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The beauty of creative contribution
to Bloomington is more than just skin-deep. For 30 year-old Dana Sperry, art is more than a career — it’s a way life.
The decision to work on his art rather than sleep for more than three hours at night is easy for the associate director of the School of Fine Arts gallery, a contemporary art gallery connected to Indiana University. “You kind of have to see it as more important than sleep,” says Sperry. Through Sperry’s own personal work and the shows he has put together, a clear objective can be seen; Sperry wants viewers to take something meaningful away from their interaction with art. His passion for art is an example of the dedication the Bloomington art community embodies. Communities all over Bloomington ranging from the IU affiliated Collins Living and Learning Center to the John Waldron Arts Center strive to keep art alive and growing in the community while making certain it interacts with the public.
A study done by Americans for Arts shows communities with the arts prosper more economically than communities with little or no art scene. Bloomington was one of 91 art communities to be researched in these findings. This study provides evidence that corporations may relocate to cities where artistic activity flourishes, a theory Richard Florida, Carnegie Mellon Professor and economist, expands on his best-selling book, The Rise of the Creative Class. While 19th century bohemians used art and literary expression to defy society, today, Bloomington, Indiana, fosters artists that use art to empower themselves and their viewers. Not only do artists in Bloomington comment on society with their art as did Bohemians throughout history, but they also strive for their art to interact with the public. Although many characteristics of Bloomington artists differ from Bohemian culture of the past, many have roots in this culture that took form in different parts of the world throughout history. In the 19th century, Bohemian was used to describe a gypsy in France thought to have come from Bohemia, a province of Czechoslovakia. Bohemians acted as avant-garde artists protesting the wealthy bourgeois. The first time Bohemian culture ventured to the United States was in the 1950s, starting with a literary and social movement among artistic communities in Los Angeles, NYC, and San Francisco, according to the Encyclopedia of Britannica. Known as the Beat Generation, these literary artists used unconventional free composition and alienated themselves from convention by adopting certain dress and behavior.
Today the term is applied to a person with artistic or literary interests who disregards conventional standards of behavior, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Characteristics of Bohemian counter-culture of the past can be found in the artistic culture in Bloomington today. Your Art Here, an organization that gives artists the opportunity to publicly display their art in Bloomington, says in the mission statement from the YAH website, "the historical role of art in society has placed upon it a significant value as it provides an arena for discussing important cultural issues. A public venue for art allows this process to take place as the culturally significant and self-reflexive media it has been in the past." Owen Mundy, one of the four co-founders of YAH, believes that traditionally, art has played a role in critiquing society, and he agrees that his organization is aligned with the history of non-conformist culture. "Society now is based on consuming so much, naturally there is going to be resistance towards that," says Mundy.
Mundy and the other co-founders of YAH, Shana Berger, Alyssa Hill and Nathan Purath want to give artists in Bloomington the opportunity to be the media. In December 2002, YAH held its first contest called Billboard Nation, a contest with two winners given the chance to display their work on two different billboards around town. Sperry was one of the winners. His piece featured a photograph of a penny, heads up on the ground sporting the title, "Making my neighborhood luckier one penny at a time." Sperry desired his work to act as metaphor about the superstitions involved with luck. He wanted his metaphor to encourage viewers to question the nature of their own neighborhood. "The metaphor was supposed to be the idea that luck is created; you don't wait around to get lucky, you make luck happen," says Sperry. All contests and submission information can be found on their website at yourarthere.org. YAH is not the only institution were artists are given the opportunity to express their ideas and show their work. return to top
"At Collins we try to instill the notion
of students as empowered individuals academically," says Yara
Cluver, arts and admissions coordinator at Collins. Four IU students, Kristin Peach, James Bourke,
Scott Shoger, and Andy Shapero went to the Collins Arts Council
with an idea called The Phoenix Society, a series of lectures and
literary readings that parody a Victorian way of life. They were
granted $150 to carry out the project.
Art communities do not reside only within university
related organizations. “We've got a lot of galleries and local artists living in our community because it is such a vibrant area, more so than other communities. Not only do we have the university, we also have a significant artistic community,” says Krueger. BAAC helped Americans for Art conduct research about how the arts relate to economic prosperity in Bloomington. The study, called The Arts and Economic Prosperity, found that Bloomington non-profit arts industry brings in $44.5 million dollars and revitalizes restaurants, parking garages, hotels and retail stores. These findings reflect a theory becoming more widely publicized because of the hype surrounding Florida’s best-seller, The Rise of the Creative Class. Students and non-students in Bloomington who may move on to bigger art scenes in larger cities may be unaware that companies may heavily recruit them in the future, according to Florida. Florida says companies are moving to cities were creative people are at large. Companies want to recruit them to help with the wave of the future: high-tech industries and a new informational world, according to an article from the Weekly Planet Sarasota by Susan Edwards According to the article, Florida believes that a city with a high-creativity index, a tool he uses to measure the music, arts, and diversity presence in a geographical location, will attract big companies and stimulate the economic growth of that respective city. Reactions to the new book differ in Bloomington. Barbara Madar, Kelley School of Business Marketing Professor, has not read the book but has heard about it from multiple people. She agrees that creativity is important in the business world because problems will arise that require a creative mind in order to come to a feasible solution. "I teach data analysis, and just because you're using numbers, doesn't mean it's black and white, left side of the brain," says Madar. However, Madar is skeptical about businesses turning to individuals with a purely arts background because they lack the necessary technical skills that are essential in the business world today. On the contrary, Sperry is not surprised that companies are looking to hire more creative people in the business world today. Sperry believes technology is requiring companies to create things faster, and thus companies should look to recruit creative people. Sperry enjoys living in Bloomington for a number of reasons. "The downside of living in Chicago was that it was expensive and there wasn’t a lot of work. The ability to come down here and have a job full time doing what I want to do was the main attraction for coming to Bloomington," says Sperry. He enjoys Bloomington because the art scene is constantly moving and providing opportunities to get involved. Sperry also likes that material for his exhibits and for his artwork are accessible in Bloomington, whereas in Chicago it would take an hour train ride to attain the necessary materials.
Sperry lives and breathes for art. He works over 50 hours a week so that he will have the money to put into his own work. Along with having a social life, Sperry also has a serious girlfriend. Because Sperry has to juggle so many things at once, his life continues on past the time when most people are asleep. Although this task may seem difficult for many people to achieve, Sperry’s love for art makes it all the more easier. “It’s exciting and fun, you have to
be obsessed with it [art].”
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