On WBUR, Andrea Shea covers the current Massachusetts Independent Contractor Law and its effect on creative individuals. According to the article, the law was changed in 2004 to prevent worker exploitation, but it's had the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for freelance writers, illustrators, and other creative workers in Massachusetts to be hired as … [Read more...]
Trends
Common Boston Festival: Connecting with Architecture and Design
Imagine a continuum that extends from a painting of a puppy riding a unicycle* (pure aesthetics) all the way to the Boston City Hall (brutalist functionality). Common Boston sits smack dab in the middle of this continuum, half art, half function, all creative. The Common Boston Festival (June 17-27, 2010) is an all-out, multi-armed (and -legged, in the case of the walking … [Read more...]
Exports/Imports: a round-up
Exported (temporarily): If you spent last Wednesday searching up and down Massachusetts for master balafon player Balla Kouyate, here's why you couldn't find him. Balla, a recent Artist Fellow in Traditional Arts, was in D.C. performing at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and later at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage. Our sibling blog, Keepers of … [Read more...]
Somerville arts… of the future (insert theremin music)
If you're an artist who lives or works in Somerville, Massachusetts, you know by experience that it's an arts-infused place: reverberant with musicians, splattered with painters, and bestrewn with, well, artists who make art that can be strewn - maybe quilters? Anyway, there's every reason to believe that in the future, the Seven Hills will continue to emanate the atomic glow … [Read more...]
Concord Free Press: literature of subversive altruism
This is the second in a series of posts about Art and Philanthropy, looking at those projects that merge artistic with philanthropic vision. Interestingly, they often invent unconventional, innovative work models in the process. In 2008, novelist, former rocker, and community activist Stona Fitch founded Concord Free Press, an outfit that blends his literary, DIY, and … [Read more...]