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.
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.
SAC also works with the Exhibitions Committee to promote exhibition opportunities that are comparable to CAA’s prestigious publications program.
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:
- 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
2011 Annual Conference
To commemorate the tenth anniversary of ARTspace, SAC will dedicate a full day of programming during the Annual Conference to a single subject: Art in the Public Sphere. Panels will include a roundtable organized by Harriet Senie on the state of public art in New York; presentations by artists Su Stockwell, Robert Ransick, Ethan Greenbaum, and Timothy Nolan; a panel discussion entitled “Public Art World vs. The Art World,” chaired by Sharon Louden with speakers Nicholas Baume, Jack Becker, Jennifer McGregor, Lester Burg, and Brian Tolle; and a session called “Is Public Space Museum Space?” chaired by Norie Sato and featuring Glenn Weiss, Porter Arneill, Richard Klein, and Tyler Green.
In addition, ARTspace will also present a variety of panels and discussions on issues facing studio practitioners today, including our highly popular [meta] Mentor series, which tackles professional-development issues; a session on artist residencies; a panel on health and safety issues facing artists; and the Annual Artists’ Interviews.
ARTspace is free and open to the public. ARTspace programming is supported in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Committee Members
Brian Bishop, Framingham State University, chair (2011)
Thomas Berding, Michigan State University (2012)
Patricia Flores, Diablo Valley College (2011)
Ken Gonzales-Day, Scripps College, CAA board liaison
Reni Gower, Virginia Commonwealth University (2011)
Julie Green, Oregon State University (2012)
Sharon Louden, independent artist, New York (2013)
Sabina Ott, Columbia College Chicago (2012)
Vesna Pavlovic, Vanderbilt University (2013)
Patricia C. Phillips, Rhode Island School of Design (2012)
Melissa Potter, Columbia College Chicago (2012)
Cindy Smith, independent artist, New York (2013)
