Art Works: How Art is Work
American Artscape | 2010 No. 1
![NEA Arts cover no 1 2010](/sites/default/files/styles/portrait/public/images/NEAarts_2010_v1_cover.jpg?itok=Crb3YhfM)
Being executive director of a theater company doesn’t mean you get to sit back and watch others work, as Michael Cochran knows. At his theater—Market House Theatre in Paducah, Kentucky—Cochran does everything from working on the publicity to coordinating catering and concessions to maintaining plumbing and setting up lights, in addition to his artistic duties of selecting and directing the plays the company stages.
Photo by Jim Keeney
About this Issue
Depending on your lens, art is many things: transformative, evocative, beautiful, provocative. Behind these great artistic performances and exhibitions you experience, however, a great deal of hard work is going on. Dance steps must be learned and perfected, canvas must be purchased and stretched before being painted, symphonies must be written and then scored into parts for each instrumentalist. On a more practical level, babysitters must be arranged to free up time to work in the studio, grants must be submitted or a full-time job attended in order to pay for supplies, sets must be built, hotels and rehearsal space must be secured for visiting artists. When we take in the ballet, the photograph, the poem, we are seeing only the finished product. This issue of NEA Arts will look at all the steps leading up to that final product, the work behind the artwork.
A couple of months ago, the NEA began the Art Works blog on our website where we keep track of Chairman Rocco Landesman’s travels around the country as part of the Art Works Tour, but also look at interesting examples of how art transforms communities. If you have an example you would like to share, or just want to comment on something you read there or in this issue, please join in the conversation on the blog.
Included in this Issue
![Cast of young actors, with one front and center with arm raised shouting something to the audience](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/02-girlinmask.jpg?h=c5e9919d&itok=XvY3BrTV)
Making Art Work
Backstage at Market House Theatre
![Two dancers in the studio with right right arms and legs extended out to side](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/03-early.jpg?h=52605a11&itok=2MlcVZY_)
Early in the Morning 'til Late at Night
The Workday of Artists
![man at letterpress machine with a stack of broadsides in front of him?](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/04-books2.jpg?h=52605a11&itok=nBpDjXuh)
The Business of Books
Behind the Scenes at Coffee House Press and Narrative
![Several students working in a costume shop](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/06-dash.jpg?h=072e9b8c&itok=YLj6ycIO)
Designs on the Future
The Design and Architecture Senior High in Miami, Florida
![two young girls in festive costume dancing with multi-colored fans](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/05groundupGirls.jpg?h=f515df4b&itok=Eb-h43pD)
From the Ground Up
Local Arts Agencies Think Artistically and Act Locally
![Two actresses - one expostulating the other next to her with head on shoulder](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/07-nothing.jpg?h=52605a11&itok=CTQSa_Sp)
Nothing Glamorous At All
A Talk with a Working Actor
![young actors in a cardboard locomotive mock-up with another shoveling pretend coal into the firebox.](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/12_3.jpg?h=bb0055f8&itok=n0DJNlc0)
Festival Theatre
Audio Available
![Two women seated on a rooftop open sky and clouds and the city skyline in the background.](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/MBHT.jpg?h=c8e773d5&itok=sNcCPqYH)
Interview with Hannah Tinti of One Story
Audio Available
![Photo of book cover: Things I must Have Known by A.B. Spellman](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/abSpellman_0.jpg?h=1f4c15d9&itok=r9shdF5o)
Interview with A.B. Spellman
Audio Available
![Artists in the Workforce 1990-2005 book cover - performers of various ages onstage facing front](/sites/default/files/styles/card_square/public/08-atwork.jpg?h=52605a11&itok=3VrEtrhK)
Artists at Work