New Advocate article on Artspace

I have an article in this week's New Haven Advocate on Artspace in the wake of executive director Leslie Shaffer's departure. The first two grafs:

Leslie Shaffer, executive director of Artspace, stepped down at the end of January after only three years at the job. According to David Leffell, board president, Shaffer resigned to be with her recently born twins.

Her tenure happened to coincide with a decline in funds available for arts organizations nationwide due to the Great Recession. Artspace, like many such groups, has cut staff in response to lost revenue. In fact, Shaffer's interim replacement, Liza Statton, is now tasked with both managing the organization and overseeing its programming.

You can grab it at your neighborhood newsstand (ha ha, I know those don't really exist anymore..) or local kiosk or read it online here.

One thing that Will K. Wilkins of Real Art Ways said to me that unfortunately had to be cut for reasons of space was, when an organization is changing directors or going through a transition, "that's the moment when you need to give more, when they'll need more resources."

City-Wide Open Studios changes Part 2: A conversation with Leslie Shaffer & Jemma Williams

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
City-Wide Open Studios 2008

One of the points Artspace Director Leslie Shaffer and Communications Director Jemma Williams make to me during our conversation is that the Artists-in Residence component of City-Wide Open Studios is now more open than in the past. Previously, Shaffer notes, there were 6—10 artists-in-residence. More to the point, they were invited rather than chosen through open, juried competition. This year there will be 60—80 artists participating. (A comment to my previous posting indicated that the artists chosen by the jurors were notified by email on Saturday night.) And all the applicants had images of their work perused by directors from New York galleries.

As to how the jurying process worked, Shaffer says, "I left it up to them. I gave them space, a computer, a partner and a worksheet. I said 'I'd like you to please find 10—15 artists to put together to make some interesting discussion.' It was a challenge for them because it's an abstract process, and they were given a timeline.

"Each group came up with a different strategy. Some looked at [the work] by medium, some looked at by content," says Shaffer.

"The jurors were tasked with trying to identify an interesting thread or theme running through an artist's work," Shaffer tells me. The siting of different artists might be determined, in part, by medium. For example, a lack of wall space may make a space more appropriate for sculpture or 3-D work. The jurors were to come up with 3—4 sentence comments for the artists regarding possible themes/threads the jurors see in their work.

"The artists will be given the space to install, create new work, put up exactly what they put on the Web site or do with whatever they like, for the most part," says Shaffer.

"It's an opportunity. I like engaging people in new dialogue," says Shaffer. "I hope these exhibitions put together will help artists see their work in a new perspective. Artists showing next to someone they've never shown next to creates a conversation. They get to know each other. For the audience, it's exciting, too."

As to the changes in the Main Exhibition, Jemma Williams says that with CONNcentric, "We're trying to make the exhibition here more exemplary of what artists are working in and showing. It's actually limiting to have everyone in a cookie cutter kind of 18" by 18" square." Artists chosen for CONNcentric may end up showing between 1—3 works, depending on the size of their works. CONNcentric will be up for three months rather than one, giving Artspace the opportunity to do some programming in conjunction with the show. Unlike previous years' willy-nilly juxtapositions (which I kind of liked), Shaffer says CONNcentric will be "thematically organized."

"Artists will drop off their work—one, two or three, depending on size—and the curators will curate the space," she says.

Williams and Shaffer note that their surveys showed that the maps in the New Haven Advocate insert were used more often for seeking out artists to visit than the Main Exhibition.

The corollary to the Main Exhibition's inclusiveness this year will be a bound, printed artist directory and its online equivalent. Williams asserts that the directory will actually have significant advantages for artists over the previously inclusive exhibit.

"It will be a full-color book available throughout the year, not just an Advocate insert. It will be an alphabetical listing. Each person will get a full page with a full-color image and an artist statement," says Williams. There may be cross-referencing by medium, neighborhood, even location in the state. Every registering artist may have a page in the book.

I continue to have some skepticism as to how this will all play out. I think the fact that local artists have gotten less traffic than the old Alternative Spaces and Erector Square has always been a matter of logistics. It's easier to visit a lot of artists in a contained single location than it is to visit studios dispersed over a wider geographic area (and including single artists in their homes).

This is also an awful lot to try and see in a three-day period. That is particularly the case if you want to stop and have conversations with artists about their work, as I often do. (And artists themselves won't be able to participate at all as visitors.)

The diffusion of ad hoc sites for showing art and the prod to artists to self-organization is the real wild card in the deck. It could work out wonderfully. But there are certainly a number of questions. First and foremost, will there be enough available spaces for all the artists who want to participate? As of this morning, there are three locations listed on the CWOS space-sharing blog. According to Shaffer and Williams, businesses that are opening their doors will likely be doling out the space on a first come, first served basis. Some sites, such as the Marrakech social service agency in Westville that has posted on the blog, may have content restrictions (Marrakech: "No derogatory, controversial or sexual content please"). Others may be more suitable for certain kinds of work—painting or sculpture. While empty storefronts or unused studio space may be perfectly suited for ad hoc shows, I'm more concerned about the efficacy of showing in open businesses. Will it feel intrusive to peruse the artwork in that environment? Will the setting be conducive to conversations with the artist(s)?

But for Artspace, this new model is a beginning not an ending.

"This is a first step. We're trying it and if it needs to grow, it will certainly grow," says Shaffer. "If everyone comes to us at the end and says 'this was a huge mistake, we need to go back to three weekends,' we will figure out how to make that happen."

City-Wide Open Studios changes: A conversation with Leslie Shaffer and Jemma Williams, Part 1

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
City-Wide Open Studios 2008

When the changes to City-Wide Open Studios were announced, I was struck by what appeared to be a drastic downsizing of the event, both in terms of time allotted and participation solicited.

Instead of three weekends—divvied up between Erector Square, local artists and a large Alternative Space—there would be one, Oct. 3-5. There will be no big Alternative Space, home to artists without studios to open (or artists who, for whatever reason, didn't want to open their studios). Instead, the New Haven area has been subdivided into five neighborhood areas (Downtown, Westville, Fair Haven, West Haven and Hamden/Newhallville) and each neighborhood will host an Artist-in-Residence Site, or AIRS. Unlike the Alternative Space of years past, the AIRS are juried. About 10-15 artists will be chosen to show in each of the AIRS. The Main Exhibition, in Artspace's galleries at the corner of Crown and Orange streets in New Haven, had always included works by every registered artist or artist group in past years. This year the show, dubbed CONNcentric, is juried and will feature over 100 artists. Artists who aren't chosen for an AIRS or for CONNcentric are encouraged to find their own space, with or without the assistance of Artspace. (As of this writing, the blog Artspace has created to help connect artists with space is live but doesn't yet have available space. Artspace Communications Director Jemma Williams says that will happen this week.)

My concerns: That it will be impossible to take in all the riches that CWOS has to offer in one weekend; there was a reason why it expanded to three weekends. That the jurying of CONNcentric and AIRS, coupled with the demise of the Alternative Space, would not only have the effect of weeding out "non-professional" artists (my description) but might have been intended to do so. The potential result seemed to portend an off-putting elitism.

But Artspace Director Leslie Shaffer and Jemma Williams, who met with me (at their invitation) to discuss CWOS, say the changes are the result of in-depth consultation with participant artists following last year's CWOS. All artists had the opportunity to fill out an online survey that included both multiple choice questions and more open-ended queries. After the surveys were tabulated, Artspace followed up by convening focus groups. Artists were chosen randomly, every 10th name alphabetically.

Williams says there were a few "big common answers":

• Artists weren't happy that the audience wasn't expanding from "just friends of other artists."

• They wanted to attract a "more professional, or even curatorial audience.

• "Local studio artists felt they never got the audience the other two weekends got."

Williams also says focus group participants were asked whether they minded if the model was changed and whether they were tied to the three weekends. Most respondents, according to Williams, were amenable to changes.

Shaffer and Williams are adamant that CWOS is just as open to wide-ranging grassroots participation as in the past. Williams says that despite the necessity for artists to take a more proactive role in securing exhibition space, "they have as much opportunity as they want to put in the effort to get."

"I know it's a shift but it's just a physical shift, not a philosophical shift," says Shaffer.

"We're trying to broaden it," says Shaffer. Over and over in the consultation process, she notes, artists asked, "'Why don't you advertise outside New Haven? Why aren't we on NPR, CBS Morning News, the Today Show? How can we get the audience that's coming in other cities--collectors, curators?'"

Given the current budget for CWOS—$150,000—and staff, it is only possible to aggressively market one weekend to that target audience from New York and Boston. (Shaffer notes that CWOS has built a strong local audience.)

"How do I choose which of those weekends to put all the marketing effort into? And how do I tell this audience [of collectors and curators outside New Haven] if I can only choose one weekend, which weekend is best for them?" Shaffer says. The choice was made to pare down to one weekend and try to organize it so as to maximize the circulation of visitors.

The goal is to make CWOS a "destination event" in concert with "community partners," the city and state offices that work year-round to gin up tourism and community and economic development. Organizing the event around neighborhood "clusters"—with the added draw in each locale of the Artist-in-Residence Site—will hopefully attract visitors to the under-attended local artist studios. In conjunction with the community partners, Artspace plans to develop an efficient system for shuttling visitors among locations.

Shaffer and Williams say they are getting the word out to businesses about the event and encouraging them to offer space. Can they host an artist or artists or offer storefront space? Can they be open all the hours of the event or, if not, what hours? They are taking note of vacant storefronts and contacting landlords. Williams adds that artists or groups of artists can be doing the same thing, saying, "It's just a phone call, a yes or no answer." (Of course, it's one thing for a landlord to get a call like that from an organization with some community cachet like Artspace and another to get a similar call from some unknown artist.) At any rate, it has become increasingly difficult, Shaffer points out, to find large vacant venues like those used for past Alternative Spaces.

"There is a lot of vacant space, unfortunately. But it is spread out, not in big 150,000 square foot chunks," says Shaffer.

I mention that one artist who contacted me felt that the timeline for "homeless" artists to find space was too short, and that the blog was yet to offer any options. There may literally be hundreds of artists competing for these spaces. Over 100 artists will be showing one to three works in CONNcentric, depending on size of work, and 60-80 artists will be chosen for the AIRS. Artists chosen for AIRS cannot also show in CONNcentric but CONNcentric artists are eligible to seek out spots in the independent locations. Williams says some 200 artists applied online for the AIRS and CONNcentric slots, three-quarters applying to both. (In past years, CWOS has had upwards of 400 participants. This year's final deadline for registration is Aug. 29.)

Shaffer and Williams acknowledge there is a time crunch this year, attributing it to the extended consultation process and reorganization of the event. Williams says she has been focused on assisting artists with the AIRS and CONNcentric registrations but now that that deadline (this past Sunday at 11:59 p.m.) is passed, concentration will be turned to making the blog a resource.

"We hope people see this as a beginning," Shaffer says, adding that planning for next year's CWOS will start the Monday after this year's ends. "It needs to have a year-round person in the office, which has never been the case. We've had temporary directors of Open Studios, who start in July, and it's just not soon enough."

I will post a part two of this piece as soon as possible. Rather than wait until it was all finished—which I do in my spare time—I thought I would get this posted, and then return to the discussion in the next few days. HH