So Long!

There’s nowhere else I would have rather spent the past two years (and two months), but this will be my last blog post for Fractured Atlas.

I’m saying farewell to Fractured Atlas, going off to work as a writer for another organization in another field. I’m looking forward to diving into a new sector and learning what matters most to that community, but I wanted to take a moment to say thank you and goodbye before I go. 

It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with you all; writing about ways to improve the world for artists, giving you strategic and practical information to support your work, and dreaming big about a better future for the cultural sector.

From the nitty gritty question of how to price your artwork or why contracts matter to more complicated questions about why artists have a hard time talking about money, I’ve been deep in the world of the daily issues that artists face and hopefully have put forward some ideas that have supported you in your life as a practicing artist. I got to explore all of the different ways that artists work cooperatively with one another for mutual benefit and lift up those strategies as viable alternatives to the systems that we currently have.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with some amazing artists and people; from Fractured Atlas members featured in our Member Spotlight series to leaders of the burgeoning solidarity economy in the arts. To say nothing of the Fractured Atlas staff who I sometimes formally interviewed! 

My time at Fractured Atlas coincided with a seismic shift in the art world and in the nonprofit cultural sector. We saw this fresh urgency how crucial the arts are to our collective wellbeing as well as the ways in which our current structures are built to fail artists and arts workers. Long-standing inequalities were exposed and we saw emergent cooperative projects that, at least for me, signify some very optimistic possibilities for the future of the field. I’ve been so proud to be a part of the field during this time when so many people are invested in building a more equitable, expansive future for themselves and for one another.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the voice of Fractured Atlas will change as I depart. One of the best parts about working at Fractured Atlas has been its embrace of change as a natural and good part of an organization's life. I saw it when I came here in 2020 and was immediately trusted to represent Fractured Atlas’s voice and shape it as I saw fit as a newcomer. I saw it as we shifted our organizational focus and experienced several transitions in programs, leadership, and staff. When I leave, the voice will change again in the capable hands of my coworkers; shifting to their own personal skill sets but with the same deep focus on serving our community and meeting your needs.

So, in closing, thank you for reading my articles, for sending them to your bosses to agitate for better working conditions and for assigning them to your students. Thank you for the work that you all make, for the ways that you are collectively pushing the arts field into a better place, and for making a professional home for me for the past two years. 

It’s been good!