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Message from Executive Director, Anne McKim

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January can be a challenging month: too long, yet somehow always flying by, too cold and grey, but not enough snow for this Michigan girl-at-heart, too many items on my beginning of the year checklist. The first half of the month is foggy with a post-holiday-emotional hangover, and the second is a race to complete the tasks I ambitiously assigned myself back in the heady days of December. 

January’s redemption, however, comes in the possibilities that each new year brings when you work in public arts. 

We’ve built out a challenging and interesting gallery calendar, set dates for the “On the Roof” series, and have begun booking bands; emails are swirling – fast and furious – with collaborators for films, performances, and readings. There are calls for public art, calls for artists for community events, and venues secured for celebrations. Our programming season may not kick off until February, but here, even the anticipation is a joy. 

The arts make life interesting, give context to the passage of time and our place in the world, and bring people and communities together. There is possibility, so much possibility, for beauty and excitement and connection in 2024 at the Arts Council, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with all of you.

Before I sign off, here are two items to have on your radar: first, in huge news, the Arts Council is launching our “Month for the Arts” fundraising and awareness campaign in February. Stay tuned for more information, because there’s a role for everyone in ensuring the campaign’s success. Second, Rats Live On No Evil Star, our first exhibit, opens on Thursday, February 1st with a reception on February 3rd from 5:30 to 7 pm. I hope you’ll join us! 

Stay warm, stay tuned, stay creative, and here’s to 2024!

Anne

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Anne McKim: Sheltered in Place. Day 32.

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First: I miss you. 

We walk for an hour every day. “Taking a walk” is different: it’s a casual, unthinking thing that describes weekend morning trips to the coffee shop and evening strolls. Walking, now – for our quarantined family – is a necessity. I wear a backpack, as if we were hiking, stocked with hand sanitizer and face masks. My children know the drill: Sunscreen, bathroom, shoes with laces (we learned the hard way that sandals, full bladders, and fair skin aren’t ideal for urban exploration).

You can cover a lot of ground in an hour, and living downtown, we have.  Mansions on First Street quickly became boring, and the Greenway is reserved (for us) as “biking only.” We prefer to walk the streets named after presidents, and through the industrial remains of Evansville’s urban core. 

Everything is blooming. 

My husband jokes (only to the children, who already have plenty of fodder for teasing me, but who else can he joke with these days?) that I can’t walk half a block without saying “Oh! Guys! Look at those azaleas [insert any flower/shrub/tree]!” Everything is blooming and lovely, and everyday we leave the house at noon and walk and walk, and see it all. 

We don’t track distance, only time. We MUST walk at least that hour, an arbitrary benchmark that I cling to. It’s too easy, in our collective current state, to feel simultaneously disconnected from the rest of the world and beholden to it. Alienated but also far too intimate. Walking through Evansville connects us to something. Anchors us to something. 

I miss you. I love you.

This is how I try to end all conversations these days. It comes more naturally with some friends than others. (One notoriously unsentimental but very dear friend may stop speaking to me if I don’t stop reminding her that she’s loved.) I miss you and I love you. Saying it connects us, anchors us to a life before sheltering in place, when I didn’t have to miss you, when love was expressed in person. 

Stay well, friends. Read, create, wash your hands and wear a mask. I miss you and I love you. 

Anne McKim is the Executive Director of the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana.

Published April 15, 2020.

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Anne McKim: Required reading

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Anne and the “Paycheck Protection Program” monster

I’ve been in the trenches this week with the “Paycheck Protection Program,” as well as local grant applications, leaving very little time (or mental energy) for creativity. So, this week instead of sharing something I’ve written, here are a few things that I think you absolutely must read.

April is National Poetry Month, and while there are so, so, so many poems I love, it’s essential that you all read “Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye immediately. Right now. Before you finish reading this post. I was so moved by this poem when I first encountered it a few years ago that I wrote it in sharpie on a scrap piece of foam core and mounted it in my children’s bedroom, so they would have to stare at it every night and, subsequently, memorize it. (It worked!) In a time of global crisis, “Shoulders” should be required reading.

Please also read ‘”Just’ Children” by Adam Zagajewski. If you have a little time, read about the poet, Adam Zagajewski, or order his brilliant book of essays, “A Defense of Ardor.” 

Finally, for several months I’ve been telling everyone to read “The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai. Jumping back and forth between Chicago in 1985 and present day Paris, the book changed my understanding of the AIDS crisis, and draws brilliant connections between the idea of losing a generation to war, to AIDS, or to terrorism. Reading about a pandemic during a pandemic might seem mildly masochistic, but I promise you won’t be able to put “The Great Believers” down. (Plus, there’s also an art mystery!)

Read and stay well, friends.  

Anne

Anne McKim is the Executive Director of the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana.

Published: April 8, 2020

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Anne McKim: First post and a poem

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Zach Evans, the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana’s Director of Marketing and Community Projects, suggested that each staff member write a weekly blog post during this time of virtual programming and virtual connection. Great idea, and easy enough: This is a chance to share with Arts Council friends who we are, the art that excites us, or why we’re so committed to this organization. 

My posts will be published on Tuesday mornings. At 10:30 p.m. on Monday night, and after several rewrites, here’s what I have so far:

Anne Blog.
Angle Nob.
Non Bagel.
Long Bean.
Bon Angel.

As it turns out, writing blogs doesn’t come easily to me. (This is not good. No one wants to disappoint Zach.)

It’s been a long time — a very long time — since I last wrote for pleasure, which is, really, part of this project. Zach, Andrea Adams (our Gallery Director) and I aren’t just sharing our thoughts through these posts, we’re intentionally encouraging each other to flex our own dormant creative muscles — the muscles that we spend our professional (and often personal) time, energy, and resources celebrating in others. And, as I type it, that is why I love the Arts Council.

It’s incredibly hard to create, to communicate, to make something from nothing. It’s incredibly humbling to be as vulnerable as one is when sending a message out to the world. Every single day, the Arts Council displays work or provides a venue for performances by the people doing just that, Every. Single. Day.

So, in honor of all of the vulnerable and persistent and audacious artists that we work with, I’m doing something that I’ve never done before: sharing a piece of writing that I put myself into, that I care about. *takes deep breath* Here it goes:

Rory Poem:

My boy does not want your ladder.

No hard feelings- He doesn’t want mine.  

Safely secured, 
Belayer in place, 
My son freezes, hangs limp against the rock.

A wall, though, or a tree.  
The garden shed.  
Counter tops and bed frames and roofs of cars,

Vines and stop signs.

Perhaps a ladder – but only one left unattended.  

This child manipulates gravity 
to control bedtime and pizza toppings 
and every moment 
of standing and falling
in line 
every day
every day
every day.

Sinewy-young-boy-muscles propel him upward, ever upward,  

We’re left to follow him  
with eyes from below.  

_________

And now I’m off to begin the first of 12 to 15 rewrites of next week’s blog post.  Fortunately I have plenty of time on my hands these days… 🙂

Posted: Tuesday, March 31, 2020.

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