Thanks for your thoughts and ideas. I won’t try to respond point by point, but I’m sure the issues you bring up will be encountered along the way — if the effort ever gets that far.

The student partner network struck a chord; it’s probably alive and well anywhere students live in close proximity. We’ve recently experienced it among foreign students, through a group of Malians we’ve been involved with. It might be similar among young, non-established artists, though my impression is that those actively involved in art here are a more diverse group. Perhaps all the more reason that a lightweight, web-based network could meet some common needs while accomodating centrifugal forces.

A number of your points relate to the difficulties of establishing yet another organization/activity that bumps up against established institutions and interests. Gallery involvement could prove a double-edged sword, as could other overly self-promoting groups, including individual artists. No doubt settled coteries will remain just that. To what extent these will present difficulties remains to be seen. I know that most experiments fail, but hopefully something can still be learned in the process.

As for bourgeois mock-culture smugness, I’m quite certain we have our share. Meaning both in Bozeman and on A&P. What to do but plug away, try to be open, and hope we’re plowing a field and not just digging a rut?

1. You guys sound as though you are immigrants looking for a mechanism for forming a network, some kind of skeleton to which one can anchor. Let me say that most successful operation of that kind that I know of is the one created by and for wives of students in Bozeman. (They soon included “spouses” and weren’t fussy about technicalities.) See what they’re up to, though their day may have passed. The emphasis was DOING — running, cooking, sports.

2. There are many pre-existing little cadres of artists who do about the same kind of stuff and who have known each other for a long time. They are often terrific people, but they are not looking to include newcomers. The exception might be people who teach, who would reach out to students. They’re very hard to find out about because they take their habits so for granted that they talk in code: “meet at the usual place,” “same as last year.” Art in Montana is very much broken up into layers (high and low art) and locations.

3. It is in the interests of the art galleries, museums, and other institutions to keep artists separated from patrons. Don’t ask them to be the go-betweens. Also, their goal is status, “society,” class, fashion, etc. all things that can corrupt and possibly destroy artists.

4. “Art” is in some peoples’ minds “bohemia,” “hippies,” “do as you like.” Tim Barrus, hardly a stickler for propriety, has a Paris loft (sigh) where they held an event. A bunch of “Americans” came, got drunk, took drugs, and smashed the metal chairs against the brick wall enough to knock out chunks and bend the chairs — which had been borrowed from a cafe down the street. They had a meeting to try to figure out how to prevent this from happening again. They decided that they would not make flyers or posters, they would pass the word to people they knew only, and there would be no chairs. Sit on the floor. They didn’t want to hire a bouncer. In a college town you might have to. You might have to close the bar or not to have a bar to prevent barfing on the art.

5. A church might be a good ally. The Bozeman Congo church is a pretty progressive bunch. Dunno the minister anymore.

6. Food is always a good attraction or maybe a little lecture series, not too pretentious. DO NOT let it be about Charlie Russell, which is an industry.

7. I’ll tell you what I really hate and what took me over the edge into outright rudeness at the Montana Festival of the Book is anyone referring to “our little” whatsis that “I” started (and let run into the ground) and making it a sort of bourgeouis mock-culture celebration of how smug “we” are.

Prairie Mary

Good thought about having an actual card to hand out or tack up. It might well have one of my photos, but I think the subject should say Bozeman, and ideally art in Bozeman. Not sure my parking garage graffiti will do the job…

The Bozeman blog would serve a distinct purpose from A&P, though there could certainly end up being some overlap of interests. But don’t worry, Sunil, it’s not a replacement! I think some concerns require a very wide (even world-wide) base to attract sufficient active participants, while other concerns are almost purely local.

Nice looking blog. Good idea.

Promotional idea: Go around to the galleries and hang out spots — I mean actually, physically show up at the spots and invite contributions from proprietors. Second, tell them that you are considering featuring their venues and interview them a bit. You’ll get ideas yourself; moreover, you’ll build a local reader/contributer base. Your community will take ownership. You’ll have a base of people who already know each other.

(Remember the saying, “Think global; act local?)