Attendees: Jeff Gurchinoff, Marilyn Houston, Kathy Kuczek, Barbara Marden, Terry O’Connor, Cyndi Safstrom, Darlene Strand,
Meeting was called to order at 6:15 p.m. at Dickinson County Library
Minutes from the July meeting were read and accepted.
Treasury balance is currently $2,348.00.
Old business:
Darlene passed out the monthly calendar to meeting attendees. Terry has distributed 250 calendars around Iron Mountain. They continue to be very well received and vendors are happy to share them. Jane at Greenway puts copies in bags of books that she sells.
Jeff shared about progress on the community center/children’s museum. The committee is now considering using some vacant space in the central school building and will know by the 13th of August whether the school will be able to dedicate that space for this purpose. The committee plans to devote space for creative activities and has lots of ideas for activities including using creativity as a way to keep kids off drugs and involving them in art-related community outreach. The space will provide access to the professional on-site kitchen, so could also be used for food-related community events like pancake breakfasts. Jeff wants to use our connection with the center as an opportunity to expand the reach of Borderland and would like to offer members the opportunity to get involved. If the program is able to go ahead as planned, the center may be open as soon as November 2018. Jeff will provide more information as it becomes available.
The Manistique Power of Words mural unveiling is Monday at 5:00 (4:00 our time). Anyone is welcome to attend. Jeff will share some pictures of the event on Facebook.
There are lots of opportunities for our current and potential future galleries. However, we don’t want to overextend our capacity to keep galleries filled.
New business:
Darlene reminded us that that the Menghini museum show is coming up in early October. Barb will contact Chris Hamlin at the museum and then post the details on our Facebook page. Members should begin to consider what they might want to include in the show.
Darlene also advised members that David Heritsch will be offering a photography class at Bay College in September. Anyone who’s interested should visit https://mytraining.baycollege.edu/searchResults.cfm?catID=6
Barb mentioned that she would like to begin sharing the meeting minutes the next day on the website with a link on Facebook. We would like to make sure that members not able to attend meetings are informed about what’s happening on a timely basis. The group was in agreement with this plan.
The group held a discussion about what kind of programs we would like to have at our meetings over the next couple of months. We considered a number of options: 1) bringing in outside instructors; 2) asking our members to share techniques; 3) learning about each other and our own journey as artists.
The preference was for tapping our own members first. It was proposed that any member who teaches a technique will be paid $10/participant and reimbursed for the cost of materials. In order to do this, we will need to be a little more disciplined about signing up for programs when techniques are offered so instructors will be able to provide the right quantity of supplies and/or advise participants what to bring. Barb will contact a few members so we can begin to line up a schedule.
In terms of learning about each other, Cyndi’s idea (partially inspired by Carol’s presentation in July) was that anyone who is interested could share his or her artist journey over the years. Many of us started out doing one thing and moved into something else over time. Others do a number of different things. And still others have continued to develop their preferred technique over many years. The intent would be to do some short presentations (about 20 minutes at the most) with a few samples of the different kinds of work we’ve done or the progression of our work in one technique. Cyndi and Darlene have agreed to share their journeys at our next meeting. We would love to hear from any of you who want to share. Barb will have a signup sheet at the next meeting.
There are available funds for inviting in an outside teacher, so we will bring up at future meetings for further ideas and discussion.
Finally, welcome to Marilyn Houston, who officially joined this evening.
Next month’s meeting will be September 6 at Bay College.
Thank you for publishing the minutes…I was unable to attend but interested in what our community of artists are doing. Thank you, Barb, for posting them, and to Kathy for developing an interesting and easy to navigate website.