The Artmaker as Active Agent: Six Portraits

"The Artmaker as Active Agent: Six Portraits" was created as a thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Professional Studies by Susan Monagan. We present it here, slightly altered to fit a Web format, but with no content changes. It is also available here in its original form as a downloadable PDF file (1.7 mb). Also see "Bridging Art and Research: An Interview with Susan Monagan."

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Portraits:
  • Martha Bowers
  • Marty Pottenger
  • George Trakas
  • Barnaby Evans
  • Jennifer Miller
  • Doug Rice
• Conclusion
• About the Author
• Bibliography

Abstract

Concerned citizens across academic and professional disciplines have recently come together to seek creative ways to reinvigorate the public life that is slowly eroding in the wake of increased privatization and commercialization of public places and services. Funders and policy makers have begun to see the unique ability of community-based art projects to spark needed discourse about public life and public institutions. Though the field of community-based art is struggling to emerge and define itself, those who practice this type of work generally see themselves as serving communities and interpreting the experience of places and communities through artwork. Often this artwork is made by or with non-artists.

This project has engaged community-based artists in dialog about their own experiences of working with communities and addressing and defining the new problems presented by a changing public life. Through a process of interviewing six artists as well as engaging in document research, the project focuses on three questions:

• How did each of these community-based artists come to this way of working?
  
  
• What are they doing now? What is their experience?
  
  
• What sort of meaning-making or theorizing do they do about the work they do and make?

This study seeks to fill a gap in the research by highlighting the experiences of these artists themselves, as opposed to the outcomes and impacts of specific projects or initiatives.

The researcher transcribed the tapes of these interviews and began to create concept maps of each artist, focusing on dominant images and ideas that emerged from the exchange between interviewer and interviewee. The researcher also began to cluster segments of all six transcripts that appeared to be related. From these parallel processes, the researcher began to write an interpretive portrait of each artist, accessing documents about the artist specifically and about broader themes that were emerging from the text. The researcher then used criteria as proposed by a dominant critic in the field of community-based art to evaluate the work of these artists.

This research contributes the following observations to the field of community-based art:

1. Despite differences in artistic discipline, these artists share many characteristics and beliefs. They hold broadened and fluid definitions of art that are reflected in the type of work these artists make with communities and seem to uniquely poise them to work closely and effectively across disciplines in order to bridge language and paradigms and facilitate collaboration, particularly when their values are engaged.
   
   
2. This research contributes to the emerging dialog about critiquing community-based art by using proposed evaluation criteria and suggesting improvements to them.
   
   
3. Finally, this research finds community-based artists engaged in using social science data collection and analysis methods and proposes specific ways artists and social scientists can collaborate across disciplines in order to share techniques that will enliven public life through activated communities.

Next: Chapter 1 - Introduction

Original CAN/API publication: February 2006