Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 10:37:51 -0500
From: ann klefstad <klefkal-AT-cp.duluth.mn.us>
Subject: re:endowment


saul ostrow wrote in response to will:

>  Art is political when it is
>produced in relation to a community in which it propagates shared values,
>standards and criteria.  As with Che when you presuppose an audiernce for
>your actions, if that audience is merely imagined disaster ensues.

You bin readin ma mail!

This is exactly my intent. What I'm having trouble with, though, although
these troubles are not insuperable, is that people who make art have certain
differences from people who don't make that stuff--or rather, people who
make in general have certain differences from those who do not make--or . .
. in any case, this seems to be why art's primary audience lately is
artists. That's the community for which art is made, because it's the
community--often the only one--to which artists belong. So I'm having to
work hard at being part of a different kind of community, partly on the
terms of the community (to be part of it) and partly on my own terms (to
continue to be an artist in the only way I know how, maybe I can grow
another way of being an artist but right now . . .)  

I grew up in smalltown northern minnesota so I came back here to try to
invent just this sort of art grown out of an audience, art grown out of a
community, art that helps a community create itself. So hey, supposedly I'm
ipso facto a member. But the practice of art and the multiple allegiances it
gives you makes it a much less simple thing than it appears.

Anyone have advice? ( and that's also why I think it may be salutary for
artists to cease to migrate to n.y., because what awaits them there is the
community of other artists, etc)

Ann Klefstad



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