by TASI Executive Director
Greg Busceme, Sr.
I am writing about an event that will happen before this is published. It is called NCECA and I haven’t been to it in 20 years. NCECA is the National Council on the Education of Ceramic Arts and for twenty years I would not miss it. Life changes and my ability to travel met an abrupt end. I am going to the conference to pursue a topic that, hopefully, will be a presentation at next year’s NCECA. My premise is that small communities can have a strong and vibrant arts community just as well as large communities, but you might need to work a little harder. I will use the Studio as the backdrop of this story and an example of how a group can bob and weave and find themselves established over a period of years (yes, years) to build municipal connections, funding, and community support, and establish a record of service to the arts community. Some things have become easier, such as getting a 501(c)(3) nonprofit designation. The work is never easy but there are organizations that help you get there.
According to my colleagues in the art world, Southeast Texas’ arts community might have something special. The other day I was talking to friends and realized how many art pieces we have on gallery walls all over SE Texas and that those individual artists have been filling our walls and galleries all over Southeast Texas for well over the 40 years that the studio has been in existence. What the studio brought to the table is a place artists can develop, grow, and refine their work. They have an annual opportunity to show the progress of your work and an excellent gallery to present the work.
When first confronted with the rarity of our little bastion of artistic life I was skeptical; there are so many arts communities, how we could be so different? I’ll tell you. For all these years we have been putting our heads down and working as hard as we could. We set our own pace because we had no idea where we stood on the spectrum of artists and their communities. The diligence of our art community, the depth they reached in their souls to illicit their art was powered by the fear of being mediocre, not enough, or trite. These phrases are enough to make an aspiring artist to become frozen in fear that we are not good enough, we can’t compete, we don’t belong to the larger community of artists. To this I can say unequivocally BULLSHIT!! Yes! We need to open our eyes to art that is going on in the larger arena, yes, we must dedicate ourselves to the pursuit of our craft and to never give up refining and improving what we already have. There is a place here for art to thrive and grow and a person who will take the challenge to create it. It is clear to me that we have the resources, the artists, and the will to make great things. If you haven’t started yet, begin!