How 257 Artists Changed How One Sees Oregon

I’m motivated by the thousands of dedicated, creative people who are quietly and steadily and powerfully and beautifully giving their lives to this work and this state.

Adam Davis works with Oregon Humanities to get people thinking and talking together, and he used to lead backcountry trail crews with the U.S. Forest Service.

There are many ways to see Oregon. You can look at it on a map and get familiar with its borders and topography. You can travel around the state and break bread with people in Cave Junction and Joseph and Burns and Lincoln City and Bend and Portland. And you can also, as I have had the good fortune to do this spring, spend time with the work that hundreds of community-engaged artists are doing in small towns and big cities all around the state.

Three years ago, Oregon Humanities and the Oregon Community Foundation started a new program called the Fields Artist Fellowship to provide support and visibility to people using the arts to fight against the opportunity gap and strengthen communities. The first cohort of four Fields Artist Fellows has just concluded their term, and we’re nearing the announcement of the next four Fellows (each of whom will receive $100,000 over two years along with regular convening and other forms of support) as well as eight finalists (each of whom will receive awards of $10,000).

Two hundred and fifty-seven people applied for the fellowship this time around — 257 creative and committed people who sing, paint, write, act, dance, remember, imagine, and get people connected to one another and to their own creative impulses. Many of these 257 applicants are people of color. Many have direct personal experience with the challenges that the opportunity gap creates. Some of the applicants have already garnered a good deal of publicity and attention, while others have quietly gone about their work, day by day and connection by connection.

With co-workers at Oregon Humanities and the Oregon Community Foundation, and with selection committee members from all over the state, I’ve had the honor of immersing myself in the full range of applications and portfolios. This means that I’ve been able to develop a broad sense of what all these people are doing and why this work matters to them, to their communities, and to the state as a whole. I’ve also been able to see a picture of Oregon emerging from the work of all 257 applicants seen together. The picture is both discouraging — because of the challenging conditions so many of them face and address — and encouraging — because they are doing such smart, heartfelt, and visionary work.

One facet of the work that stands out to me from this reviewing experience is how much of it takes place out of sight most of the time. I’ve been with Oregon Humanities, a statewide organization in Oregon’s cultural sector, for eight years now, and still, so many of these 257 people were new to me, as were so many of the projects and partners their applications mention. And I know there are thousands of people who did not apply who are also doing this quietly remarkable work. This reviewing experience has helped me see that Oregon is home to a dedicated, powerful, and somewhat subterranean corps of community-building artists.

A second facet that stands out is that even though some of this work is episodic and some of it is literally performative, all of it, no matter how powerful the immediate end product, is more about the process than the thing or the performance that gets produced. It’s long-term work. Here the subterranean character of the work is hopeful, because of the roots that are extending and the plants that are emerging and the stands and forests sure to come. 

At some point in my adolescence, I put on a snorkel and mask for the first time and dipped my head into the Pacific, and I remember being stunned — knocked out, saltily jaw-dropped — by the world that suddenly became visible. All the colors, the plants, the fish—all the life—had been there all the time, but I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t really believed it was there. And then, in that moment, I saw it, and I’ve never been able to forget it.

This experience with these 257 applications and portfolios has been similar, except that it’s not the ocean I’ve begun to see differently. It’s Oregon. It’s not the natural world, it’s the world of the arts, the world that human beings are making and shaping, imagining and creating. There’s so much beauty here, and so much opportunity — with all the gaps and challenges and possibilities that word suggests.

I’m proud that these four Fellowships and eight finalist awards exist today, given that they didn’t exist just a few years ago. But I’m frustrated by the fact that there are so few, and that so many more are needed and deserved. And most of all, I’m motivated by the thousands of dedicated, creative people who are quietly and steadily and powerfully and beautifully giving their lives to this work and this state. 

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