-VTDigger
In 1973, I left Chicago on a one-way ticket to New York to pursue my dream of becoming a dancer. Part-time jobs and unemployment subsidized my performing career. In between tours, I finished my college degree in psychology.
After I stopped performing, I managed two dance companies in New York, worked at contemporary art centers in Minneapolis and San Francisco with stints in philanthropy and ran the Flynn Center in Burlington. After retiring from the Flynn in 2018, I served two terms in the Vermont House of Representatives. As I moved through the world, I was blessed to have my husband willing to relocate.
All the while, I never stopped writing personal essays and making films. Complications from a spinal surgery left me paraplegic nearly three decades ago — and yet, my art background served me. While kinesthetic connections in my legs were lost, I learned how to walk again in front of mirrors, just like I did in dance class.
Now retired from day jobs, what a joy it is to wake up every morning and imagine, “What can I make today?”
I finished my 21st short film and have a print on view at T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier with an installation opening next month at Burlington City Arts Gallery. Videos of mine were broadcast this summer on Vermont Public and Maine Public. While tremendously validating, there is little financial reward. Even with grants, commissions, royalties, publishing and broadcast fees, breaking even remains aspirational.
Last year, Vermont Arts Council awarded creation grants of up to $5,000 to 22 artists, which cover a portion of their estimated expenses. Winners are only eligible to apply again after a five-year waiting period. So, few can realistically pursue an artistic career full-time locally.
National opportunities are ever slimmer. Federal arts and humanities grants that had already been awarded were clawed back and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting just announced it will be closing after losing its funding. Art-making in America remains avocational.
In our fractious times, further capitalizing the arts seems prudent as culture demonstrably builds community and creativity sparks innovation — necessary components for a path forward. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, curriculum is enhanced when you add the ‘a’ for art to provide STEAM problem-solving in our schools.
Making work is stimulating and filled with wonder. I wish this for others.
Artists are often among the first responders in political protests with potent iconography. The Civil Rights, Queer Liberation, Reproductive Freedom for All and Black Lives Matter movements are pertinent examples featured in the multidisciplinary exhibition, “It often rhymes” at The Current in Stowe.
These kinds of voices are essential to democracy. In our current Trumpian apocalypse, clarion dissenters are even more necessary, along with soothsayers offering hope.
Artifacts from every epoch are indicators of the vibrancy of that society. It is the disruptors that are often remembered. In art (as in politics), change happens from the fringe. What will our legacies be? For an emboldened and transformed future, invest more deeply in artists. They begin, and begin again.