White Caps 40” x 44” 2012

10 People, 3 Days, 1200 Sheets of Paper

July 16,17,18, Old Art Building, Leland, Michigan 

A summer drawing workshop with Richard Kooyman exploring the process of generating visual ideas through drawing. Emailrichardkooyman@yahoo.com Richard for more information

East Bound

Freighter 30” x 40” 2012

Trailer With Red Door 40” x 44” 2012

Three simple,not that expensive things, plus four bullet points, off the top of my head, that Michigan should do or could do better to support the Arts.

1) Be clear what we are talking about. 

Definitions and terminology matter and they matter even more when it comes to making public policy about art and culture.  Art is not the same as tourism. Art involves business at times, but artists are not typical ‘entrepreneurs.’  Creativity isn’t something everyone has, and art education is something quite different than “the Arts”.

2) Let’s be honest when talking about supporting “the Arts”. 

The state of Michigan, unlike many other states, does not provide any type of direct support for artist, writers, performers. The state gets money from the National Endowment of the Arts and contributes it’s own small amount of tax dollars which go to support arts organizations and several arts advocacy organizations. That’s different than providing support for artists.

Here is what the state can do to actually support our artists, writers, and performers and  to encourage other artists to move to Michigan. 

 a) Let artists live in Michigan income tax free. We offer business’s tax incentives to move to or stay in the state, why not do it for artists?  

b) Change the  tax laws to allow artists to receive  meaningful tax incentives when they donate work for non-profit fund raising events. 

c) Give artists reduced tuition rates to attend state university classes for the purpose of career development or research.

d) Award merit based awards and grants to the states best. Throw is a bone once in awhile. It would be the cheapest PR the state ever paid for. 

3) The Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs needs to have real, full time artists on their board. 

The fact that they don’t, nor do they have a professional advisory council, is almost funny if it wasn’t such a bad business practice. Locals arts boards take heed also.

Blue Wave 24” x 48” 2012

‘Laundry’ 14” x 11” 2011

Let’s Occupy Art.

The beauty of the current Occupy Movement is that it isn’t just one movement or cause but a series of interlocked movements across the country. Some of these movements have been created around a specific cause such as the Occupy Museum Movement. Not only is the capitalistic system of corporate favoritism and the finance sector’s shenanigans being called into question with OWS, the Occupy Museum movement reminds us that some of our private art institutions also need a critical look.  Along side these I propose an Occupy Art Movement. A movement that shows us when it comes to art, artists and culture our policy makers and politicians have let us down miserably. 

 Read just about any public policy statement written since this country was founded that mentions how much Americans cherish the arts and you are made to believe that our society would not be the same without the value that art provides.  Compare this message with what our politicians and policy makers have actually done to bestow greatness to the arts and you will be highly disappointed.  

Our very first president believed in the value of the arts. George Washington called on Congress in 1789 to “accelerate the progress of art and science” and to “cherish institutions favorable to humanity.”  Congress did nothing.  Thomas Jefferson believed the arts would improve the country’s taste and garner it respect around the world. President Kennedy believed not only in the importance of the arts but in the specialness of artists themselves and said in a speech to Amherst  College shortly before he was assassinated, 

 “I see little of more importance to the future of our country…than full recognition of the place of the artist…Society must set the artist free to follow his vision where it takes him…And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites…the fate of having nothing to look backward to with pride and nothing to look froward to with hope.”

 Kennedy’s vision for the future eventually became the National Endowment for the Arts under President Johnson and the country prospered from 25 years of direct support to artists. The NEA funding grew from $2,898,000 in 1966 to a all time high of $175,000,000 in 1992 before it was systematically unraveled by the conservative far right in their attempt to control the money and the morals of America. 

What began as a national ideology that believed art was important enough to be publicly supported; an ideology that believed that artistic pursuit faced unique difficulties that needed both public and private support, was politically destroyed by the right’s insistence that the government had no business supporting the arts at all.  Economists James Heilbrun and Charles Gray who compiled the most recent broad range study of the economy of art and culture contend that the conservative right  saw the source of contemporary art as urban, elitist, and associated with decadence and corruption while populist art was centered in the “Heartland” and based on simple values and purity. That difference in ideology led to a culture war that began in the late 1980’s and continues to this very day with recent Republican requests to defund National Public Radio and what is left of the NEA. The continuing war spurred tax laws supporting the wealthy (tax incentives) in buying and donating art but not the artist making the art. It is a culture war by politicians who claimed corporations and individual donations would support the arts and do a better job than the government. A claim that Heilbrun and Gray have shown to be exaggerated in their book “The Economics of Art and Culture”, Cambridge University Press.  

Today the government is as close to being out of the business of supporting the arts as ever before. The 2010 NEA appropriation was $167,500,000 and the 2012 figure is expected to be reduced to $155,000,000. If we choose to maintain the same level of investment that we made to the NEA in 1993, the height of our commitment, the NEA budget today should be $269,000,000. Or looking at it another way the NEA appropriation today is roughly equivalent to one new F-35 fighter jet loaded with bombs and a pilot. Just one.

 The current NEA evolved from a granting program that awarded grants to individual artists and artistic programs to a system that only awards grants to organizational or institutional projects or productions. (Interestingly there are still individual grants available for writers. Evidently the political fall out is less for an art form that involves reading.)  We have changed our focus from funding artists and the work they make to funding institutions and organizations that present art. The artist is on his own. 

To survive the difficult funding battle of the 90’s the NEA was forced to agree to include on their peer award panels “knowledgeable laypersons” not directly involved with the arts and increase panel turnover, including a broader range of “cultural views.”  They also were required to increase, to over 40% of their program budget, the monies given to  states to disperse as they saw best. Bye Bye artist investment. Hello local conservative content control. 

 Occupy Art’s Demands. 

 The demands of the Occupy Art Movement could include the following ideas along with many more, 

• The NEA should fund artists not the broad, politically safe term the “Arts”.  The “Arts” have become a  multi-tiered system of regional art agencies filled with arts administrators who administer various initiatives to state art administrators who then administer initiatives to local art administers who have conferences and meetings to be better administers. 

• Fund what we said we believe is valuable.  If we value the art we need to pay for it just like we pay for highways, corn, energy production and the military.  

• All higher education including art education should not send students into a downward spiral of debt from which they never can recover. 

• Local art organizations, state agencies and ultimately the NEA should not have to be the funding source for our children’s art education. That duty should reside in a well rounded public school program. Stripping the art’s from our public school systems just makes school privatization that much more attractive to investors. 

• Give back a political voice to our non-profit organizations. If for profit corporations can hire lobbyists to direct legislation then non -profits should not have to give up their political rights for the hope of donation support. The need to seek tax free support should not have to come with a muzzle. 

• Artist should get the same tax incentives that art buyers get when donating work to causes or museums. 

Let us not become the nation that “disdains the mission of art” as President Kennedy feared. We can heed the warnings and demands of the Occupy Movements across the country and question the policies that make profits off the backs of the poor,middle class, and artists. We should support in all ways possible the things in our society that can make life full and rich. We can insist on support for our libraries, our museums, our schools and for the artists, writers, and performers who are the back bone of the arts culture. We can Occupy our Art.

 Richard Kooyman 2011 

The entire 2011 NEA budget request was $161 million dollars. This  includes all the money we deem is needed to invest in our cultural institutions and artists. The budget for the Architect of the Capital Agency, the agency in charge of maintaining Washington’s cultural institutions, is over 600 million dollars year.

Please join us for an exhibition of recent paintings by Richard Kooyman, Nina Rizzo, and Michelle Wasson. Reception: Tuesday, October 18, 5:00 pm Gallery Talk: Wednesday, October 19, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

http://www.kcad.edu/events/then-again-maybe-not/

Kendall Collage of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, Michigan

In 1989 the Washington Times owned by the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon called Congress’s attention to Andres Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ and the following year they helped squash a deal for a permanent home for Judy Chicago’s ‘The Dinner Party’ at the U of the District of Columbia.

The New Drawing Ideate Project. 500 sheets of paper. 500 drawings.

This poem incorporates the first lines or the beginning of the first lines of about 30 different artists statements taken roughly in order from a single issue of  ’New American Paintings’.  I kind of wish it was my own artist statement.

My paintings are derived

through the narrow slit of a window

we all know that.

My paintings are visual reflections

my world explores the contradictions.

My qouache portraits are

my recent work.

Investigating ideologies and morphing

the paintings are improvised covers.

I attempt to represent a form

for me Painting is essential.

My work expands the limitations

my work has always left a bad taste.

I demonstrate my interest

before I start to work.

I paint pictures by first drawing

relationships between a time.

My work hinges upon an awareness

I have been painting about.

I work to integrate my responses

the allegorical nature of these paintings

I paint meticulously.

These works hover somewhere

for the most part.

My work work addresses.

I approach my painting as a diaristic

overtime.

Be observant, as if

these paintings are from a series.

I explore the layers

a part and a symptom.

Richard Kooyman 2011