Here goes

This is my first post to the SYNERGY art project blog. This is exciting! First of all, I am going to talk about the history of the SYNERGY project:
SYNERGY was born on March 30, 2004. It has grown and evolved through discussion with artists and art critics. SYNERGY was invented as an answer to the complaint that public art projects have been "dumbed down" for the general population. Specifically, there was an article written in The Washington Post on Sunday, March 30th, by art critic Blake Gopnik that was very critical of the DCCAH's Pandamania public art project. ( Forgive me, I'll figure out the linking stuff soon enough.) The panda that I painted was featured in the article. When my colleagues from Eastern Market handed me the paper that Sunday, I was so excited to see my panda in the Arts section. Imagine my dismay to read the very lengthy negative article that accompanied the photos of several pandas. After some discussion with friends, it was concluded that inclusion in the arts section was a good thing and I cheerfully composed a response letter as soon as I got home. John Pancake, the arts editor, very kindly included my letter among 8 or 9 others in the next Sunday's section. In the letter, I challenged Mr. Gopnik to a cube contest. If he would round up the 4 0f the 6 talented artists that he referred to in his article, I would team up with 3 of my colleagues from Eastern Market and we would paint cubes. Once the cubes were designed and painted, the public could vote on their favorite and we would see if Mr. Gopnik's assertion that there are only a half dozen truly talented artists in this city was remotely accurate. Of course it was all in good fun, but I really needed to make this happen.
I talked about the possiblities with other artists. The idea of some reality art show stuff started to come up. What if the teams were filmed while they discussed their concepts and the necessity of compromise? Now that there are artists who are working together to create art, there must be verbalization of the process. When one artist creates, they don't need ( or usually want) to put it into words. What does it sound like when artists talk to each other about a visual concept? Will the average Joe get it? What about personalities? How does what an artist portrays, reflect the artist? Can 4 or 3 or 2 very different artists agree on what they will create? Can we film the artists as they work that will be entertaining and enlightening? How do we bring the public at large into the process?
These are some of the quesions that SYNERGY wants to answer. I'll talk more about the challenge of bringing the concept to life on my next post.