some of the exhibitions have been the most moving and thought provoking.
I think that when you run an alternative space, you open a door to a really like uncontrollable presence. You don't know who's going to walk through the door. It might not be desired at all. It could be a negative input, but refreshing and unique perspectives come from people who I never would have anticipated. I think, in some ways, that's the most radical thing art can do is congeal an uncommon audience and allow space for conversation and dialogue to happen. By nature, alternative spaces are predisposed to those interactions and something that I appreciate.
[LS] That did remind me that there is a sort of prestige that sometimes goes along with art in general, but when you get down to it, art is about survival. It's about expressing your community or representing yourself in a way that maybe you couldn’t otherwise. I was thinking of a recent exhibition in Baltimore where I live. It was a retrospective of this experimental cabaret, it's more like an experimental art space. After reading the exhibition text, I realized this was the only space where people could be themselves safely. I think that we sometimes forget that how critical and crucial those counter-cultural spaces are to a community and to a city. I genuinely believe they are the lifeblood of a city. Whenever I go somewhere new, I’m not trying to go to like the biggest museum. I’m trying to find those little like nooks and crannies where people are able to be themselves and be the most experimental. I just wanted remind myself and anyone listening that it is important for these spaces to exist.
I want to offer a moment for the audience to type questions into the chat and we’ll continue talking.
[SLB] I just want to bounce off what you said Lillian and pull back something that I said earlier about how important those like smaller spaces are to a community. In Omaha’s current theater culture, performance culture, those small theaters, those grassroots theaters aren't really there. There are a bunch of spaces, like we're saying, these new venues but the tools of self-production haven't been cultivated in the community. Providing space is wonderful, but also providing all of those tools in order to learn self-production is something that I feel is so important to the broader arts community. For Omaha’s cultural scene to have depth, we have to have those smaller performance experiences and those bare bones, riskier storytelling experiences. Right now, I’m not seeing a ton of that in Omaha.
[LS] I would love to circle back to the idea of elitism and how you manage to move away from elitist attitudes in your spaces. As you move through the art world, it's pretty difficult to shed those attitudes. I’m curious, how do you see that happening in your work and how would you recommend that institutions do the same? Or is it really not in their purview? Would it be authentic if they did?
[JS] I think it's a museum's job reflect what's happening in the culture. There is a lot of “fine art” and “high art” that gets exhibited in these spaces but there's such a treasure trove of lower forms of art that are really important to a lot of people. I think it would be interesting for museums to question what exactly they're showing and why they're showing it. Are they just trying to show all of the hot artists, or are they willing to take a risk and show an artist that might not be popular but is important to a certain group of people?
[KL] This question, the question about elitism and cultivating a more open cultural sphere, there's no one way to answer it for all spaces in all localities. I think it has to be addressed specifically and locally first. Since moving here, one of the first things that I noticed was that the same artists kept getting shown at all the local galleries. I had only been here for about a year, and I had already seen two or three artists be shown more than once at spaces. I got the feeling that there was an interior kind of hierarchy. While it might not be elitist in the sense of an international art economy, I did feel as though there was some kind of Omaha hierarchy taking place and that certain voices were being amplified and reiterated over and over and over again. That was one of the things that made me feel like it was necessary and important to create a space that was doing something different and not showing the same artist that everyone knows. While it might not be often perceived as elitist, it is about a kind of cultural clout, or “Omaha famous,” and insert any city in front of that.
There is an internal hierarchy that artists and creators work through to gain exposure and gain importance within their local creative communities. I think that's a problem that could be addressed through a variety of means, but one that I find inspiring is encouraging local cultural workers or artists to be more open to influences outside of their local community. It's so important to support local artists and to really provide robust resources for your local cultural economy, but I think that when that's the stopping point, you create a condition that gives way to brain drain, where artists reach a certain point, and they find themselves wanting more. They find themselves migrating to larger cultural centers like Chicago or New York or LA. By creating a more open and variated ecosystem, by bringing an artist from outside and trying to connect local artists to a greater cultural discourse, you can create conditions where there are opportunities here, but there are also avenues for connecting with the world beyond that would allow for a more settled and more diverse cultural community and dialogue to exist. That's one way that self-run spaces can help to combat both an exodus from regional cultural communities and elevate and extend the reach and importance of their local economy to broader one that touches different cultural spaces.
[SLB] I agree with all that. One thing you said, Lillian, that I wanted to comment on was the idea of larger institutions participating in the amplification of artists. Is that something that's disingenuous? Are they able to do it? I think they should do it regardless. Even if it is a little fake or a little false. I feel these larger institutions have a responsibility to their communities and to local artists. Even if they're clearly just doing it because they're a big institution and they should, yeah, then they should do it. It might feel a little fake or a little false but it's offering opportunity. It's offering exposure. It's highlighting artists we might not think would normally be supported by larger institutions. I think it is their responsibility to their community, whether it is genuine or not. I think they have to do it.
[LS] Are there collaborations that you have seen, or could foresee, between some of these more self-run spaces and institutions? Have you seen that come to fruition before? Part of this conversation is trying to figure out what the relationship between those two types of organizations could be in the future.
[KL] I think a primary example would be the Bemis Underground, the space they used to have where their current music program or sound program is located now. They used to have a space for alternative or less institutionalized art to take. Why they abandoned that for the sound program is not for really for me to say, but I think it's a yawning chasm in their relevance to a local cultural economy. There was so much potential and so much possibility for a significant arts organization that has a residency program, which engages an international arts community, to have their own programming on the first floor but then have a space where you can have more flexibility for experimental work or work that doesn't exist within a more rigid market.
I deliver groceries and do freelance design work to facilitate the exhibition program here, but with the operating budgets that some of these places have, I really wonder where it's getting spent and what the priorities are in these spaces, while also empathizing that it takes a lot of energy to engage with the community. When you've got those kinds of resources to throw around, the priorities and the implicit privilege and blind oversight that takes place becomes a lot more apparent. I think the Bemis is a really good example of a place that needs to be questioning the way that it's allocating its resources. I’ve found The Union to be a much more inspiring space in the way that they allocate their programming to supporting local artists and then also bringing in national artists in a way that feels integrated.
I think you have two very strong dialectics. You have the Joslyn, which is a marble building, and then you have the Bemis, and the Union. It's two different models for how arts non-profits and contemporary art can be contextualized and engaged in a community focused way. With Arts Omaha and the ripples that came from spotlighting the gross inequity in arts funding and how that's distributed and how that trickles down to community and cultural programming, I agree with Sarah. I think it should be underlined that space for more flexible, more expansive, and experimental work that that brings the community in without relinquishing high standards, is something local institutions should investigate and reallocate their attention to.
[LS] That made me think of a couple of different directions we could go with this final question. One comment came up in the chat that I think is worth mentioning. It’s almost about the life cycle DIY sphere. Someone commented that the Bemis Underground, which you talked about Kyle, that showed more local artists, was run by people who spun off into different organizations in Omaha. That is something I noticed a lot when I lived there. It seemed as if everyone started in one place and then honed their own visions and spread out. There's something really interesting there and I’m not sure if it's a good if it's a good sign for the ecosystem or not. But I think it’s something special where you're honing your vision of how art can interact with community. I worked at Bemis, full disclosure, and I was there for the implementation of the sound program. I can say from a just programmatic standpoint, I’ve never been more inspired by sound than when seeing some of the people that they brought in. It was an incredibly diverse group even though it wasn't necessarily locally based artists. There is still a chasm that's left behind. I just wanted to say my two cents about the merits of the program but point taken about the locality issue.
The final question, while a little uninspiring after everything we've talked about, is still important. How are you all keeping the lights on financially without access to the same grants, sponsorships, and board members contributing to keep things moving? Whether you're from Omaha, or if you're in Baltimore, or wherever you are in the world, watching this and knowing more about how to support those smaller organizations and self-run spaces is important.
[JS] When I was in college, the space that um Gabriella Parsons and I ran called the Mez was donation- and volunteer-based. We put on a variety of um programs. There was music, poetry, performance, theater, and then we would have exhibitions. For all of those programs, we would have a tip jar out. I think that's pretty common at a concert or even for an exhibition. Part of those funds would go toward paying for snacks or our rent and then a lot of it was went to the artists. Whatever they sold in the space was theirs to keep unless they wanted to make a donation. It was not like a contract or commission space so a lot of it was out of our own pockets. It was something that we wanted to do. With Fleabane Gallery, I wasn't using the space, other than for storage, and I’m already paying rent on my house, so it really just comes out of my own funds.
[KL] Similar to Joelle, the idea of folding your living expenses and running a gallery into one lump sum is something that was an early strategic decision born totally out of necessity. I'm living in a duplex and I suddenly realized, “oh, wow there's a lot of space here; this is too much space.” I thought this two bedroom, two bathroom, two floor space could accommodate a gallery and also quarters for artist residents to come in. I felt like if I want to keep living here in a home, then I will continue to pay it. And as long as I am living here, there is a gallery. I feel like I've worked myself into a closet, literally, but it also tones down the pressure that comes with renting a space outside of where you live. All too often, that is what becomes prohibitive in running a program. It's one thing to rent a space, but all the inherited costs of putting on exhibitions, it's a lot of money. It's also a lot of time and energy. That's a cost that is often overlooked. People come out to exhibitions, and I think there's a certain level of appreciation but outside of this most recent show, which is photographs on a wall, everything else has pretty much consumed my life.
I think the keeping the lights on conversations around that is important for people watching this, and people generally, to understand that running a serious, thoughtful, and ambitious program takes a lot of life. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of work. When you show up to an opening, you're seeing maybe one percent of what that takes. Operating a self-run space, kind of like what we talked about in the beginning, creates certain strictures too. You have less access to financial, support through institutions, but within those constraints, you also have agility to be able to say, “Okay, this is what I can live with. No, I can't fit that in my garage, so we won't be showing that giant boulder. I don't have money to frame 500 photographs.” You know what you have, and you know what you can live with. This allows you the agility to make decisions. It also requires you to engage in a bit of self-care as you manage both your life and your cultural productivity.
[LS] Well, we're coming up on time. Would you like to share any final thoughts or anything that this sparked? Anything you want people to leave thinking about? Sarah, did you want to jump in?
[SLB] I'm very glad to have been here and to have chatted and learned from all of you. What we're working on right now is all internal stuff. I’m excited to see what comes out of it.
[LS] Joelle, do you have anything coming up?
[JS] We're closing for the winter, but in March we'll have Quentin Fortney, a photographer out of Lincoln. Keep an eye out for that. Yeah, I'm so glad to have been here tonight and thank you. This was a great talk.
[KL] It was nice to hear all of your perspectives on this stuff. I’m excited for the rest of the conversations around institutional futures that Amplify’s putting on. As far as the gallery, right now we have a show of Providence-based artist Drew Healey’s photographs of sculptural installations that will run through December 3rd. After that, we'll have an opening at the beginning of the new year of Midwest-based artist Lub Poeem’s photographs. Excited for the year of programming ahead and excited for continued community engagement.
[LS] Thank you so much Sarah, Joelle, and Kyle. This was so fun. It makes me nostalgic for Omaha and miss it a lot. Thank you for reminding me of what a special place it is. Thank you everyone for coming and listening. Bye everyone.
*This transcript has been edited for clarity.
About the Panelists:
Sarah Lynn Brown (she/hers) has worked in Omaha as a director, actor, adaptor, and educator for the past 20 years, where she has facilitated countless productions and theatre education programs.
In 2016, Sarah founded “Juno’s Swans,” a program that explores identity and the gender continuum through theatrical storytelling, discussion, and performance workshops. She is currently on the Nebraska Arts Council Artist Roster as a Theatre and Gender Performance educator and a contract facilitator for Inclusive Communities.
Additionally, Sarah has worked for Utah Shakespeare, Nebraska Shakespeare, NTC productions, Folger Library Theatre, BlueBarn Theatre, Omaha Performing Arts, Omaha Symphony, Opera Omaha, Denizen Theatre (NY), University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Creighton University. Currently, Sarah created and teaches from a shared studio: Leavenworth Space in Omaha Nebraska. She has a Masters of Arts in Theatre Education from the University of Northern Colorado and a BA from University of Nebraska at Omaha in Theatre Performance.
Kyle Laidig founded Baader-Meinhof, a center for contemporary art located in Omaha, NE. Baader-Meinhof is committed to connecting Middle America to an international art economy and giving a voice to an international conversation on art and culture. As a part of this mission, Baader-Meinhof operates a residency program which provides living accommodations and access to fabrication resources for artists living outside the Midwest.
Joelle Sandfort is an interdisciplinary artist living in Omaha, Nebraska. In 2017, she co-founded The Mez, a community space, music venue, and art gallery. She has taught at the high school level and led workshops with the Naturalist School and the South Omaha Mural Project. Joelle has exhibited her work at Tugboat Gallery in Lincoln and Sanctuarium in Omaha. She holds a BA in Art and her K-12 Education certification from Nebraska Wesleyan University.
About the Moderator:
Lillian Snortland, originally from Eugene, Oregon, is a writer of fiction, poetry, and cultural essays. She has explored themes of fantasy, surrealism, and the imaginative feminine from a young age. At Carleton College, she studied storytelling and material culture of the past—Classical Studies, French literature and media, and art history, and continues to play with a multidisciplinary perspective in her analysis today. She currently works in the nonprofit arts sector. Lillian was accepted into the 2021 Virtual Collaborative Program for Emerging Artists, hosted by Exit 11 Performing Arts Company and Postscript Magazine. Further writing can be found at chaimihai.wordpress.com/, and on her instagram @perfectbleh and @chaimihai.