FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
A: ArtsMove’s incentive is a $15,000 five-year forgivable mortgage, which requires no prepayment and accrues no interest, provided the artist purchases residential property in a qualifying downtown neighborhood and the property remains owner occupied for the full five-year term. The money can be applied toward down payment, closing costs, prepaid expenses, and any upgrades included in the contract.
Q: Who is eligible to apply for ArtsMove?
A: We welcome applications from full time, professional artists and artisans in a wide variety of creative enterprises: performing arts, 2D and 3D visual arts, literary arts, and culinary arts. Incentives are open to local Chattanoogans and out-of-towners interested in relocating to downtown Chattanooga.
Q: What constitutes a full time artist?
A: We consider an artist to be full time if their primary source of income is from work in a given artistic field.
Q: On what properties may I use ArtsMove funding?
A: The ArtsMove incentive can be applied only to residential property in one the five approved downtown neighborhoods: Main Street, Cowart Place, Fort Negley, Jefferson Heights, and the MLK District. You can see an interactive map by clicking here. While artists may use the incentive toward a combined live/work space, it may not be applied toward the purchase of studio space alone.
Q: What happens if I want to move and sell the property before my five-year term is over?
A: The mortgage is forgiven over a five-year period at a rate of 20% per year, interest free. If you decide to move, you would be responsible to pay back whatever percentage was left of the mortgage at the time of sale. For example, if you move with two years left of your five-year term, you would owe the remaining 40% of the mortgage, or $6000.
Q: Who decides which artists are approved for the incentives?
A: The ArtsMove application process is very competitive, and we leave such hard decisions in the capable hands of our jury panel. The jury panel is composed of five to seven experts in the fields of arts and culture, who are of the highest repute in their field and very active in the local community. The panel will critically review all submitted material from each applicant and work together to come to a cohesive decision regarding approval. This process is confidential.
Q: What are your deadlines, and when do I find out if I’m approved?
A: ArtsMove applications are juried on a quarterly basis. Quarterly deadlines for 2008 are January 25th, April 25th, July 25th and October 31st. Late submissions will be rolled over and considered the following quarter. You will be notified of your eligibility within 30 days of the application deadline.
Q: Why do you need six copies of everything?
A: We need six copies of your completed application and all accompanying materials so we may distribute them to our panel of experts in the fields of arts and culture. They will review all the submitted material individually before gathering together to discuss the applications.
Q: If I’m approved for the incentive, what’s next?
A: You should establish a relationship with a bank or mortgage lender early in the process to get approval for your primary mortgage. After initial approval for the ArtsMove incentive, you should begin to look for a property within the ArtsMove footprint. Your ArtsMove approval is basically a coupon, which is good for a 6-month period or while supplies last. One of 15 available incentives will be secured for you once we have received a copy of the Purchase Agreement/Contract signed by you as the Buyer/Seller of qualifying property and a copy of your pre-approved letter from your bank or mortgage lender. We will coordinate with your realtor, lender, and title company to ensure the funds for the incentive are at the title company on your closing date.
Q: Can you help me find a realtor?
A: While we can’t suggest one realtor over another, we’re happy to provide you with a list of realtors familiar with both the ArtsMove incentive and the downtown area. That list is available under the “find a realtor” tab on the ArtsMove website.
Q: Do you have any other incentives available for artists through ArtsMove?
A: Unfortunately, at this time ArtsMove does not provide funding for teachers, students, artist health insurance, or financial assistance in purchasing commercial/studio space. However, we would be happy to meet you and help you connect with others in the local arts community and beyond! Please check out CreateHere’s other exciting programs and projects at www.CreateHere.org.
Q: Any more tips?
A: All the panel of jurors will see of you and your work is what is on your application and in your work samples. Take time as your prepare your application and portfolio so that you represent yourself well as a professional. Know and communicate clearly what makes your work authentic and what sets you apart as an artist or artisan. The tips included below on writing an artist resume and artist statement may be helpful to you. Jurors also tend to be interested in your prior community involvement and your plans for engaging with the local Chattanooga landscape.
Q: I have more questions. Who can I talk to?
Feel free to contact me, Sarah Lester, with your questions and comments. You can reach me at 423-648-2195 or at sarah@createhere.org.
WRITING AN ARTIST RESUME
By Margaret (Maggie) Brezden
By Margaret (Maggie) Brezden
An artist resume is an absolute necessity for every professional artist. Although an artist bio may contain similar information it is presented in a different format than the artist resume. An artist bio is most often written in the third person and in paragraph form while the resume is not. Generally an artist’s resume is organized by headings that are listed by date with the most recent event first. These headings can be bulleted, bold or underlined so they stand out.
Most artists have two versions of their resume prepared, a long version and a one-page version. Your resume should be easy to read, typed and printed on quality paper. As you develop as an artist you will need to update your resume, at which time you should edit out old and irrelevant information.
Artist resumes should contain the following:
1. Your Name and Contact Information - Your name should be at the top of the page and should be larger than the rest of the information presented in the resume. Following your name include your mailing address, phone number, fax number, email address, and website address if appropriate.
2. Education - List all the academic degrees earned and all honors received. Include here the schools or universities you attended without completing a degree, and if you do not have an art related degree, you can list workshops or classes you attended and the notable artists /teachers you have studied with.
3. Honors and Awards/Grants - Under this category you want to list all recognitions of merit, prizes won in competitions/exhibitions, grants, fellowships, scholarships and other special recognitions.
4. Bibliography - Include articles, reviews, radio and television interviews under this heading as well as books, magazines, newspapers and catalogues who have published your artwork.
5. Exhibitions - List the title of the exhibition, the exhibition space, and the city and state where the exhibition was held. You may want to divide your exhibitions into separate categories such as: solo shows, group shows, juried exhibitions, invitational exhibitions etc.
6. Collections - This category can be divided into private collections, corporate collections and permanent public collections. Always ask permission to list a private owner of your work on your resume.
7. Professional Affiliations - List the professional organizations, national, regional, and local, to which you belong. If you held a position within the organization or served as a volunteer, note this as well.
8. Related Work Experience/Professional Experience - Artists may include experience they feel is relevant to their professional art making career such as: teaching art; jobs held in their field; technical experience related to their artistic discipline or, lectures, workshops and presentations given as an artist. Some artists also include information under this heading that does not neatly fall into other categories on their resume.
Be sure to proofread your resume carefully. You may find it beneficial to have a friend or colleague read over your resume before you type your final copy.
WRITING AN ARTIST STATEMENT: DOs and DON’Ts
From the AVA Artist’s Professional Development Series 2006
Artist Statements should not:
o Use flowery language for its own sake.
Upheaving mountains and deepening canyons, surfing waves and deafening falls, subliming mist and swirling clouds, leaf-shimmering aspens and limb-stretching oaks, head whirling ecstasy and heart-breaking sorrow… I am always overwhelmed by the everlasting changing-- the movement-- the manifestations of energy and life.
o Make trite statements.
My paintings oscillate between the visible and invisible worlds, suggesting a place on the periphery of knowledge-- a poetic place imagined and intuited, but rarely seen. It is the journey, the wandering spirit on its quest for the sacred, rather than the destination itself, which I depict in my paintings.
o Use elliptical or enigmatic prose for its own sake.
I am investigating the sex of color. This may be a waste of time but not my time. This must be necessary because everyone wants it. Looking into this subject is a natural thing for my paint to do. Combinations of things that do not combine are interesting to me. All your body parts are mine to use. The work is about inventing, pretending and remembering. Is pretending like a movie of imagining?
o Use trendy “buzzwords” and pseudo-intellectual catchphrases, unless they truly communicate an idea.
It is indeed ironic that in the age of the ‘Information Super-Highway,’ we exist in a vacuous society devoid of any ontological sensibility. One need only to view the nightly news to glimpse an image of a culture gone awry; a culture in which embracing continually shifting paradigms has become not only submissive to absurdity but celebratory of it.
o Provide autobiographical information, unless it has a direct bearing on your work.
I was born and raised in suburban upstate New York. I went to college to study chemistry, but didn’t believe in physics and was flunking calculus. In 1974 I took an art course for the fun of it and fell in love with a new way of thinking and living. Art became my obsession…
o Bog down the reader with irrelevant details about your working process.
I am mostly a painter, although I have worked, and still do, in other media. I paint from photographs using oils, alkyds and acrylics, regular brushes and some airbrush.
o Play the role of art critic, interpret your work for the viewer, compare it to others’ work, or tell the viewer how to respond.
As applied to interactivity, my approach rewards viewers with an immediate, visceral sense of presence, while simultaneously inducing them to understand the conceptual motivation and deeper meaning behind the work. My interest in phenomenology and minimalism reflect several of my artistic influences, most notably that of Robert Irwin and James Turrell…
Artist Statements should:
o Discuss the inspiration for your work, artistic and otherwise.
Common shovels, awkward looking excavating devices, … ‘dumb tools,’ picks, pitchforks, the machines used by suburban contractors, grim tractors that have the clumsiness of amoreal dinosaurs, and plows that simply push dirt around… Building takes on a singular wildness as loaders scoop and drag soil all over the place… These processes of heavy construction have a devastating kind of primordial grandeur, and are in many ways more astonishing than the finished project. –Robert Smithson
o Discuss the concepts underlying your work.
The world is filled to suffocating. Man has placed his token on every stone. Every word, image, is leased and mortgaged. We know that a picture is but a space in which a variety of images, none of them original, blend and clash. A picture is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture… We can only imitate a gesture that is always interior, never original. –Sherry Levine
o Describe the imagery used in your work and the source of its derivation, if it is of interest.
I have in recent years used newspaper photographs and television and movies for the blatancy, for example, with which film projects images-- how the scale of flesh, the scale of expression, is shoved at us in a flattering effect… We have more variables, many more bits of information to deal with all the time. I attempt in these paintings to give some of the quality of media experience, a sense of tension and of abrupt immediacy. –Leon Golub
o Describe your use of media and materials (metaphorically, visually, theoretically, etc), if it is of interest.
Fat is a supremely alchemical material. It has an almost living quality and, through its various transmutations, symbolizes the different stages of such awareness: dilated it becomes liquid, quickly contracted, it becomes solid, and can become gaseous on evaporation… And this same process, whereby something indeterminate is… moved towards a determinate form, is a basic element in sculpture theory. –Joseph Beuys
o Discuss the formal properties of your work, if they are relevant.
The use of white in my paintings came about when I realized it doesn’t interfere. It is a neutral color that allows for clarification of nuances in painting. It makes other aspects of painting visible that would not be so clear with the use of other colors. –Robert Ryman
o Describe your working process, if it is relevant.
[My process begins] with an intimate, hands-on reading of the site. This means sitting, watching, and walking through the site, the surrounding areas (where will you enter from and exit to), the city at large or the countryside. … A quiet distillation of all this-- while directly experiencing the site-- determines all the facets of ‘sculptural response’… whether the response should be monumental or ephemeral, aggressive or gentle, useful or useless, sculptural, architectural, or simply nothing at all. –Robert Irwin
o Discuss your philosophical positions regarding art, if they are reflected in your work.
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. –Sol Le Witt