Chameleon Community Arts

Ethos and Projects, 2007-08

Chameleon believes that art is one of the keys to solving social, educational and community difficulties. Chameleon believes that the success of its youth development programs is tied directly to its ability to create aesthetically beautiful and intellectually challenging community artworks.

Chameleon believes in building and nurturing a community of creative artists and supporting small arts agencies. This community of professional artists is the resource for facilitating community arts projects and Chameleon youth arts programs..

Chameleon believes that long term collaborations with select schools and social services agencies is the best way of facilitating community arts projects and reaching at risk youth with arts programs that can be evaluated and assessed for their success and impact.

Chameleon believes that it is a highly successful strategy to work with these long term partners to create community art works facilitated by nationally regarded artists. The art works have proven to build the self-esteem of the participants and intellectually challenge a broader viewing audience.

Arts Consortium	Print Lovers at 30
Faces of the Homeless	SGC 2007
The Gift Project	Spirit of the Woods
Open Stage	Storytelling & Listening
Pools of Belief	Troost Festival

Understanding Community Art

It is important to understand that community art is an artistic discipline with its own set of processes and aesthetic point of view. Community Art like other disciplines has its own core syntax and criterion for excellence. Community art is a collaborative process between an often disadvantaged community and an artist or group of artists to produce works that create discourse, celebrate the community’s culture and increases self-worth. The goal and process of community art is expressed by the theorist Nicolas Bourriaud when he describes the field of relational aesthetics as “ artistic practice considering the ensemble of human relationships and their social context as a starting point-instead of an autonomous and private symbolic space.”

Critic and writer, Suzanne Lacy writes “ For the past three decades visual artists of varying backgrounds and perspectives have been working in a manner that resembles political and social activity but is distinguished by its aesthetic sensibility. Dealing with some of the most profound issues of our time—toxic waste, race relations, homelessness, aging, gang warfare and cultural identity—a group of visual artists has developed distinct models for an art whose public strategies of engagement are an important part of its aesthetic language.”

 Chameleon Criterion for Community Art

Community art nurtures lost intuitive processes in a community. Processes that dictate healing, and provide new grounding for ethical, social and spiritual insight.
–A. Mesa-Bains, artist

Community artworks are effective for creating discourse, building community, creating chamge and are not-purely aesthetic.

Community art is not imposed on the community but derives from direct interaction between artist and the community. The artist filters the interaction using his or her creative abilities to develop strategies and art works that reflect and articulate the community experience. 

Community art is a process that has long lasting effects, leaving the community methods and images for evolving spiritual, personal and social changes.