Itinerant Artist Project
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| INTRODUCTION : |
| Several years ago, a folksinger suggested that if I wanted to survive as a painter I might have to get used to staying in other people's houses. That was the seed for my idea of an Itinerant Artist Project. Although the project eventually came to embrace a complex set of interests and motivations, its appeal to me owes a lot to its emulation of the folksinger model: bringing my art into people's lives while having a more or less supportive, interested audience to interact with, day after day. It struck me as - and has proven to be - a welcome contrast to the usual routine that most artists take for granted: working in isolation, then, maybe once a year, meeting a small crowd at an exhibition opening for a few hours. (more...) |
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There is gift-exchange in my life, to be sure, but even I have never had the nerve to try an experiment as full as the one you undertook. Bravo! - Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift and Trickster Makes This World |
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. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . ... . . . . . . .The original logo (photo by Theo Gray) The Itinerant Artist Project (IAP) is an art outreach initiative that combines personal painting practice with radical public engagement. The project involves: locating (by various means) a series of voluntary “hosts” around the USA, touring by car from host to host, and at each stop painting several small location paintings, offering one in exchange for the hospitality provided (room, board and occasional conversation for 1-5 days). Based on the idea of art as gift and the principles of gift flow communicated through traditional literature, folk tale and myth, the IAP was never meant to be primarily about travel painting, or traveling for cheap, or a picturesque take on the Great American Road Trip – none of which interested me much when I started. Rather, it was about standing up for art as a vital, enriching part of our daily dialogue with life, place, and with each other in a culture that tends to marginalize, commercialize, over-hype and under-appreciate fine art, to separate art from everyday life. And it was about resisting my own tendency to withdraw: doing my small part to contribute to the fabric of community and culture rather than acquiescing to the sort of isolation and virtual living that increasingly characterize life in our society. The first phase of the IAP included five tours and a few residencies, for a total of six months “on the road” during the years 2000-2006. The second phase, beginning with the 2007 tour, has focused more on sharing IAP art and ideas with a larger audience, through talks, exhibits, and collaboration with the media to get the story out. Increasingly I organize tours and extended residencies around speaking and exhibiting opportunities. Recently I have also been experimenting with local-scale touring: concentrating on seeing a small region, city or town from several vantage points. Notable in this respect was a 10-stop tour of my hometown, Rochester, NY, called ROC-ART. Future tours may include NY City and the US borderlands, with travel extending into Canada and possibly Mexico for cultural and geographic contrast. So far, the Itinerant Artist Project has involved 50 weeks on the road and the completion of over 500 small oil paintings of the American landscape. I've gotten to know more than 100 hosts in 32 states. And I've had a fair number of novel experiences, including the chance to pay a speeding ticket with art and an appearance on the Today Show. The IAP has been pivotal for my development as an artist. Besides giving me new ways to think about my role as a painter, and as a mediator between art and place and public, the touring has stimulated unexpected productivity. And the opportunity to share my work with an engaged and expanding audience is a rare privilege. Please contact me at: jim@jimmott.com if you would like more info, to be a sponsor, to be a host, or to arrange a presentation. You are perfectly right about landscapes being OK in the post-historical phase of art. But somehow more in the spirit of the times is your project of itinerancy, which has a performance dimension… -Arthur Danto |