Mad Money

The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation dares to connect art with livelihood – and artists with high-paying donors.

Most of us are familiar with the cruelties of the marketplace, which sometimes leave us with little control over our income, no matter how hard we work. But what do you do when your work consists of gluing together cardboard sculptures? Or shooting black-and-white photography of clear-cut forests? Or stitching words into scraps of paper? Imagine competing in today’s marketplace with those skills. Luckily for Northwest artists like Scott Fife, Mary Randlett and Mark Dombrosky (who work in the previously described media, respectively), there are other forces at work, which help the fine arts operate on a different competitive plane.

James Porter

One of the strongest of those forces is the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, a company established in 1981 to connect philanthropists with organizations that truly serve the needs of the community. The foundation pools the charitable funds of multiple donors in smart investments and manages the returns. Currently, the foundation oversees around 440 funds (amounting to over 57 million dollars in assets), which contribute to grants, endowments and scholarships benefiting nonprofits in Pierce County. KUOW Public Radio, Tacoma Art Museum, DASH Center for the Arts and Hilltop Artists in Residence are just a few of the groups that have benefited from these funds. Like almost everyone else, GTCF’s portfolio took a hit in ’08–’09, but, thankfully, the giving hasn’t stopped.

Dan Parker

The foundation has made a habit of rewarding the offbeat, hands-on work that’s often needed in Pierce County. After a string of shootings broke out in Tacoma in 2006, the foundation responded by forming a Youth Against Violence initiative. The foundation hosted community forums that gave young people the opportunity to discuss alternatives to violence. The result? Community members developed “four truths,” outlined on the foundation’s Web site, including this one: “Arts are a tool for social change.” Recently, the foundation created a Vibrant Community Grant, for which nonprofits can apply. Number one on their list of five elements of a vibrant community? Arts and culture.

In 2008, thanks to an anonymous individual donor, the annual Foundation of Art Award was launched. Unlike grants offered by 4Culture and Artist Trust, which rely on artists to apply, this award is based on nominations. This encourages folks to look outward in their creative community and sets in motion a year’s worth of dialogue and events celebrating the contributions of local artists.

Kyle Dillehay

Once a list of nominations is compiled, a committee of professional artists meets to select a winner, who receives $7,500 as recognition both for artistic talent and for his or her commitment to the creative community of Pierce County. The catch? The artist must attend a few parties and create an original work for the foundation’s collection.

Tacoma-based painters Chris Sharp and Jeremy Mangan are previous recipients of the award. Their original commissions have adorned the foundation’s last two annual reports, transforming what could have been a hideous barrage of bar graphs into beautiful works of publishing art. The works are “created in very different styles,” points out GTCF communications director Mickey Ahrens. Indeed, the foundation doesn’t seem to be prejudiced towards “pretty” or “safe” representational art.

Jeremy Gregory

Just survey the work of the artists nominated for the award this year: Kyle Dillehay’s sculptures, Jeremy Gregory’s whimsical drawings, Dan Parker’s Lego expressions, Toot Reid’s quilts and Victoria Bjorklund’s photos, plus several others. Not all of the great artists in Tacoma are represented, but the lineup does represent a strong trend of contemporary art being made in Tacoma.

Toot Reid

The foundation is working hard to make the award more than just an isolated incident of check writing, insists Ahrens: “We want to add benefits to being a nominee and promote as many artists as possible.” Thus, the foundation has created a full-blown marketing movement for all artists. On June 3, all the nominated artists are invited to a fundholder “thank you” event, where they can clink glasses with patrons. There’s also a six-week show being held at the Kittredge Gallery between August and November, and an online gallery displaying all artists’ work is available year-round.

Victoria Bjorkland

That the arts are becoming so prevalent in the foundation’s work is good news. It shows that money for the arts is recognized as money for lasting and positive change. And the fact that the foundation, despite record losses, gave more than $130,000 to Tacoma artists and arts projects in 2009 shows that there are folks out there with the stomach to support arts, even in hard times.

Neil Anderson

Drawing a parallel to the Youth Against Violence initiative, Ahrens suggests that the foundation takes its role very seriously when it comes to keeping arts programming alive in Tacoma. “If Brick City closed – and their dance and hip-hop programs just went away – what would the youth do then?” •

Read an interview with the winner, Lisa Kinoshita.