Committees

Services to Artists Committee

Description

The Services to Artists Committee (SAC) was formed by the CAA Board of Directors to seek broader participation by artists and designers in the organization and the Annual Conference. SAC identifies and addresses concerns facing artists and designers; creates and implements programs and events at the conference and beyond; explores ways to encourage greater participation and leadership in CAA; and identifies ways to establish closer ties with other arts professionals and institutions. To this end, committee members are responsible for the programming of ARTspace and its related events.

ARTspace

Initiated in 2001 at the 89th Annual Conference in Chicago, ARTspace has grown into one of the most vital and exciting aspects of the yearly meeting. A conference-within-the-conference, ARTspace presents programming designed by artists for artists and is free and open to the public. Working in tandem with two affiliated programs, the Media Lounge and ARTexchange, ARTspace promotes dialogue about visual-arts practice and its relation to critical discourse. It also provides professional-development seminars and roundtables as well as opportunities for the creative exchange of ideas.

ARTspace offers an informal, dynamic setting with morning coffee hours, sessions and panels, and other social events. Past presentations have covered artists’ residencies, health and safety issues, and artists’ materials. Other diverse, timely panels have addressed arts funding, politics and art, censorship, and criticism. For the Annual Artists’ Interviews, renowned artists, usually those with long-standing connections to the host city, are invited to discuss their work publicly with a respected colleague.

2012 Annual Conference

ARTspace at the 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles will present a variety of panels and discussions on issues facing studio practitioners today, including our highly popular [meta] Mentor series and the Annual Artists’ Interviews. Supported in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, ARTspace is free and open to the public.

Recent Projects

SAC is reevaluating its core mission and discussing ways in which the community created by ARTspace might continue to benefit CAA members outside the Annual Conference. Committee members have a strong desire to implement programming that would facilitate an exchange of ideas of artist members throughout the year.

Additional SAC activities in ARTspace during the conference include the Media Lounge, which allows artists to present single-channel video or interactive work in a continuously running program. Another successful event, first held at the 2004 Annual Conference in Seattle, is ARTexchange, which allows artists to present portfolios of their work—drawings, photographs, sculptures, paintings, prints, books, laptop presentations, and more—on, under, or above six-foot folding tables. The calls for participation for the Media Lounge and ARTexchange are published in the Headlines section of the CAA website.

Read about events in past ARTspaces:

2011 Annual Conference in New York
2010 Annual Conference in Chicago
2009 Annual Conference in Los Angeles
2008 Annual Conference in Dallas–Fort Worth
2007 Annual Conference in New York
2006 Annual Conference in Boston

Committee Members

Sharon Louden, Independent Artist, New York, Chair (2014)
Jacki Apple, Art Center College of Design (2014)
Helen Bayer, CAA Staff Liaison (ex officio)
Sharon L. Butler, Eastern Connecticut State University (2014)
Blane De St. Croix, Indiana University, Bloomington (2015)
Conrad Gleber, La Salle University (2014)
DeWitt Godfrey, Colgate University, CAA Board Liaison (ex officio)
Micol Hebron, Chapman University (2014)
Niku Kashef, California State University, Northridge (2015)
Jenny Krasner, Independent Artist, New York (2015)
Emmanuel Lemakis, CAA Staff Liaison (ex officio)
Julia Morrisroe, University of Florida (2014)
Timothy Nolan, Independent Artist, Los Angeles (2014)
Saul Ostrow, *Critical Voices* 21STREETPROJECTS, CAA Board Liasion (ex officio)
Sabina Ott, Columbia College Chicago, CAA Board Liaison (ex officio)
Nia Page, CAA Staff Liaison (ex officio)
Vesna Pavlovic, Vanderbilt University (2013)
Cindy Smith, Artist, Archivist, and Curator, Brooklyn (2013)