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Lane Arts Council Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary

Photo by Eric Alan

  The Lane Arts Council will mark its 40th anniversary with a celebration at Eugene’s 5th Street Public Market on Friday, September 16th. Director Liora Sponko and James Aday, one of the council’s founders, reflect on forty years of arts advocacy and change.

LaneArtsCouncilExtended.mp3
Interview with James Aday and Liora Sponko (extended version)

ONE VIEW OF THE LANE ARTS COUNCIL'S EARLY DAYS

by James Aday

As a part of President Johnson’s Great Society program, the National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965.  Although cultural politics mandated that a large portion of the NEA’s resources were to be devoted to the maintenance and development of large established mostly urban, mostly east coast, mostly European based arts institutions, America’s populist nature embedded the notion that “…the NEA supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America.”  To achieve a fair and energetic distribution of resources outside the beltway, the founding document determined that a nation wide system of states arts commissions be established.  Therefore, in 1967, the Oregon Arts Commission was established.

With a commission of regional representatives appointed by the Governor, the OAC received and distributed block grants from the NEA and worked with local philanthropists and governments to strengthen and promote the arts in Oregon.  As a natural evolution, by the mid 70’s Arts Commissions across the country began to develop regional arts councils to assist in fulfilling their charters.

In the early 70’s, artists and arts institutions saw the OAC as a rare source of government support.  Artists, like myself, who had assumed managerial roles within companies soon learned that a visit to the OAC offices in Salem was a necessary pilgrimage to learn about incorporation, grants writing and who to talk to if you wanted a grant from the state.  Eugene, Portland, Ashland and, to some extent, Salem were flowering with artists spinning out of the 60’s looking for nurturing home soil in which to grow dreams.  The vitality of the Eugene-Springfield community was palpable.  In those heady days the University programs, the Eugene Symphony and Ragozzino’s Musical Theatre programs were joined by the Bach Festival, the Saturday Market, the Country Faire, Philip Bayles’s operatic offerings, the early stages of Riley and Toni’s Ballet, the Eugene Theatre Company, Flora Rudolph’s Open Gallery, WOW Hall, the NewMime Circus’s summer parks performances, and numerous other galleries and roving players of all disciplines.  That many large and small communities across the state were spawning similar if less ambitious projects must have stimulated the OAC desire to create outlying councils to assist with their programs and aspirations.

Around 1975, when I first heard of a meeting in Eugene that was organized by the OAC, my motivation to attend was based solely in my dreams of gaining financial support for the NewMime Circus.  Knowing that Lane County’s Arts Commissioner, Hope Hughes Pressman, would be in attendance, made the meeting worthy of missing an ensemble session.  I doubt if there were more than 12-15 people there; I know that we all sat around a large table, as in a work session rather than a presentation.  It was the first time I met Hope and my first meeting with the young photographer that would lead the Lane Regional Arts Council through its early years, Selena Roberts.  Hope Pressman was quietly inspirational in her generous and enthusiastic support of all arts and all artistic aspirations.  A life long Eugenian, she has been a great gift to us all.  By the time I left that first meeting, she had drawn me into her vision and teamed Selena and myself in a partnership that would last most of a decade.  (Eventually, Selena would be taken by John Frohnmayer to work at the NEA and later would lead the % for the Arts program that placed the PORTLANDIA sculpture in the middle of Portland.)

When Lane Regional Arts Council was officially established in 1976, we had acquired free office space in the new Atrium building; LRAC was in one small office on the top floor and the NewMime in the small office next door.  As we learned how to incorporate, we taught others to incorporate; as we learned to write grants, we taught others to write grants; as we developed our interactions with local government, we both represented and guided others in moving through government processes.  LRAC’s first Board was composed of experienced arts activists/supporters and newly minted professionals, who went on to be philanthropists and experienced members of other Boards.

 In addition to assisting performing and visual arts organizations with their programs, the Arts Council was encouraged by the OAC and the NEA to support individual artists through Arts in Education programming.  This was seen as a good way to grow future audiences while giving dedicated artists an avenue to earn money and create reputations.  Unlike today, these arts in schools programs were complements to school based arts programs rather than enrichments to testing based curricula.  Sometimes these became Arts in the Community programs where artists and performing groups would be paid to go to smaller communities to present programs for family audiences.  Obviously these two types of programs were combined so a performing group might have a week long tour that included days in the schools and nights performing in school auditoriums for all comers.

It was this type of program that put me in a six-week program working with prison inmates housed at the State Hospital in Salem.  But more on that later.

An NEA program, managed by LRAC, brought nationally known poets and performers to small communities that might otherwise be unable to access such programs.  (Perhaps the most notorious was when a world famous violinist (I believe it was Isaac Stern) flew into a remote northwestern community where over 100 people braved a freezing blizzard to attend the evening performance.)  Since the University had a program for visiting artists, LRAC’s local program was in the form of visiting critics that would travel to Eugene to see a performance or gallery show and report on the event in a major regional publication.  The ripple effect of these programs was one of the greatest results of the Arts Council’s efforts.  In one example, Selena asked if I would deliver a copy of a review and a check to a small gallery.  When I arrived at the small building on the corner of 24th and Hilyard (in what is now a parking lot), the gallery owner, Flora Rudolph, and the artist, Steven Oshatz, were standing in the doorway in expectation of my visit.  I did not know either and felt awkward having to view the show under their watchful eyes.  By the time I left I was talking to Oshatz about designing sets and the three of us became lifelong friends and frequent collaborators.  Oshatz has designed sets and set pieces for the Eugene Ballet and numerous other local performances.  Flora grew her Open Gallery until it filed the Midgley building by the railroad tracks and, with the Arts Council’s assistance, brought internationally known artists to present works in and around the Gallery; including Deborah Butterfield years before she placed her horses in the PDX parkway.

The Lane Regional Arts Council was more of a resource and a community organizer than a granting agency.  Selena, a working artist and a mother, worked tirelessly to encourage artists and find the resources for arts organizations; always with the mentoring and support of Hope Pressman.  Selena and her Boards would bring artists and arts leaders together to find ways of encouraging community support for the arts. When the City Room Tax was established, this group lobbied for the arts to be a major recipient of those funds.  When a new group hit an organizational barrier, this group would find a more experienced arts administrator or Board member to consult with the struggling organization.  LRAC helped breed a spirit of collaboration in a vital arts community and inspire the dreams of smaller communities in the region.  Since the Arts Council couldn’t participate in political activities, some of us who worked through the Arts Council organized the short lived but important Arts Alliance to focus on the political arena.  This group became significant when yet another attempt was made to pass a bond to build a performing arts auditorium.  The nearly two dozen organizations that formed the Arts Alliance ponied up the money to run one ad in the RG in support of the bond measure.  This ad was immediately picked up by Benson Snyder of the pro bond campaign who ran a larger version multiple times during the campaign.  When the bond measure passed, Benson, Maurie Jacobs and other City leaders attributed its success to the Arts Alliance support.  Another example of the ripple effect of LRAC’s community activities.

And now back to that Artist in Residence program at the State Hospital.  On the ground floor of the building I worked in was the office of a Farm Workers Advocate program.  The administrator of that program was a long time organizer and a wealth of information, which he readily shared.  One day he told me of surplus funds in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program.  There was a granting deadline coming up to expend these funds during the summer months.  I took that information to Selena and we crafted a proposal that allowed us to employ about a dozen artists and support staff for our two organizations for the summer.  Building on that success and research we did on how other organizations across the country had used the CETA program, we worked with other local arts administrators to write proposals that resulted in over 100 artists being fully employed, mostly as Artists, for a full 12 months.  One of LRACs programs was to hire 8 artists of different disciplines to work together on collaborative projects.  When Nancy King presented a Jazz concert, her other 7 collaborators worked to design the environment and manage the theatrics.  When Steven Oshatz created the (temporarily) iconic Flying Geese mural on the south wall of the 5th St Public Market, Nancy and the other artists all participated in the process and the painting.  And all the artists participated in creating a group show at the Open Gallery.

I wish I had a better recall of names, but this the day after my 72nd birthday they seem to be slipping.  I have so many friends and acquaintances I met through Arts Council activities but I don’t remember what we were doing when we met.  For some reason some names fly into the either.  Selena left and Karen took her place.  Karen left to work with Hope in the Development office at the UO and Martha took her place.  In 1980 I went to work with the City as the Cultural Arts Supervisor and worked with the Arts Council from a different station.  Sometime in the 80’s, Martha asked me to drive with her to Roseburg for a final interview with a candidate for her job.  There we met with Douglas Beauchamp and shortly later he moved to Eugene to be the Executive Director of LRAC.  Soon after he would change the name to Lane Arts Council.  (Too many of us old hands had started referring to the organization as El Rack)

Like most organizations that last 40 years, the Arts Council has seen boom years and almost bust years; expansion and contraction.  What has been and is consistent is that it is an organization run by inspired and committed professionals and dedicated volunteers to provide support for local artists and arts organization.  The Arts Council has been there to fill the gap when the trickle down apostasy of the 80’s decimated arts education.  And they continue to be here to aid in the vital networking essential to the success of the arts.  The Arts Council was established to develop leadership, collaboration/communication, and economic vitality in the arts by supporting artists and those who support the arts.  From what I can see that is both the history and the reality of Lane Arts Council.

James Aday

August 16, 2016