MISSION STATEMENT

 

"Who Gets to be An Artist?” is an art-facilitating program that brings visual art-making to under served populations. Our current focus has been to working  people with moderate to severe disabilities. Our belief is that art is created in the mind and can be extracted from a person by customized creative problem solving. Each facilitator will work one-on-one with their artist to determine which available methods (or create new methods) that may work best to enable their visions to be realized. The main objective is for participants to create through use of our trained and skilled facilitators. Facilitators will be used as tools to aid in the physical art-making process by directing their facilitator though each step of the process.

 

Artists will be offered the option to take workshop classes on related topics, such as Color Theory and Drawing and Painting, however, their will be no prerequisite and artists can start experimenting and working with no class training. If an artist does decide to take an instructional class, during the actual making process the facilitator will return to being a tool for the participant and cease any instructor role.

 

All participants must be 18 years or older.

 

 

 

HISTORY

 

This project is an ongoing series of specialized, individual art-making sessions designed to enable people with even the most immobilizing disabilities access to the art-making process. By working one-on-one with an art facilitator, personalized strategies are developed to extract information and instructions from each artist. Facilitators are not teachers, but human tools, trained to help execute each artists’ personal vision. 

 

“Who Gets to Be An Artist?” has also worked with incarcerated teens. Bringing art-making to youth behind bars poses different challenges than working with artists with disabilities, but the goal is the same: bring art-making opportunities where there may be none and to answer the question “Who Gets To Be An Artist?”.