Black Tar Rains & Hellfire

Nothing sez gentrification like Lyndhurst grants to shitty artists in the name of small business.

Really? That's the biggest expression of gentrification?

It isn't really standard gentrification with artists as protagonists, as if they were already there trying to make their way. In this case, hobby artists are bribed and shuffled in as decoys to get the small business to be decoys for overpriced condos for profit for and by comb-over Republicans who think real art is that poster-reproduction of Payton Manning throwing a Bible to Robert E Lee. Meanwhile, arts culture never develops past the pandering schlock of tourist art we have now.

So, if gentrification can happen ex nihilo instead of typical exploitation, Lyndhurst grants to shitty artists probably is the greatest expression of it.

I kid you not. I just wikied gentrification and there you have it under "attempts to amplify gentrification" is Arts Move. I'm not the only one who sees through this crap.

Is it really "stardard gentrification" if no-one is living or working in the revitalizing neighborhood in the first place?

Further, virtually all of your "shitty" or "hobby" artists who received the ArtsMove grants are engaged in their particular creative field for a living. Copywriters work full time for ad agencies, designers for creative firms, and some fine artists are actually making a living selling their work.

So, as far as I'm concerned, non-profit organizations funded by wealthy persons with a concern for their city can write all the checks they want to community improving & tax-base expanding creative individuals. It's money being put back into the economy, which creates the jobs and wealth that enable access to or the creation of "art" or other cultural expressions of value.

Thankfully, there's a good many people in Chattanooga who aren't pessimists, who believe even if Chattanooga has a tendency towards bland tourist art (and it by no means necessarily does), they're not content to let it remain that way.

The douchebags sit on the sidelines and take potshots at people, organizations, and issues about which they know little more than what they've read on a wikipedia article desperately needing some citations.

If not seeing arts and culture through dollar signs makes me a douchebag on the sideline, I will settle for that. Aristotle believed the good life was living out our human capacities and virtues for their own sake. That was "making a living." By your criterion, anyone not drinking from the well of profit, or at least waiting in line hungry for someone else's money, is a sideline critic of arts culture. That is me. But I am not a critic at heart, only when I turn around and see those poor souls waiting in line do I find something worth criticizing.

I don't oppose gentrification or making money with arts and culture. It is good to eat. I oppose the baiting of artists to move here for the economic purposes of others. Any successful artist by your own criterion, which is making a living, would never need to move here in the first place. That is why we are getting hacks and hobbyists. If Lyndhurst cared about art, it would go back to giving people like Cormack McCarthy grants with no-strings attached, not looking for copywriters to hang out in coffee shops. But it seems obvious they don't care about "fine art" culture as much as they care about economic development, which is perfectly fine. It is just frustrating for some of us to watch. The only time art is being sold in the history of this city, it is being sold as a sales pitch in a business meeting. Gee, thanks.

I apologize for being so abrasive and causing you do defend something that you don't really need to defend. I don't want to be a pessimist, but I don't want to see the rich possibilities of arts culture here being cut up, packaged, and priced before they ever happen. You will get the arts "culture" you pay for. Even if real artists were to live on the South Side, which they wont, the success of gentrification forces them move elsewhere to find affordable rent, anyway. No need to bring wiki into it. Cite me in five years.

You've got a few clever-sounding lines in there, but you really don't know what you're talking about, nor are you actually addressing the issues. Have you even researched or talked to anyone engaged in these programs? They're not hard to get a hold of, make a phone call, send an e-mail.

Lyndhurst/ArtsMove/MakeWord are organizations and initiatives with a broad interest in the growth of the entire creative community through the recruitment Fine Artists, commercial artists, and creative entrepreneurs. In addition to recruitment, they also offer individual artists grants for the engaging in and creation of more typical "Fine Arts".

The folks running these programs are some of the best and brightest people around, who recognize the importance of "fine arts for fine arts sake" and also recognize the value of having a creative economy that can actually sustain the fine arts community without having to rely on some non-profit or city/state grand to fund them

A neighborhood, its culture, and its economy are far more complicated entities then trite, meaningless statement about "art for arts sake" or "this is just gentrification". There's so much work being done (and to be done) on so many fronts in a thousand different ways; it's so simple to pick up the phone and find out what's being done by who and how you can get involved. It's the lack of involvement coupled with potshots that makes one a douchebag.

Finally, your mention of "developers" as some kind of money hungry cabal is, well, utterly inaccurate. I know these people, almost to a man. There's no collection of development conglomerates at work, at least not in the great mainstreet and Southside area. Most of them are local individuals, many husband & wife teams, people who bought these buildings and want to live in the neighborhood and see it grow and do better. Some were fresh out of College entrepreneurs.

And it's a damn beautiful thing, and pretty much the thing that makes me (and a great number of other people) really love living, working, and playing in Chattanooga.

I truly hope I don't know what I am talking about and these concerns are nothing but clever lines.

oh, "clever-sounding"