Organizing Arkansas’ Creative Army | Five Questions with Cat Fury of the Arkansas Arts Alliance, What Army

Banner, Five Questions, News — By Christopher Spencer on April 13, 2011 at 3:11 pm

Cat Fury, chair of the Arkansas Arts Alliance and musician in Fayetteville's What Army

Cat Fury of What Army thinks it is high time musicians and other creative folks in Arkansas get organized.

This Fayetteville residents is the catalyst behind the recently incorporated Arkansas Arts Alliance, or A3, which plans to publish a print magazine in May focused on the under-reported aspects of the state’s creative economy.

Already, the group has raised about $700 toward crafting a website and publishing the first edition of the magazine. A fundraiser at Rogue Pizza Co. and a recent bake sale have increased the visibility and the financial wherewithal of the group.

Fury was nice enough to answer out Five Questions this week about the project.

What is the Arkansas Arts Alliance?

The Arkansas Arts Alliance is a nonprofit organization, based in Fayetteville, that was created to help artists barter skills and equipment, work out in-kind trades, meet people to collaborate on bigger projects such as plays, videos or music festivals, and share their knowledge with each other. We also try to act as a directory of other similar groups, venues and organizations (for example, Art Amiss, CEAG [Editor's Note: I'm the chairman of the Fayetteville Forward Creative Economy Action Group or CEAG], the OMNI Center…) that can provide more exposure for artists.

We also have a website under construction at ArkansasArtsAlliance.org which will provide a searchable directory of creative people and venues who are Alliance members. That way, if a graphic designer or web designer needs to find a photographer who is willing to trade work in return for materials or skills (for example perhaps the photographer needs a graphic designer to edit some of their photos), they can just search the database. Or, if a venue needs to find a certain genre of musician to fill a cancellation in their calendar, they can search Alliance musicians by genre.

There are a lot of creative people who are just at the “getting started” level of their chosen medium. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t talented, just that they need more experience and exposure. So, we are exploring ideas such as mentorships and apprenticeships. For example an artist who has had gallery shows might take on an Alliance member as an informal apprentice and walk them through the process of bringing their work to that level of presentation.

Another huge focus of our organization is trying to get exposure for those creative people who might otherwise have a hard time getting noticed in the local media. It’s a Catch 22 situation for so many artists, performers, writers, and musicians. Nobody wants to do a story on you, give you a show, or hire you unless you have a decent portfolio and resume already. But how do you develop that resume if you can’t get anyone to take a chance on you?

So because of this challenge, we came up with the idea of publishing A3 Zine, which is a 20-page monthly newspaper that focuses exclusively on the work of Arkansas creative people, and on giving information on resources, educational opportunities, venues, and organizations that creative artists might find helpful.

Our first issue will be out in May.

How did the idea come about?

 

For me, this is an idea that formed a seed in my mind years ago, and has been a very long time slowly germinating and taking shape. I remember hearing about San Fransisco bay area group called “Bands For Bands” that connects new bands up with more experienced musicians with a bigger following. They help each other get gigs, promote, and develop as artists. I immediately thought that we really needed a similar organization here.

 

I had no time to start a group like that, so I just tried to help out any other band I could. I volunteered to do things like make and distribute flyers, improve band logos, share booking contact info for venues, loan out P.A. equipment and our band trailer. My guitarist Eris jumped in and started helping by teaching other guitarists every trick she knows. And my drummer Luke Schmude, along with his girlfriend Dna Shumaker has been hosting house shows to get gas money for musicians who are on DIY tours. But it was all very informal and haphazard until recently.

About four months ago, Tyler Hawkins from the NWA metal band Abacinated dropped in to our practice area to hang out and talk, and we got on the subject of how competitive and secretive the music scene can be.

We joked that it seems like once a band gets past a certain level of success, their booking agent or label swears them to secrecy about the tips and tricks for getting signed and getting booked for tours and bigger venues.

At least in the hard rock and metal scene, it seems like there is sometimes an attitude that if another band gets a show, they are taking that show or those fans away from your own band. In our conversation, we talked about how our belief was that if all the local creative people could get in a cooperative mindset, the scene would become big enough and lucrative enough for more people to succeed.

I remember we told each other that we needed to stop joking about it and dreaming about it, and actually schedule a get-together with other creative people to see how much interest we could generate in the idea. We gave a two-month notice on the first meeting, but we didn’t really advertise it as well as we should have. Still, over 30 people turned up for that first get-together and the energy and excitement as they brainstormed what they’d like to see happen in the local scene was overwhelming.

I had no expectation of that kind of support and excitement about the idea.

Since then, in the past 90 days, we’ve filed as a nonprofit organization, held a great fundraiser at Rogue Pizza, started a Little Rock chapter, held a very successful bake sale/live art event, elected officers, put together an editorial and reporting staff, found opportunities for musicians, writers, and artists, worked out quite a few lucrative trades of services between members, and had a lot of fun doing it.

What impact do you hope the group will have on state and local artists?

Well, I don’t want to impose my ideas on the group. Though I tried hard to dodge, I got elected Chair of the Arts Alliance. I believe that my job in that role is to listen to what the members are saying that they want, and then go out there with the other officers and make it happen however we can.

The first thing everyone agreed that we needed was more cohesion in the local scenes in each city in Arkansas.

The next idea people started mentioning during brainstorming was that they wanted to see more cooperation and sharing. As those ideas got discussed, people expressed a lot of frustration that there was very little help out there for creative people just getting started, and what help there is, they had no idea that it existed or how to access it. So the concept of sharing information and getting exposure, plus cooperating to build a better arts scene, evolved into the idea of creating a website and a magazine to serve as a hub to do all those things.

If I could have my wish, the one thing I want to see is more creative types becoming self-sufficient and creating their own infrastructure.

For example, if you can’t get your band booked into a venue, then don’t depend on the existing venues! Get with five other bands, pool your money, pool your sound and lighting equipment, and rent a venue. Or throw a house show and promote it yourself.

If the media won’t print your press releases, then stand out on Dickson Street on a Saturday night and tell every person you see about your show. Sell tickets. Tell people that if they don’t like the show, you’ll refund their money, which is a guarantee no local bar venue can or will give. And the same thing for artists. If you can’t get your art hung anywhere, or get a show, then get together with some other artists and scrape together the money for a parade permit – all of you walk around the square and down Dickson Street carrying one of your canvases. Or get some pastels and collaborate on a sidewalk mural.

In nearly all the towns in Arkansas my band has played in, I talk to the various creative people I meet at shows, and I get this strong sense of these underground scenes being like pressure cookers. What I mean is, there’s all this creative energy built up, but only very limited venues for the outlet of that energy.

I think in the punk scene, that energy finds its way out it violence and self-destruction. Among writers and poets, it seems to turn inwards as depression and stagnation. I just want to see that energy find a real outlet to be displayed as creative work, and if it can’t find an existing outlet, I hope that people will band together and build one.

It’s a very sad thing, but in the Fayetteville and Little Rock scene especially, bands like A Good Fight or Randall Del Shreve get to a certain level of fame and success, and then they feel like they need to leave – not just tour a lot – but actually leave for a bigger scene and a bigger audience.

In the 15 years I have been here, there have been so many times that we’ve had all the ingredients for the scene in NW Arkansas to go viral the same way that Seattle did in the 90′s. It’s like we’ve had all the ingredients for cake, and just thrown them in the bowl together in random amounts and in any old order. So it never quite turns into cake.

I want to see us take these “ingredients” and collaborate to consciously, intentionally build a scene that attracts production companies, agents, big festivals, promoters, record labels… And I think that the only ingredient that has been missing in the past is simply a group that states this as their goal and intention.

Another big effect I hope the Alliance will have is more local businesses seeking local creative people for their needs. I was so happy we used a local sculptor to create the Peace Fountain at the community center, for example. Cross-pollination and bringing in new ideas is important, but every time we pay an artist in the community, the money stays in the community to hopefully be spent at local businesses again. If you pay an artist from the east coast to design your logo or paint your signage, they may do a great job, but they will never come into your store to go shopping. But a local artist will be proud of their work, will have a personal connection to your store, and they’ll talk about your business to their friends.

They’ll use you in their portfolio when looking for other jobs locally. So they’ll create a lot of local word-of-mouth buzz about your business. I’m hoping we can start getting local businesses to take that into consideration when they need any type of creative work done.

My point is, if the existing venue and media infrastructure seems oblivious or uninterested in your work, then who needs ‘em? DIY is the oldest and most effective trick in the book for creative people, but it means not being afraid to take a few risks, try new things, look silly in public.

So hopefully, the Arts Alliance will provide the comfort and resources of a group of allies and friends who are willing to hold each others’ hands and take that leap of faith together.

I guess my ultimate dream, if the organization works well and serves communities well, would be for us to start chapters in other states until we actually have a chapter in all 50 states – and while we’re dreaming big, maybe in 20 years we could become international, start partnering with other organizations like the Heifer Project and some microfunding sites like Kickstarter.com and the Kiva Foundation to teach artistic skills to impoverished people in other countries so that they can start to make a living off those skills.

It would be nice to help people both in the U.S.A. and in other countries take some pride in their culture or subculture by expressing it through art and realizing that their art and creativity has value.

It’s so sad to me that there are whole subcultures of art scenes in the U.S. (such as punk and steampunk, and science fiction writers, to name a couple) who sometimes feel that mainstream culture doesn’t consider their work to be “real” art, or valid, or valuable. And it makes me very sad that there are lots of creative people who think that their work isn’t very important because they will never hang it in a museum, or be published in a well-known literary magazine, or get airplay on national radio.

Cat, you’re a musician. Tell us a bit about your band.

My band is What Army. We’re from Fayetteville, although we have toured the West Coast and will be touring again soon.

We’ve got three albums out and will be releasing a fourth in 2012. Our three members are Cat Fury (that’s me) on 6-string electric bass and vocals, Eris on guitar and backing vocals, and Luke Schmude on drums and backing vocals.

Our sound is hard rock, fronted by heavy female vocals – you’d probably have to listen to Flyleaf and Janis Joplin to get an approximation of the vocal sound. We try to get a lot of dynamics into our music, a lot of time-signature and tempo shifts. A typical What Army trick is to whiplash from growly and distorted to an acappella whisper, then back to heavy again in a second.

But we all loved 80′s metal as kids, so we always try to keep a singable melody line going through the whole thing.

Our name comes from the playground taunt “You and What Army.” I guess the idea for the Arts Alliance was in the back of my head even back in 2008 when we started the band, because our concept of the band’s name is that WE are the ‘army’ backing up other artists when they say they want to accomplish something big.

We want to believe in other creative artists’ success and try to help out.

Our band’s motto is “The Axe Is Mightier Than The Sword” which is a pun on the way 80′s guitarists called their instrument their “axe.”

We’re into the concept that communication and understanding will always eventually triumph over violent solutions. It’s reminiscent of how reporters and the military have had a hard time getting into places like soviet Russia, or communist China, throughout history, but somehow American music and art, especially subculture and counterculture music like rock and roll, seemed to sneak across borders that the military or diplomats couldn’t cross.

We find it fascinating how a teenage kid in soviet Russia wouldn’t risk their life to sneak in a reporter or an ambassador, but they would do so to get music that they could get in a lot of trouble for having. And art can go into someone’s mind and inspire and change them – maybe even open their mind to new ideas and change them into a friend. But all a bullet can do is kill people – it changes them, but only into an enemy, or a dead enemy.

It seems like making speeches at someone, or trying to open up peace talks, puts them on the defensive, makes them edgy about accepting your ideas. But art and music get people interested and draw them in. Even if they find the art offensive, it seems like you can get people into a productive dialogue about why they are offended. And, of course, a pair of musicians, artists, dancers, sculptors – any two creative artists of any kind- they might have opposing political and religious beliefs, they might not speak a word of each other’s language, but all artists have access to the spectrum of color, and all musicians have access to the same range of human hearing. So you put them in a room together and give them an artistic project or problem to work on, and the differences become irrelevant.

I think that all creators are actually of the same race, nationality, and religion, which is “Artist.” We are all citizens of Art, and that seems to trump all our other affiliations. These are the ideas that find their way into our lyrics and into so much of what we do as a band.

If people want to hear our songs, they can friend What Army on fbook or they can go to http://www.cdbaby.com/whatarmy1

and view our profile.

How’s the working coming on the magazine and website?

Great! We have nearly enough submissions for the first issue of the magazine. We have an editorial meeting coming up on May 24th at 7pm at Studio Leilani on the 2nd floor of the E.J. Ball building, so anyone who wants to bring a submission or turn in an article is welcome to join us. We have volunteer staff who are experienced in editing, proofreading, layout, design, journalism, first amendment law, photography, publicity… you name it.

But more people are always welcome. The first issue should be out in May. We’ve sold quite a few ads, but there’s room for more still. Although we are a nonprofit organization, we’d also like to go ahead and get a business license for the city of Fayetteville, just to make sure we are fair to everyone locally.

We have our EIN filed, and a PO box (PO Box 8842, Fayetteville, AR 72703) that is just for submissions. Also, people can submit work to AAAzine@gmail.com.

As far as the website goes, we’ve had webhosting and domain name registration donated to us, and we’ve paid our web designer (who has volunteered to work at half her usual hourly cost) for her first 9 hours of work. At least a one-page informational page about A3, plus a signup form, will be available soon – certainly by May 1 – with the other website functions and features to follow soon.

It’s an exciting time, because we know we’re right on the verge of seeing some major accomplishments realized in the physical world. We’ve done a lot of ground work, developing organizational structure and creating intellectual property, filing paperwork and doing outreach, but now we’re about to have something we can bring to friends, family, colleagues and sister organizations and go “Look what we did! Do you want to play in our sandbox too?”

There’s already been (to me at least) a surprising amount of generosity and effort donated by our members. I guess we all could use some help on our projects, and it just never occurred to us that we could ask EACH OTHER for that help.

Sometimes it seems like we’ve all been coming from a place of need; we need a venue, we need funding, we need more information, we need materials. And for me anyway, the Alliance has got me started thinking more in a mindset of what I have already, that I can share with others to create something bigger than all of us. And the website and paper, along with the first annual A3 Arts Expo at 104 East Street on June 4th, will be the result of that mental shift in all of us.

Find out more at the group’s Facebook page.

 

 

 

See our ongoing coverage: Creative Economy

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