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Whether you're considering being an Itinerant Artist Project host or sponsor or just want to learn more, this is a good place to start. Follow these links, or scroll past them for more background info: |
 Postcard used to find hosts for the first round of touring. Several friends were given several stamped cards and asked to send them to people I didn't know who might want to participate. The back side simply announced: Itinerant Artist Project, traveling around the US exchanging art for hospitality" and gave contact info.  A Classified Ad in the Nation led me to some of my favorite hosts and most interesting stops. Although I am glad to be able to see and stay with old friends and far-flung acquaintances while touring, the project often feels most rewarding when I'm farthest removed from anyone or anything familiar. Thanks toThe Nation staff, who liked the idea enough to give me a special heading and run the ad for longer than I thought I could afford. |
BACKGROUND AND BEGINNINGS:
Periodically over the last several years, I have been working as an itinerant painter, traveling through various parts of the United States by car, staying with a series of hosts, painting landscape studies wherever I go, and trading artwork (small paintings) for hospitality (2-4 days room and board).
The Itinerant Artist Project (IAP) officially got under way on March 31, 2000, when I set out on a cross-country drive to visit people and places in about 30 locations--from the Chesapeake Bay to the California coast--where I'd been invited to paint (see: The First Tour). My hosts were an even mix of acquaintances and strangers, people who had heard about the project by word of mouth, an e-mail chain letter, postcard announcements or through a classified ad I posted in The Nation. I met many people I never would have known and saw places I'd never expected to see. For the most part, the painting went well, and sharing my art with people interested in opening their homes to a traveling landscape painter created a rare opportunity for mutual enrichment and exchange.
In 2000, I successfully completed the national tour and a New England tour. Over the following year or two I made three additional tours. Later in 2002, I returned to my local roots with a NYSCA grant for painting scenes of farmland and development in western NY. That was followed by a period of short tours and residencies in scattered locations, as I responded to invitations to paint in locations from Quebec to Arizona.
I am currently in the midst of a second major round of touring, which began in the fall of 2006, with a circuit through eastern NY and New England, and will extend at least through 2008. The latest outing was a 6-week cross-country tour (Sept.-Nov. 2007) which was featured on the NBC Today Show. Some of the coming tours will probably focus on the US-Canadian and US-Mexican border states and provinces, although it's too early to predict or limit where the touring might take me.
The location and shape of any given tour depends on where I am able to locate hosts. Unlike the itinerant painters of earlier times, I arrange most of my stops in advance, although I try to keep my schedule flexible enough to allow for unexpected developments.
So far I have logged about 28 weeks of Itinerant Artist touring, with 65 stops in 29 states. I've painted approximately 350 small landscape studies during that time. Because of its unique challenges and rewards, I plan to devote some time to itinerancy each year.
With this project I am exploring a unique strategy for surviving as an artist, while extending my work to a wider audience. In addition, the itinerancy framework allows me to investigate, through practice and conversation, issues relating to art, value, connection and communication that interest me. I see the project as a cultural experiment; a revival and reformulation of an old American tradition; a welcome chance to practice gift exchange instead of marketing; and an opportunity for me to visit with old friends and new patrons while painting a lot.
Note: While this tends to sound mainly like a lot of fun to most people, for me it is actually quite a stretch. In general I am not very outgoing, avoid travel, can't sleep easily in new places and, before the touring started, didn't know if I'd be able to paint in unfamiliar locations. And although it is an escape of sorts, an escape from conventional arrangements, I have gone "on the road" not to break away from community responsibilities or expectations but, in a sense, to find and engage them in ways that are not possible at home. It was above all a desire to do something toward building real connections - between people, between art and life - in an increasingly virtual society that nudged me out on my way (the irony of having a website discussing this is not lost on me, but I hope it serves more to facilitate and encourage direct encounters than to substitute for them).photo by Theo Gray
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