And the cultural ground continues to shift: Stephanie Riven, the woman who built the Center of Creative Arts (or, as we say around here, "COCA,") into the powerhouse that it is, has announced that she is taking an arts consulting job in New York. In an interview with the Post, she noted that she'd gotten away from what she really loves -- working in education and community programming. I can't blame her for wanting to move out of grant writing back to the grassroots.We wish her luck, and will be curious to see who comes in to take her place - COCA's currently conducting a nationwide search.
Unrelated but worth noting: our editor, Steve Schenkenberg, passed a link to me yesterday for the 50 States Project (www.50statesproject.net), a yearlong photography project:
"Each photographer lives in one of the 50 States and during the year long project each photographer will represent the State where they currently live. Every two months each photographer will be sent an assignment by e-mail, they then have two months to produce one image in response. The images must represent both their style and their State."
So far, assignments have included "people," "habitat," "landscape," and "industry." Oddly, I find textures I recognize more readily in the work of the Ohio and Detroit photographers, but I guess that means our Missouri photographer, Carmen Troesser, is doing her job and ferreting out non-cliched images of the Midwest. You can see more images of Missouri - as well as China, Florida and other exotic locales -- on her website. --Stefene Russell
