Tag: art

creativity

A Year of Yes: The only way to get through a creative block

Christa Avampato

For a few weeks, I’ve been turning over ideas in my mind for a new live show I’m creating and co-producing. I did a lot of research just to feel like I was moving forward even though I was spinning. Not a single original idea was coming to mind.

So I finally did the hard work that I do any time I feel stuck in my writing. I wrote. I wrote down a load of really horrible, boring ideas. And I knew they were horrible and boring but I just kept going anyway. And finally, slowly, bit by bit, the ideas started to get a little better. And then a lot better. And then I had a whole plan cooked up for this live show. And this was a very good lesson.

As artists, the only way to make art is to just make it. Even if it’s awful, it’s part of the journey. Thinking about art doesn’t create it. Roll up your sleeves, put aside your inner judge and jury, and dive in. Make something. The only way to take a journey is with one foot in front of the other.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Hasan Minhaj has advice for every artist

Christa Avampato

I went to a fantastic PEN America event on Sunday to close the PEN World Voices M Word series. These are my favorite words of wisdom from Hasan Minhaj and Wajahat Ali:

“Every artist needs to play offense. You’re not asking [gatekeepers] for permission. Ask for support. Decide that your work is happening with or without them.” ~Hasan Minhaj

“What advice do you have for artists?” ~Wajahat Ali
“1. Move to the city that has a community
2. Immerse yourself in the community
3. Rise and help others find their voice
4. When you succeed, don’t be an asshole” ~Hasan Minhaj

creativity

A Year of Yes: What you see, you feel – why I collect art

Christa Avampato

“What fills the eyes fills the heart.” ~Irish Proverb

Is it wrong to realize you may need to get a new apartment to fit all of your art? I still have a fair amount of wall space, but honestly at the rate I acquire and make art, I’m going to need a new place at the end of my lease. It’s starting to look like the old Barnes Collection in here but I can’t help it. I love to make art, and to support artists by buying their work. My art makes this apartment more than just a place to sleep. It’s the place where I do most of my creative work. I wake up every morning surrounded by work that makes me happy. When I travel, I always make a point to buy art from the places I visit. It supports the local artists and provides me with a way to relive my travel memories every day. I acquired these four pieces in Vancouver, all by Native artists.

 

 

creativity

A Year of Yes: Museum of Vancouver’s Haida Now exhibit

Christa Avampato

I understand that museums have engaged in some unfortunate practices when it comes appropriating items from other cultures. It’s impossible to erase the past; we can make amends with respect, understanding, and concern. The Museum of Vancouver has begun the process of repatriation with the Haida Now exhibit, a thoughtfully curated exhibit done in collaboration with the Haida people. I was fortunate enough to see the exhibit while I was there this weekend. I’m still processing my thoughts and feelings about everything I learned, and I wanted to share these photos with you. Visit the exhibit’s website by clicking here.

 

creativity

A Year of Yes: Scene from New York City’s March for Our Lives

Christa Avampato

28828610_10104256776831916_4621455774924061512_oThis young woman, mixed with a very small group of counter-protesters in the shadow of some of the greatest museums in New York City, was just asking to be free to express herself through art rather than being worried about guns. A simple ask that we must answer with an emphatic “Yes”. Take a look at the future. It’s so bright and I couldn’t be more hopeful. More photos below.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Balancing the head and heart takes time

Christa Avampato
Screen Shot 2018-03-17 at 9.38.20 PM
The Balance by Christian Schloe 

I’ve been using this piece of art as a focal point for my meditation since I found it about a week ago. I bought it immediately, and added it to my art collection. Balancing the head and the heart is the challenge of our lives. It’s a daily process, and one that I’m intently working on. Like a tightrope walker traveling among the stars, all I can do is put one foot in front of the other. I’m learning, one decision, one choice, at a time.

creativity

A Year of Yes: The necessity of rewriting and revision

Christa Avampato

“That’s the magic of revisions—every cut is necessary, and every cut hurts, but something new always grows.” ~Kelly Barnhill, author

I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot as I prep for Virginia Festival of the Book. When I think of my favorite books, plays, songs, and pieces of art, they are the ones without any fat, the ones where every word, every note, every brush stroke is carefully and purposely chosen. That concern, that love is what strikes me right in the heart. Rewriting and editing is the lifeblood of art that lasts. It’s the cuts that matter most because that’s where we find the seeds that need to be planted and nurtured.

creativity

A Year of Yes: See what’s possible before you decide what’s right

Christa Avampato

In our work and in our lives, exploring our full slate of possibilities before deciding what to do is a critical step that can’t be minimized or hurried. Before we rush to judgement and decide, let’s take a moment to think about what we’d like to do without determining whether or not that’s the best course of action. Let’s lay every card on the table and give it its due before we decide whether or not to set it aside. Let’s dream a little.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Why a career in the arts is the best business training you can get

Christa Avampato

About two years ago, I went to the Kennedy Center’s Arts Summit. It was a gathering of about 150 arts professionals, hosted by Yo-Yo Ma, and focused on Citizen Artistry, the idea of using the arts to influence positive change in people’s lives. I was one of the only people there who had worked in an industry other than the arts, and one of exactly two people who had an MBA. Several people asked me why I ever thought about pairing my artistic interest with business training. I told them that art and business are equal partners, not adversaries. In an artistic organization, you need business skills just as much as you need artistic talent. And in all organizations, business people have a lot to learn from artists.

This was puzzling to a lot of people, and that’s when a lightbulb went off for me. How could I bring the arts and business, and more specifically people who work in both disciplines, together to learn from one another? At the end of the Summit, everyone had to create a card to describe their career goal for the year. Here I am with my card:

“I commit to helping artists find the business people within them, and to helping business people find the artists within them.”

My life and my career have never been a binary choice between the arts and business. They’ve always been a package deal for me. And I wanted to find a way to work that mission into my career. I started my career twenty years ago in company management of Broadway shows and national theater tours. It has been a long and winding road since then. In all of these experiences, I say without hesitation that my work in theater has been the best business training I’ve ever had.

I so fervently believe this that when people ask me “how can I enhance my business skills?”, I tell them to go produce a live performance.

Why?

Here are the business skills we wield to produce a live show:

  • Meeting a preset, non-negotiable deadline (that curtain is going up on time no matter what—the show always goes on)
  • Staying below a strict budget, and likely a very small or non-existent budget to start with
  • Intense collaboration with a motley crew of colorful characters who all have different needs wants, and goals—hello competing priorities!
  • Publicity, marketing, media planning, and content creation
  • Financial management and accounting
  • Operations and logistics
  • In-person customer service
  • Bargaining and negotiation, as well as legal contracting
  • Impeccable time, people, and stress management
  • Recruitment and staffing
  • Oh, and then there’s that little matter of the show actually being high-quality
  • And, lest we forget, if any one of those balls drops, you bear all of the responsibility because you don’t have any backup

Are you kidding me? What other industry requires that much of a single person? No other industry. The production of a live show is the epitome of deft business skills in action.

I was beyond fortunate to have this kind of experience in the arts in my early twenties. It has informed and shaped my career and life as an adult, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. These skills are transferable to so many other industries, and a variety of roles within organizations and companies. The arts, and our active engagement with them, have many more gifts to give us than we realize.

My great hope and purpose in coming to work at PatronManager is to help arts managers create an environment of financial sustainability that allow your art and artists to shine, and to make your work accessible to as wide an audience as possible. The arts have never been more important than they are today, and our responsibility to produce them has never been greater. If you have ideas for us, please don’t be shy. I want to hear them so that we can help each other bring them to life.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Finding Beauty

Christa Avampato

“I promise if you keep searching for everything beautiful in this world, you will eventually become it.” ~Tyler Kent White

Where do you go to find beauty? A museum or gallery? A concert? Nature? Social media?

Wherever you go to seek beauty, I want you to find it and bring it so deeply into your being that you become exactly what you seek. Have a beautiful Monday.