WHAT IS ARTS ADVOCACY? According to Miriam-Webster, the definition of advocacy is “the act or process of supporting a cause or proposal.” So, if we’re talking about supporting the arts — and in Massachusetts — then there’s a handful of folks pursuing various kinds of arts advocacy. Sometimes the cause is more funding for the arts, other times it’s about fair pay for artists. Now it’s for protecting cultural spaces. WHO’S DOING WHAT: NATIONALLY, REGIONALLY, LOCALLY Nationally, Americans for the Arts holds the top arts advocacy position. In Massachusetts, we have MassCreative, whose primary job is to advocate for increased funding for the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The MCC offers grants, services and professional development resources. It also advocates for the arts, along with other organizations including Mass Humanities, the Arts & Business Council of Greater … [Read more...] about THE ART OF ADVOCACY: WHAT IT IS, WHO’S DOING IT, ROADBLOCKS & RESOLUTIONS

In a city where technology thrives, digital art is advancing fast, and would make the Lumière Brothers very proud. It is not an optical illusion, magic or mind trick. It is digital art. Grab your Google or Apple glasses and download apps to see augmented reality (AR) or simply not; look around. Digital art is everywhere and has been rapidly breaking ground, expanding into our everyday lives and naked eyes. It is that simple, if you have a cell phone, you experience digital art daily. So, let’s embrace, dive into and enjoy it. The inception of digital art can be traced back to the mid-1900s, with experiments done by computer scientists, engineers and mathematicians, naturally the only ones with access to the necessary machines. The medium evolved during the following decades through visual compositionmainly generated by mathematical calculations until the 1980s, when the … [Read more...] about THE RAPID ADVANCES OF DIGITAL ART: MASARY STUDIOS BRING THEIR WAVEFORMS TO NEW AUDIENCES