Ruth Reichl's plates for dinner at Tinku Gallery
Finally going to Canada tomorrow night for the last weekend of my show in Toronto at Tinku Gallery. I am interested in having 10 questions prepared so that our dinner is an opportunity to mine the minds of the people present. There are so many challenges that face us here at the dawn of the 21st century. My particular interest is how art can inspire transformation to higher consciousness. I feel like irony, social critique and snark has been done to death. I wonder if vision and integration might not be in order as artistic touchstones for future development. Artists have the capacity to invent and create future vision for society. Not in isolation, though. Artists need to reach deeply into the public conscience and be relevant, again.
So, questions for Saturday night-
1) How can art(ists) re-invigorate optomisim?
2) How can art use technology to broaden its agenda?
3) How can art be more visible in the world?
There’s a start. Please add questions in the comment section you would like to see discussed at our dinner. Better yet, share with me your questions and have your own dinner to discuss them. *Ahem* Your dinner will be enhanced if you eat off of my plates. Well, your local potter will do. 
Leave a reply
by Daniel Edlen on April 23, 2009
How ’bout:
How do we make art accessible both financially and physically without a perceived devaluation of its marketability?
Peace.
by Mary Anne Davis on April 24, 2009
Hi Daniel-
I like it. Will put into the mix. Thank you!
by Jane Hudson on April 24, 2009
How about asking how simple food can be enhanced by the dinnerware. Fun with plates!
by Mary Anne Davis on April 24, 2009
Yay, Jane! Simple food enhanced by handmade dishes… That works!
by Carol F. Davis on April 26, 2009
Most people work to live. Artists live to work. Their work discipline is a life rhythem that sustains them year in & year out. Most of them share this belief & recognize their mutual commitment to work is a fundamental bond, joining the craft community in a strong sense of their own identity.
I paraphrase from Julie Hall’s comments in Tradition and Change. This is not a question, and I leave it to you to turn it into one. I can’t think of anything I’d enjoy more than eating dinner with friends on your dishes, asking these kinds of questions with folks who would be interested in the answers, and simple being in an atmosphere where these kinds of considerations were important. Good luck in Canada.
by Erica on April 28, 2009
How was dinner? What did you come up with? You have me thinking about the youth I have met, supported, learned from, and been inspired by over my last eight years at the YWCA and 6 years in my North Minneapolis neighborhood. So many of them are artists in so many ways, but there are overwhelming barriers for them.
So, the first question that comes to my mind is one that I ask as a mother, youth worker, and community member:
How do we (artists, educators, parents, community members) engage, nurture, and empower young artists to actualize the creativity within?