Community Artist:Artist Community

I tend to see more possibility and promise in the example provided by Manglano-Ovalle whose project for "Culture in Action," which was sponsored by Sculpture Chicago, was the designing and establishing of a youth program focused on providing the community, which I would tend to see as those people who share some sense of a common or communal identity, with access to video equipment for the purpose of experimenting with film and providing them with a type of expertise in film production. In this case the artist was a resident of the community and so already had the relationships, the knowledge of what was needed, an understanding of the culture, and ideas about how it could best be expressed in a productive and communicative way. At the moment of the idea's formulation there would not have been anything that could have indicated the amount of success the project has seen but it certainly serves as a more than sufficient model for future projects.

What I see as key to the project's determination of success was its continuation despite an eventual disassociation from its original and major instigator, Sculpture Chicago. The participant group in this "new genre public art" took hold of the project or "piece" and made it their own, fueling its growth and developing it into a full-fledged program that they themselves found value in maintaining almost 15 yrs later. I think it's an important quality to be able to recognize the opportunitites in one's own context, socially, relationally, ideologically, etc. This artist had "the home-field advantage" and saw the possibilities that they could work within to affect their own context to the advantage of the community. This notion has profound implications especially today with the reality of globalization in the large scale and the access we have to specialists, professional, etc, who come from entirely different backgrouds, all the way down to the town or city scale. At the very least this example reinforces the importance of relationships and communication with the communities affected by or involved with a project, building into them and having them build into the project. More importantly, however, it signifies the potentialities for artists, designers, and creatives alike that lay waiting right in front of us.