My definition of the courageous artist evokes someone who is committed to the gift-giving and life-affirming possibilities in our profession. It refers to that aspect of our work, which might be described as a vocation or a calling. And, while this talk will touch on possibilities for enhancing prospective economic conditions in our profession, I am more interested in discussing the spiritual and ephemeral aspects of what it means to be an artist working "on the fringes" in the final years of the twentieth century.

The idea of the future is significant in my consideration of this topic. For the first time in human history, the very notion of a future for our world is debatable. I believe that artists can and must make crucial contributions to critical discussions about progress, technology, and the environment. As humankind decides, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the viability of our very existence, we as artists and visionaries have a responsibility to eschew the self-limiting market-driven forces in the art community, to join the broader community and embrace the humanitarian and planetarian. I believe that only then can we make a direct connection to the creative impulses which will help us lead the way into a more just, sane, and healthy global future.

My thoughts on these subjects are based in my twenty years of experience as a sculptor, educator, arts administrator, and public artist. Allow me to briefly preface my remarks this evening with a short personal and professional history.

I was born and raised in the upper Midwest, in a family of second-generation immigrant farmers. I received limited formal training as an artist until I sought and obtained the MFA degree several years ago. Throughout my career, I've intentionally worked outside the art system, and on the fringes. I've taught and lectured as a visiting artist in colleges and universities, I was an arts administrator for several years, and I've exhibited and undertaken artist residencies around the country and abroad. Thirteen years ago, I moved from Minneapolis to rural Virginia, to live and work close by nature. The site installations and public art works which I’ve made in that time, are environmentally attuned and socially engaged. Although I have worked nationally and internationally, I consider myself a "provincial" artist, because I have chosen to live quietly, and off the beaten path, in order to hear my own creative voice. I’ve intentionally veered away from the New York City art marketplace, believing it antithetical to the humanistic values which inform my artwork.

Through the first decade of my career, in an effort to focus exclusively on my sculpture, I spent most of my work time in the studio. Then, in the late 1980's, eager to live in the country, I moved from the urban Midwest to a tiny, agricultural village in rural Virginia. I identified a strong and irrefutable need to live and work in isolation, in a place of great natural beauty. My sculpture began to reflect themes found in nature and the environment, and, in ways that I couldn't possibly have anticipated at the time, my life and artwork were profoundly changed by the experience.

Unfortunately, these changes didn't include an increase in my checkbook balance. Realizing that I couldn't support myself in my new home despite fifteen years' experience as a producing artist, I took stock of other, more marketable skills with which I might earn a living. In 1990, I entered the field of Arts Administration as director of a regional non-profit contemporary art gallery. This experience taught me that it's very difficult to run an institution and, at the same time, pursue a viable career as a producing artist. Eventually leaving that position, but still seeking a solution to my economic woes, I thought teaching might be the answer. After all, I knew many artists who seemed to be able to juggle a demanding teaching career with making and showing their art.

Toward that end, I enrolled in graduate school (more on that later) and earned an MFA. But, since many other, mostly younger and equally hungry, aspiring educators seemed to have had the same brainstorm at the about same time, after successfully completing my studies, I still didn't have much earning power. It was at this point that I began to seriously reassess my ambitions for my life and work. It seemed to me at that time, that my efforts to nurture my artwork were at odds with attaining professional success in my field. I was convinced, as I am to this day, that if I left the place that nourished my artistic practice to pursue teaching and other employment and exhibition opportunities in a place like New York City, the inspiration for the work would quickly be exhausted. On the other hand, if I continued to live and work in a way and in a place that I love, and which is essential to sustain my art, "success" would always elude me. I questioned my dedication, my talent, and my perverse choice of living out in the middle of nowhere, miles and lifestyles removed from the art world action.

As I reevaluated my own worth as an artist, I also began to have grave misgivings about the validity of what I now consider the "traditional" definitions of success for artists: the urban, high-profile university teaching position, the New York insider art network, the high-visibility gallery and museum shows. Clearly, these struggles weren't unique to my situation. And I now regard them as fortuitous. My perceived failures compelled me to make hard choices in my life, and reactivated my vocation as an artist. Ultimately, I rejected making art in order to secure recognition, or an income, or in pursuit of any of the other traditional earmarks of success. I vowed to make art only if I feel compelled to do so, and not because I can't think of anything else worthwhile to do with my time. And surprisingly, rather than feeling as though I'd given up, I sensed the pressures I had placed on my work and my life begin to subside. I perceived a purpose to my work which had eluded me in the hot pursuit of career success. In short, I began to redefine my art making as a morally and ethically driven calling, one that stresses humanistic values over market values.

Since then, I've focused on integrating my artwork with the whole of my life: the vision for my sculptures and installations has come directly from living in nature, in a quiet rural setting, among country people. It is based on ideas about the interstices of nature, technology and community, but proffers harmony rather than discordance as its foundation. I am not interested in shocking people, or presenting cynical or nihilistic views, although education through recognition, humor, and wit, are central themes in my art.

My experiences as a provincial artist have led me to conclude that, unlike many other professions, there exists a distinction in our field between "career" and "vocation". In our art careers, most of us judge ourselves in terms of money, opportunities and status, our culture's principal yardstick for measuring success. In this, we're no different from attorneys or corporate executives. But if ours is also, or perhaps even fundamentally, a vocation, I believe that the most pressing issues for the contemporary artist engage, first and foremost, the intellect and emotions, the psyche, the spirit and the human condition. As a vocation, we ask too much of our work: to earn us a living, to give us notoriety or fame, to enrich and fulfill us on a personal and professional level. Perhaps accepting a vocation as an artist is something akin to entering a religious order, demanding humility and sacrifice rather than delivering public acclaim and financial security.

Career versus vocation? Career or vocation? Career and vocation? We all flip through the glossy art magazines. We're all familiar with the same couple of dozen names in every discipline, discussed month after month. These publications are the major mouthpiece for the contemporary art market, and as such, fill a niche in that market. But, as we all know, they offer only a very small window on the worldwide contemporary art community. The galleries and museums which support them, generally devote their space, for obvious reasons, to work which is marketable to a minuscule portion of an already tiny art-consuming public. They exclude the majority of the most exciting developments in, and most other potential resources for supporting, contemporary art.

As we approach the millennium, and appraise the many changes that have affected, some might say afflicted, our various disciplines during the past two or three decades, it's evident that we're dealing not only with an outmoded mouthpiece, but on the whole, a very antiquated art system. This system operated very well indeed when art products were most effectively displayed in an urban gallery or museum, and art producers and potential consumers resided in major metropolitan areas: before fax, computers, and email, and before the world became so uncomfortably small.

In late-twentieth century society, the traditional art system has ceased to work altogether. Most of us will admit that no one outside of art professionals is paying much attention to what we do. Contemporary artwork which is considered "valuable" by the art cognoscenti, or worthy of attention by the art media, has no currency at all in any broader public dialogue. On the other hand, on rare occasions when art is consumed in big gulps by the public, it flocks to see motorcycles at the Guggenheim, or Van Gogh at the National. Both of which are fabulous shows and venues, but, you get my point. Allow me to digress and wonder aloud how we come to learn about what's "valuable" or "worthy" in the arts. Presumably, each of us here is a member of the College Art Association. We're all involved in art education at some level. It is our responsibility to teach our students, some of whom will be future art patrons, as well as individuals and groups in the community, to discern what has merit, not just marketability, in the field of fine arts.

We do the future of our field a grave disservice if we teach the old line that all things are possible to those students who are smart enough, talented enough, and dedicated enough. Allow me to explore a few alternative approaches, many of which you've no doubt already considered. Let's begin by making a distinction between teaching art, or the applied arts as professions, and making art as a vocation. Surely, it's unwise to operate from the premise that our art programs are primarily turning out fine artists. We beg the question if we continue to train the majority of undergraduate and graduate-level fine art students on the assumption that, by virtue of an MFA, they have the gifts and spiritual commitment to pursue vocations as full-time working artists. Or, at the very least, that good college-level teaching jobs await them upon graduation.

Rather than raise the bar in our academic programs, hoping to entice that tiny percentage of students who might actually become fine artists, perhaps we ought to consider redesigning traditionally conceived visual arts training programs. Let's consider designating specialized training for our art students, placing more emphasis on preparing them for viable careers as teachers, or media producers, or graphic designer. Or in any number of professions which will utilize their skills as designers, artisans and craftspeople, and combine them with appropriate technical know-how, with the goal of providing them jobs at a living wage upon graduation from our art schools. Wouldn't it be heartening to know that, rather than dejectedly hanging around their studios waiting for a big break, some of these students might be able to use their talents to contribute to improving the broader visual environment? Wouldn't it be encouraging if we could demonstrate, in palpable ways, that efforts made by arts professionals actually make a difference in the world?

There’s never any scarcity of aspiring fine artists. And, as we all know, the world is a hard place. Not every student who is attracted to the artist’s vocation has the necessary talent or depth of commitment or spiritual resources such a vocation demands. Perhaps we don’t really need to encourage others to pursue the artist’s vocation. Perhaps it will be more just if we offer practical programs leading to specific careers, to students who could be talented designers, and artisans, and craftspeople.

Whatever we do, I don't believe that we can sustain the present model for the status quo: offering the accomplishments and life-styles of a tiny minority of art stars on the top, as inducements to attract tens of thousands of aspiring artists to our art schools and professions. The bad news is that we have too many aspiring fine artists seeking too much material success, in a very narrow field, in a time of diminishing economic opportunities. The good news is, this is our field, and we can take it in any direction we choose. You are all in the position to make changes that can recharge and reinvigorate those of us already in it, and those who might choose to join it in the future. But, in order to take any action, we must believe in the value of our contributions. We must believe in the future of the artist as a meaningful contributor to the dialogue that takes place in the broader public realm.

We're a powerful constituency, with far more influence as a group than individually. Why, then, do those of us in the so-called provinces accept the judgements of our artwork and professional lives handed down by the elite few? Why is it considered less valuable to teach in an ex-urban setting where that contribution is actually far more valuable to that particular community, than in an urban situation where art and artists are a dime-a-dozen? Why is the rural artist considered less serious than her or his urban counterpart? Why do exhibitions and art events taking place in out-of-the-way enclaves, receive little or no attention, regardless of their local impact or broader significance? Why do we seem to have so little faith in our value as artists? And perhaps the most important query: Who really needs more art and artists, anyway?

I asked myself these questions as I prepared this address. I could conjecture and prognosticate, but mine is just one more opinion. I suspect that what might really help us to put these questions and issues into perspective, is to hear about a few of those artists whose lives we don't consistently read about, and whose artwork we don't always see in blockbuster exhibitions. Artists who, like many of you in the audience tonight, consistently, and often with great modesty and gentleness of spirit, make exceptional art working on the so-called fringes, while teaching or pursuing other careers, raising families, paying mortgages, and participating in community life. I propose that these are the truly successful artists. Through their work and their lives, they've carved a space for themselves, each after her or his own particular fashion, to make outstanding art, to achieve satisfying and reasonably remunerative employment, to enjoy fulfilling relationships with their families, and to make a connection with a broader community, one which often disdains contemporary art, or doesn't even know it exists.

The five artists I'll discuss tonight live in San Antonio, Texas; Portland, Oregon; Columbus, Ohio; Mount Kisco, New York; and Kingston Springs, Tennessee, respectively. All but one live and work at a physical remove from the traditional urban art centers, from the art world as we often refer to it. One is a full-time art professor, two teach part-time and care for their families, two earn a living from sales and commissions of artwork. Familiarizing myself with their artistic efforts and the circumstances of their personal lives has revealed a fearlessness and courage (though they would probably deny it) in pursuing their individual artistic visions, with seemingly little regard for art world fashion or careerism. Their wonderful work reminds me that art from a so-called "regional" perspective can be marketable as well as spiritually rich, intellectually challenging, and fresh despite or perhaps because of, its provenance.

The sculptural constructions of Craig Nutt, an artist living in Kingston Springs, Tennessee, flirt with several art and craft disciplines including sculpture, woodworking and furniture design. A self-trained artist, Mr. Nutt works full time in his studio and earns a living from his work. He has received substantial awards and prizes during his twenty-five year career including an artist fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Art Federation. His work is represented in numerous regional museum collections and he has received several public art commissions, most recently for a site sculpture installed in the International Concourse of the Hartsfield International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia.

Initially, Mr. Nutt's work intrigued me because of the way in which it unapologetically integrates accessible imagery with a high level of craftsmanship. In part, through humorously approachable imagery, his work addresses an audience which might not ordinarily be prompted to purchase, or even look at art. In a recent conversation Mr. Nutt commented "I believe one reason to make things is to fill a space….I find it harder to work if I don't have some space to fill." His furniture sculptures, such as Tomato Table, or Celery Table With Carrots, Peppers and Sno Pea are certainly practical, referencing a space filled, or a need fulfilled. Still, these pieces are sly. Through their humorous approach to subject matter, they refer to trends in contemporary design. It would be a mistake however to dismiss these pieces as pretty, lighthearted objects. Their elegant lines and rich surfaces and colors compel the viewer to touch. And, once caressing the beautifully finished surfaces and sensuous forms of these objects, one makes the surprising discovery that this is also, and perhaps fundamentally, sculpture. The tension which exists between the artist's exquisite craftsmanship, and the absurdity of the imagery he employs, is insidiously enticing. Like a delicious, thoughtfully prepared meal, its appeal commences visually, progresses sensually, and closes intellectually.

Craig Nutt's background as a musician and antique furniture restorer, a job he held for several years after receiving his undergraduate degree, forms the foundation for his work as a visual artist. In Craig's own words, "I became interested in furniture and discovering the old ways of making it. Working on old furniture exposed me in a very personal way to what I call "the ethic of craftsmanship"….."As I became more fluent with technique, and as a result of making period-style pieces, I began to look for ways to combine the more improvisational aspects of the painting, sculpture and music I had been doing, with the very tight craftsmanship of furniture." This "ethic of craftsmanship" is clearly evident in Mr. Nutt's recent commission entitled Concorde, a site-specific sculpture installed in Atlanta's Airport in 1996. The humorously out-sized and elaborately carved airborne cob of corn is appealing because it so tellingly blends the artist's fascination with the social and economic significance of food, with astute observations about the powerful effects of mobilizing technology. With the public installation of Concorde, Craig Nutt has achieved a rare fusion of wit, humor, social commentary, and graceful craftsmanship in a work which is appealing and morally grounded without ever appearing didactic or self-satisfied.

I've known and admired Suzanne Silver, an artist living and working in Columbus, Ohio, and her work for the past decade. She says of her work: "I have been exploring issues of making and meaning by using a variety of materials without concern as to their permanence, their marketability, or their relationship to new technologies." Her work in no way engages a craft ethic, except perhaps to refute it, or dispute it, in terms of the essential impermanence of all human endeavors. Ms. Silver further comments: "I use traditional and contemporary signs and symbols associated with Judaism in order to investigate issues of cultural disposition….They address all those who have struggled with issues of cultural identity."

Suzanne Silver was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, New York. Her parents were social and political activists. At an early age, she was introduced to an intellectual life, which revolved around this activism and a commitment to social justice. Her father, a labor lawyer, and her mother a librarian, vigorously encouraged her art and emphasized her Jewish cultural background. She recently received the MFA in Painting and Drawing from The Ohio State University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in the permanent collection of The Jewish Museum of New York City.

Most of Ms. Silver's work from the past two or three years is made from materials with limited life-spans. As the mother and primary caregiver of two young children, the resulting pieces are fabricated during a time frame punctuated by frequent interruptions. The artist says of her works "Their transitory nature conforms to…..my agenda of work and play as intrinsic to art making." In the installations entitled Marks of Dispersion I and II, from 1996 and Acoustic Chamber from 1997, the interplay of seemingly strategically placed objects juxtaposed against more random scatterings, appears to corresponds to some sort of convoluted logic, involving both intuition and reason in its formulation. These and other recent works refer to an intriguing conjunction of child's play and military maneuvers. According to the artist, "There can be whole worlds behind the sofa or under the chair where children are at play."

At times, Ms. Silver's work seems almost combatively anti-visual. Sculptures such as Salt/Sugar Text, and Silent Books, completed in 1998 and made from salt, sugar, paper, fabric and thread, reference the classroom and writing, while they forcefully conjure physical processes and excrescences. Salty Text, and Sacred Texts, made from salt, wax, soap, and nails, seem to directly, and perhaps darkly, describe the spiritual, psychological and physical experiences of mothering and nurturing. By layering drawings over text, or creasing cloth "pages", they also make reference to the indelibility versus expunging of identity. Further, blotting out whole written pages, or piercing soap cakes with nails as in Sacred Texts, raise issues of cultural annihilation or genocide. One of the most compelling aspects of Suzanne's work is its complete lack of ego. It is humble without effort, as if a very intelligent, unworldly child had composed it from readily available stuff at hand. Tiny works such as Pacifier Sculpture from 1994, or Navel of the Universe, introduce the child's universe, while they gently chide the adult viewer who attempts to construe them exclusively as "art".

In her artwork, Ms. Silver has fully integrated her experiences as a Jewish woman, and a mother, with her social and political ideals. Her work, though evocative, is never nostalgic, nor does it hark back to a more tender or idyllic time or place. It engages memory but isn't essentially personal. Every piece is an adaptation: in terms of her financial resources, the demands of her family, her social and political objectives, and the synthesis of a rich interior life. Her creations seem intended to transcend the worldly and materialistic, through them she refutes the commodification of the art marketplace and speaks to a more ancient and communal purpose.

Creighton Michael was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. For the past eight years he has lived in the lower Hudson Valley, in Mount Kisco, New York, with his wife and son. He has lectured and taught widely at institutions across the country and his work is included in the collections of Brown University, The Brooklyn Museum, Neuberger Museum of Art, and New York University among many others. Mr. Michael's work concerns itself, in part, with the continuous, quiet, processes of nature. In his drawings, as in nature, revelations unfold through time. In the Pull series from 1998, images placed beneath a semi-transparent veil of gesso seem to writhe and intertwine. And in each piece, the gesso is sliced through to reveal what might be living protoplasmic organisms, or perhaps a visual interpretation of the struggle between order and chaos. The resulting drawings are both dark and sensual. The tension which exists between the foreground and backgound pulls the viewer into another, almost microscopic world, while suggesting both the beauty and the disorder found in all nature.

There is an anonymous quality to Creighton Michael's drawings which emphasizes, in a near-primitive manner, the primacy of the singular mark. Examining drawings from another recent series, entitled Contours, from close proximity, the eye travels deliberately over a value field of marks, while each remains surprisingly distinct from the others. From a greater distance, these marks coalesce to offer a bird's-eye view of a topographic landscape, undulating like a hodgepodge of agricultural fields seen from the air.

Eight years ago, in part due to a serious illness in his immediate family, Mr. Michael, his wife and son moved from Manhattan to the lower Hudson valley. Prior to relocating, he was best known for his sculptural work, showing in New York as well as in other major cities in the U.S. The requirements of caring for a chronically ill family member, as well as commuting between his home in the country and a studio in the city, have prompted substantial changes in his artistic oeuvre.

Mr. Michael now limits his production almost exclusively to drawings and paintings, such as the large-scale oils in the Notations series, finding these formats more amenable to long commutes and condensed work periods in the studio. His artwork explores nature remade through observation: secretively, in microcosm and macrocosm, speeding quickly beyond view. His is a transformative vision, one which recognizes the randomness of forms and gestures in the natural world, and suggests the inevitability of change and rebirth. For me, his work serves as a reminder that the human organism exists singularly and with free will, yet is equally an integral member of a much larger and more powerful entity. His drawings explore the struggle which emerges from this duality, both in human society and in the greater natural world, and embrace complexity as the foundation for balance.

Brian Borrello lives and works in Portland, Oregon. He works full-time as a public artist as well as running his own neon design and fabrication studio in Portland. During the past ten years he has completed more than a dozen public art commissions in Aspen, Colorado, New Orleans, Santa Monica, California, and Portland Oregon. Mr. Borrello says of his work: "I regularly pursue community based public art projects - usually of my own origination and usually pro bono. As an artist, I can't make large cash charitable contributions, and with little economic/political clout, can't initiate vast social and political change. But I can act within my sphere of influence and make a difference…I have led job training projects for inner city teens developing public art for their neighborhoods, for example. This is the catalyzing point where I can do most good."

A mural project completed in 1995 for the New Orleans' Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors' Plaza exemplifies this philosophy. As art director and community liaison, Mr. Borrello worked with young cancer patients at Children's Hospital, drawing on and otherwise decorating handmade tiles. The completed tiles were then arranged in a 72 foot long ceramic mural, entitled the Kids with Cancer Mural Collaboration, which was mounted around the perimeter of the steel archway leading into the plaza. The idea for the plaza originated with Richard Bloch of the H&R Block tax preparation firm. A lung cancer survivor, Mr. Bloch dedicated this plaza, and others like it, to cancer patients and survivors in an effort to encourage hope and camaraderie. A twelve-year-old child involved with the tile mural commented "I don't like to tell people that I have cancer. Through drawing, I can express my feelings."

Another recent project, entitled Mikey's Garden Monument, commemorates the life and shooting death of four-year-old Mikey Stewart. The little boy was killed by a stray bullet in July, 1995, while he played in front of his grandmother's house in New Orleans. The vacant lot next door was transformed into a garden which features Mikey Stewart's shoes cast in bronze."The shoes rest on a concrete plinth that contains guns we got from the police.", (slide of plinth) Borrello commented in a newspaper article describing the project. "It's becoming a mythical thing. People point to it and say, "There's guns in there under that little boy's shoes."

In other public art works, Mr. Borrello confronts human interactions with nature, by rendering organic forms with high-technology media. A multi-faceted installation entitled Sunspot and Sunsigns sited in the Belmont District of Portland, Oregon in 1997, is made from plasma-cut aluminum, and back-lit by gold argon tubes. At night, the illuminated sculpture evokes the sun in an upbeat but also ironic gesture, displayed as it is in the often-sunless Northwest. For several blocks around Sunspot, "street fossils" appear sandblasted in concrete, representing sun symbols from several epochs and cultures. While this installation suggests Brian Bordello’s fascination with the incorporation of natural imagery and man-made materials, his work also possesses a critical awareness of humanity's abuses of the environment. In a sculpture from 1992 entitled Last Monument and installed on the grounds of Louisiana's Species Survival Research Center, a granite slab is carved with a barcode. Perhaps alluding to the scientific half-life and probable demise of the human species, the sculpture comments wryly, and with immediate visual impact, on the powers of human invention and technology, while predicting its eventual self-destruction.

Clear authorship, or stylistic consistency doesn’t characterize Brian Bordello’s artistic output. Instead, he uses everything available, philosophically, symbolically, and in terms of media, and technologies, to unite his disparate works into an integrated whole, exploring the complexities, conundrums, and enigmas found in nature and in human life.

Ken Little, an artist who lives and works in San Antonio, Texas, embodies that admirable combination of artist and educator which is so inspiring to students and colleagues alike. During a career which spans nearly three decades, he has taught and lectured in over seventy-five institutions of higher education throughout the country and he is currently a tenured Professor of Art at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Works by Mr. Little are held in forty permanent public collections, and he has received major grants and fellowships including an Individual Artist's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an International Artist Residency at Art Pace.

Ken Little has frequently spoken on issues which face the provincial artist. He recently said: "Having grown up, been educated, and employed always in the midwest -- away from major art centers or schools, I make my work for the uninitiated as well as the connoisseur….I do find worth in all the readings of my work at each level of the audience. I play for all the seats."

Perhaps best known for his animal sculptures made from discarded trash, works like Burn from 1986, and Ford from 1993, represent a poignant investigation of disparate narratives. Slapping together battered cast-offs such as leather shoes, purses and belts, to form vulnerable yet somehow triumphant images of wild creatures, bears, deer, coyotes, Little offers wry commentary while suggesting grim destinies. Longing, need, disappointments, joy, all are captured in these reconstructed piles of junk; in the bodies of these beasts. Other works in this series, for example Moon and Hip also from 1993, encourage the viewer to question the primacy of the man-made, of technology and industry, in the animal world from which we have separated ourselves. His beasts ascend constructed accumulations of man's making, to remind us that, in the living wild animal, is life.

In other installation works, representing cullings and mixings from several bodies of his sculptural works, the power of the beast is accentuated by the presence of the mundane. In The Elements of Progress: Dreamscape from 1990, Little uses cast bronze animal masks, as well as paper shell masks and houses made of dollar bills, to discuss issues of wealth and power, and their authority in determining value systems in the conscious and subconscious mind. In Soaring -- The Rules of Engagement from 1995, he creates a place which is austere and wide-open, yet full. Much like the plains of Texas where he was born and raised. Big Bear anchors the room, while paper cutout "mom and pop" figures spin around beneath line drawings of houses. Maybe it's the panhandle wind, or a twister's come through. Or perhaps it's all a dream of a boy's childhood in the still, middle of the country, and a man's revelation that here is where he needs to be.

Pursuing art world celebrity and success, while living in Billings, Montana or Bremo Bluff, Virginia, is difficult, if not delusional. If those of us living and working in the hinterlands measure our value as artists against prevailing big-city standards, we can't help but come up short. The few artists who achieve celebrity and success in the art capitals have made their sacrifices to get there, just as we've made sacrifices to have the lives that we enjoy. To quote Ken Little: "…Get a more practical kind of everyday pleasure and affirmation of who you are from your work, rather than thinking that's not enough, that you need to have a one-person show like such and such, or reviews, or a coffee-table book. It's easy advice to give, and it's hard advice to live by…..I live in the middle of the country. There's not much here unless you make it yourself. Once you've done it, there's a lot of power."

Perhaps the artists I've introduced to you tonight are the finest exemplars of this philosophy. They have redefined and balanced their own standards for success as artists with other equally meaningful and necessary requirements of their lives: family, economic obligations, a sense of rootedness in a place, personal and professional integrity, and peace of mind.

From the beginnings of human history, ours has been the task of the visionary. Worldly success in the forms of fame, or notoriety, or the attainment of material possessions is a very pleasant thing. But it can tempt us away from the mission which we have accepted as artists. It is no easy thing to follow one’s vocation. Perhaps, in our efforts to achieve success by others’ standards, we’ve lost sight of the value of the gifts we have to offer the societies we’re a part of. The single most important thing any one of us can do during our brief visit on this planet is to care for each other and for the other creatures and life forms on it. If, in some small way, through what we contribute as artists, we can heIp to promote healing, and love, and hope for the future, we will have fulfilled our calling.