9-4-2017
Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts
10 E. Baltimore Street, 10th Floor
Baltimore, MD 21202
Artscape,
BFAI, BOPA
Susan Fortkiewicz, Bill Gilmore, Bob Sicard, Chuck Adkins, Corey Lacey, David D. Mitchell, Kathleen Hornig, Kim Domanski, Krista Green, Linda Blume, Markell Cassard, Megan Bosse, Rosalind Healy, Shelia Goodwin, Tess Cooper, Tracy Baskerville, Anana Kambon, Michael Shecter, Jeffrey P. Pillas, E. Scott Johnson, William B. Gilmore, Kimberly A. Clark, Thomas Crawford, Michael Davenport, Shelia Y. Goodwin, Rosalind M. Healy, Sandy Hillman, Jack Lewin, Brian Lyles, Safa Ashrafi
Susan Fortkiewicz, Bill Gilmore, Bob Sicard, Chuck Adkins, Corey Lacey, David D. Mitchell, Kathleen Hornig, Kim Domanski, Krista Green, Linda Blume, Markell Cassard, Megan Bosse, Rosalind Healy, Shelia Goodwin, Tess Cooper, Tracy Baskerville, Anana Kambon, Michael Shecter, Jeffrey P. Pillas, E. Scott Johnson, William B. Gilmore, Kimberly A. Clark, Thomas Crawford, Michael Davenport, Shelia Y. Goodwin, Rosalind M. Healy, Sandy Hillman, Jack Lewin, Brian Lyles, Safa Ashrafi
Artscape@promotionandarts.com;
tcooper@promotionandarts.org;
SFortkiewicz@promotionandarts.org;
tbaskerville@promotionandarts.org;
sgoodwin@promotionandarts.org;
rhealy@promotionandarts.org;
MBosse@promotionandarts.org;
MCassard@promotionandarts.org;
lblume@promotionandarts.org;
kdomanski@promotionandarts.org;
khornig@promotionandarts.org;
kgreen@promotionandarts.org;
david.mitchell@promotionandarts.org;
clacey@promotionandarts.org;
bsicard@promotionandarts.org;
CAdkins@promotionandarts.org;
lblume@promotionandarts.org;
SAshrafi@promotionandarts.org
Hello,
I’ve waited over a month to write this so
that my thoughts
would be clear and concise on this year’s Artscape Artcars
exhibit. Without a doubt
it is the worst event I have
ever attended. Not only
have I been
going to Artscape for nearly a decade with my car but I also
attend two to four
other artcar events every year.
You
failed in almost every way possible from the way you treated us
artists to your
failure to promote the artcar parade. You
not only failed us but you failed your vendors in a huge way.
We arrived at 11am on Friday to find one tent
(not two per
car as we were promised or even two for all the cars), with no
furniture, no
chairs, no table, no ice, no water, no soft drinks, zilch. The heat index was over
107° and we were all
expected to shelter from the sun in one 10’ square tent on a
concrete overpass
with no other shade of any kind!
We
finally got some utterly crappy pizza dripping with grease (two
choices!) after
dark with about a dozen soft drinks in a bag.
Still no ice, no chairs, no table.
Unbelievable. To
top that off we
were not allowed to leave until 11pm!!!
We are not statues, we’re not simple displays that can be
set up and
left behind. We are
artists, these are
our vehicles, and 12 hours in the hot sun is ludicrous! There was no reason
whatsoever for us to
remain there after 9pm either Friday or Saturday and why you
forced us to is
beyond me. In the past
we’ve been able
to leave once it slowed down so we could do things like eat and
sleep and
recover from the heat. You
people don’t
seem to understand that we use our cars to
get home! We can’t
just leave them and
walk, can we? That seems
to have been
your attitude this year.
Saturday was perhaps where you screwed up the
worst of
all. You didn’t
advertise the artcar
parade at all. We were
waving at the
vendors sitting with empty booths on empty streets. I’ve never seen it like
that and it’s because
you failed miserably. In
the process you
really screwed over your vendors.
In the
past the festival has been packed with people waiting for the
parade and what
did they do while they waited for it to start?
They shopped. What
did they do
after the parade passed? They
shopped. They simply
weren’t there this
year. If I had a way to
inform the
vendors of this directly I would.
I
would bet most of them saw a decline in their sales from past
years, but I
wonder if you people even care?
You seem
not to have given a flying f*** about the artcar artists so why
would you care
about the vendors as long as they’re shelling out the bucks for
booths?
We had to be at the AMA at 9am for this
non-parade after
being held prisoner until 11pm the night before. Figure in an hour to get
home, shower and eat
and then an hour in the morning to get up and dressed and drive
to the museum
(even longer for some of the local artists who had a half hour
drive) and that
doesn’t leave a lot of time to recover from 12 hours in the
blazing sun. That also
meant by the time we were finally
released from that scorching hot bridge Saturday night at 11pm
we had had a 14
hour day! Dr. Bob, who
has been bringing
his beautiful vehicle to Artscape for 27 years is over 70 and
you wouldn’t let
him leave to go home. You
are monsters. Again,
there was no reason for us to stay
there past 9pm. None
whatsoever. We were just
a spectacle for drunken dance
party people to point at and shout, “Whoa!”
If we were just placing our cars there and leaving it
would be no big
deal but that’s not what any of us were doing and never has
been. You would know
that if any of you cared to
find out what you were doing. We
were
suffering waiting for you and the cops to decide you could open
up an exit for
us. It has never been
this stupid any
other year I’ve come to Artscape and I know one reason (other
than the obvious
incompetence of most if not all of you) is you didn’t have a
single person
dealing with the artcars that knew a thing about us, had any
idea what we
needed, had ever dealt with us in the past, or would have the
slightest clue as
to why your treatment of us was so crappy.
And let’s not forget your perennial bit of
idiocy in
requiring artcar artists to register in February
for an event in late July. Most
of us
don’t even know if our cars will be running that far in the
future. We’re not
vendors, we’re a feature, though if
you treat your vendors like you treated us this year I don’t see
how you can
rent a square inch of booth space.
If you seriously think that kind of treatment
was worth the
stipend we got to drive from Louisville Kentucky to Baltimore
and suffer in the
sun you’ve got another thing coming. You
don’t pay the local artists a damned penny and put them through
this same
BS. I can’t tell you how
many times I
heard things like, “Oh great! The
artcars are back! This
is my favorite
part of Artscape. We
missed you so much
last year.” But you
people apparently
have your heads so far up your own backsides you have no clue
what a benefit we
are to your festival or how beloved the artcars are. Well frankly I doubt I’ll
ever attend again
after this year, not without firm assurances you’ll do a better
job next time.
I know there are multiple pieces of custom
built furniture
for the artcar camp in storage.
I know
you have a 25’ square tent that was bought specifically for the
artcars. Perhaps one of
you could get off your ass and
find them for next year. Perhaps
you
could place the cars where they have an exit at a reasonable
time instead of
being locked in by the TSA and Baltimore police until hours
after the vendors
have closed up and gone home. Perhaps
you could provide refreshments the first day.
Perhaps you could bother to advertise the parade and
actually make a
parade out of it instead of a quick drive through the grounds to
our parking
spaces (seriously, in the past we’ve had marching bands, arted
bicycles, and
dancers, this year we hardly had to slow down there were so few
people out
there). I write all this
fearing none of
you cares enough to even bother to read this far, much less do
anything to
improve your performance.
Please respond to me promptly so I can decide
whether or not
to share this letter with every artcar artist in the country. If you do understand how
badly you screwed
the pooch and make concrete efforts to do this thing right next
year I’ll give
you a chance in 2018 but I hold out little hope. Regardless Artscape 2017
remains the absolute
worst artcar event I’ve seen in this country in the dozen years
I’ve been
attending artcar shows. There
really is
nothing anywhere in the same league of horribleness to compare
you to.
Sincerely,
Alan
p.s. As
you have no direct
contact information for the BFAI board members I’m guessing
they’re all too
embarrassed to allow themselves to be publicly contacted. I would appreciate it if
you would make sure
everyone on the above list gets a copy of this letter as they
all took part in
this travesty.
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