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The following individuals listed are those who will soon be receiving a copy of this letter. Each letterhead will include a carbon copy of the list in an attempt to negate plausible deniability and stimulate a response from the ruling elite of Columbus, Ohio. If no response is forthcoming from this ruling class, which includes the local media, then democracy is all but dead and the press fully complicit.
Cc: Mayor Michael Coleman, Andrew J. Ginther (Columbus City Council President), Chester Jourdan (Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission Executive Director), E. Gordon Gee (The Ohio State University President), Benjamin Marrison (The Columbus Dispatch Editor), Douglas Kridler (Columbus Foundation CEO), Stephen Weed (Friends of WOSU Board President), Tom Rieland (WOSU GM), Ann Fisher (All Sides Host), Ray Paproki (Columbus Monthly Editor), Christopher Hayes (Outlook: Columbus Editor in Chief), Travis Hoewischer (614 Magazine Editor-in-Chief), Eric Lyttle (The Other Paper Editor), Kristen Schmidt (Columbus Alive Editor), Worthington News Letter to the Editor, German Village Gazette Letter to the Editor, Jami Jurich (The Lantern Editor in Chief), Jeffrey A. Rich (Ohio Arts Council Board Chair), Julie Henahan (Ohio Arts Council Executive Director), Robert Falcone (Greater Columbus Arts Council Board Chair), Milt Baughman (Greater Columbus Arts Council President), Sherrie Geldon (Wexner Center for the Arts Director), Nannette Maciejunes (Columbus Museum of Art Executive Director), Burt Logan (Ohio Historical Society CEO), Leslie Ferris (The Arts Initiative at Ohio State Acting Executive Director), and Abigail and Leslie Wexner
Also…
Cc: Jon Stewart (The Daily Show Host), Charlie Rose (Talk Show Host), Rachel Maddow (Talk Show Host), Scott Pelley (60 Minutes Managing Editor), Thom Hartmann (Radio Talk Show Host), Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post Editor in Chief), Michael Moore (Documentarian), BBC News, Melissa Block (All Things Considered Host), Neal Conan (Talk of the Nation Host), Chris Anderson (WIRED Editor in Chief), David Remnick (The New Yorker Editor), Jim Nelson (GQ Magazine Editor in Chief), Larry Flynt (Hustler CEO), Rocco Landesman (National Endowment for the Arts Chairman), Bill Moyer (Media Icon), George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Thomas Friedman (Economist and How America Fell Behind Author), Bruce Mao (Industrial Designer, Massive Change Author and Institute Without Boundaries Founder), Stephane Hessel (Time for Outrage Author)
Dear Reader (or identified person of interest):
It is my understanding after watching the PBS program Art Works Columbus is looking for not only a “champion for the arts,” to quote Columbus Foundation’s CEO Douglas Kridler, but something of a courageous, self-promoting, and still yet magnanimous champion equally capable of selling the values and virtues of living and growing with Columbus, a city ranked at the top of Forbes magazine’s Top Ten Up and Coming Tech Cities as recently as 2008. The art and cultural Establishment, in other words, which in many ways is steered by the funding decisions of the Columbus Foundation, the ninth largest community foundation in the US, is looking for someone locally with enough grit, flair and savvy to capture the attention of Cultural Creatives from around the region, at the very least, if not the nation and world, as a way to help market Columbus as the place to move and jumpstart a career of some sort. Columbus: What’s up next, basically. If this simplified summary of Columbus’ civic agenda is more or less true, allow me this opportunity then to formally introduce myself to all of you.
I am a native of Columbus, an artist and a third generation American. My grandparents emigrated here from Germany just prior to WWII. Although like most emigrants at the time they found themselves living in New York City for a while, they eventually settled in the near eastside of Columbus to build a life and raise a family, a story that in its essence mirrors the birth of German Village, the largest historic residential district in the nation. My father is by all intents and purposes a self-made man, although by trade he is a managing architect and Senior Vice President of a locally-based national firm that this year will be highlighted in a remarkable 16 different magazine articles. His firm designed the Riverside McConnell Heart Hospital, location of the reality show about newborn’s called One Born Every Minute currently in its second season on the Lifetime channel; the Dublin Methodist Hospital, Pebble Project flagship for a national LEED program that integrates aesthetics with health and sustainable architectural design practices; and the Columbus Convention Center, the other Columbus-based Peter Eisenman building. Moreover, the founder and namesake of my father’s firm was one of the principal advocates responsible for the rescue and restoration of downtown Columbus’ now prized Ohio Theater. Equally accomplished, albeit in a different capacity, is my mother who is a part-time adjunct professor of English at Columbus State Community College and a full-time gifted outreach teacher for Westerville City Schools.
As far as my education is concerned, I graduated from Thomas Worthington High School (TWHS). Branded as “One of Ohio’s Best” communities, a few notable alumni from Worthington include comedienne Rachael Harris (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Hangover, Natural Selection, Friends, The Daily Show*, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Desperate Housewives), actress Maggie Grace (CSI: Miami, Cold Case, Miracles, Oliver Beene, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Lost*), and artist Jeff Smith, whose Bones comic series Time magazine ranked in its Top Ten graphic novels of all time. As for myself, although in high school I was a highly rated scholar-athlete, the lasting mark I left at TWHS was the logo redesign for the school’s cardinal mascot. From Worthington, the city named after Thomas Worthington, the so-called “Father of Ohio Statehood,” I moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where I earned a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Among those with whom I graduated was Seth MacFarlane, creator of the acclaimed Family Guy*, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show TV animation series.
On a serendipitous side note, RISD is the artsy sister college of Brown University, that ivy league institution where E. Gordon Gee went to preside over after leaving OSU back in 1998. Brown University is also the college Barnaby Evans graduated from, the signature artist whom the city of Columbus and the then new director of the Columbus Museum of Art, Nannette Maciejunes, commissioned to install Scioto Waterfire, a now ritual piece of community performance art that was inaugurated in 2007, the same year as Gee’s return to OSU (whether or not this connection was intended I am not in a position to say). Another synchronicity includes the fact that Barnaby’s first Waterfire installation was performed for the city of Providence in 1994 while I was a junior at RISD.
After finishing undergraduate school I moved back home to Columbus and shortly thereafter found myself enrolled at The Ohio State University, where I eventually earned an MFA in Painting in 2002. Of course many superlative accolades can be cited about OSU. Some relevant to this narrative include the fact it is headed by a man Time recently named the most powerful college president in the nation; that it is the largest land grant university in the country; that it boasts the second largest student population in the nation; that it houses the biggest cartoon library in the nation; that it has one of the highest ranked art education departments in the nation; that it has one of the top ranked architectural departments in the nation; and that it is home to the Wexner Center for the Arts, which is not only an iconic building in terms of postmodernist architecture, arguably the first in the world, but also, owing to its unusual design and to all the controversy (i.e. publicity) it received because of its radical aesthetics, the Wexner Center for the Arts initiated a first-wave renaissance in museum construction around the globe that continues to this day.
Focusing in upon the Wexner Center for the Arts, there are several other noteworthy points to touch upon. Firstly, that Limited Brands CEO Les Wexner, the person responsible for the Wexner Center’s funding, is someone who not only is recognized as being one of the Top Ten art collectors in the world but is someone who also sits on the Board of Trustees at OSU. This is significant because when it comes to art, OSU and the city of Columbus, the legacy of Les Wexner is one issue clearly at stake. Secondly, the fact that the building that the Wexner Center for the Arts displaced used to be a military armory. This is relevant for its symbolism since the arts can and/or should be understood as being antithetical to the precepts of militarism and war. This polarity is also underscored by the Columbus Cultural Arts Center, located at the south end of the newly dedicated Scioto Mile, which used to be a civil war armory. Thirdly, that the Wexner Center for the Arts was the primary construction project that heralded in what can only be referred to as OSU’s renovation renaissance. This fact is a perfect example of the now recognized theme of the role of the arts as an engine for economic redevelopment; a theme put forth by the economist and one-time OSU Department of City and Regional Planning instructor Richard Florida who authored the New York Times bestseller Rise of the Creative Class. Fourthly, that the artist Malcolm Cochran, whose giant gavel sculpture can be seen outside Ohio’s Supreme Court building, whose Fantasia-like sculptor is currently being installed in the pond at Goodale Park, and whose work was on display at the grand opening exhibition of the Wexner Center for the Arts, is the same Malcolm Cochran who sat on my Masters Thesis Committee. And lastly, that I was a junior in high school when the Wexner Center for the Arts opened, a spectacular event that had a huge impact on my decision to become an artist.
Suffice it to say it has been a serious challenge to try and make a career out of being an artist, especially in a city that up until about five years ago carried the stigma of being the nation’s largest college cow-town. Hence, faced with a cultural environment that seemed to take for granted the value of the arts as a general rule, after graduating from OSU I reinvented myself as a guerrilla city planner and set about the task of redefining the role of the arts in local politics. From that decision emerged the New Eden Project, a radical and strategic vision to transform Columbus into something other than just a city of status quo conventions and latent creative potential.
I have heard it stated that the good is the enemy of the best; and therein lays the rub. After ten years of lobbying for the New Eden Project I can say with absolute certainty the political Establishment continues to sell the artistic community of Columbus well short of what it deserves. If we truly aspire to be the “Indy Art Capitol of the World,” an idea Mayor Coleman has already publicly endorsed, then we need to stop playing it safe by implementing the same sort of development ideas every other city in the nation has already implemented, or is in the process of implementing, and stop taking our cues from the same book that every other city planner in the nation is reading. We need to come into our own on our own terms in other words. We need to be history in the making: Everything else is cow-town bland. Unfortunately average (i.e. blandness) is not all that good if it represents the minimum amount of potential and creativity people starved by neglect are willing to accept.
It might seem paradoxical to conventional thinking to be so brazenly critical of an Establishment I seek to be endorsed by. However, if we recall the insights of James Surowiecki, author of Wisdom of Crowds and the 2008 keynote speaker for the 2012 Bicentennial Citizen Summit, if the ruling class makes decisions without taking into consideration the entire range of opinions available, especially those that are unorthodox or contrary in nature, whatever decision they make is likely to end in failure because it runs the risk of seeking the deadly neutrality of conformity instead of the optimized utility of good judgment. Such a complacent perspective also shows a lack of art historical understanding for the iconoclast, one of the most pivotal roles an artist plays in culture and societies at large. For historically speaking it has been proven time and again when the avant-garde becomes vanguard excitement reigns supreme; which brings us back to the New Eden Project.
If I were to be critical of the New Eden Project, and judge it as a piece of performance and documentation art instead of whether or not it has achieved the aims of its agenda, the success of which rests politically upon the collective establishment of a new cultural movement, the sheer audacity of my initiative alone makes me one of the most controversial artists in the country–comparable to and equally profound as the satirical and dynamic The Yes Men duo who recently garnered national attention for their GE tax refund hoax. In the very least publicly declaring myself as much makes me the most controversial artist in Columbus. But until the leadership Establishment accepts the idea that being controversial and iconoclastic is the only real means to market Columbus as a state-of-the-art cultural hub, I am afraid our Creative Class competitive advantage will be uninspired and, as a consequence, only able to attract those people who already live within the borders of Ohio. If this persistence to censuring or otherwise curbing artistic ambition continues, in other words, ten years from now we will be stuck in the same position we are in today wondering what we can do to change the perception of Columbus as “sphincter-vortex of ho-hum mediocrity.” Make no mistake, reputations and legacies hang in the balance as much as the economic wellbeing of our community.
As far as the theories behind the New Eden Project are concerned, international speaker, expert on co-evolutionary theory and professor at the OSU School of Industrial Design Elizabeth Sanders has stated to the effect my development models are ten years ahead of their time. Considering most of the work was conceived of ten years ago, and because it will probably be another ten years before any of these ideas ever manifest–unless of course this community decides to take advantage of the opportunity to make use of my work first–one can safely assume my concepts are visionary in scope. The fact I have no training in architecture, civic planning, marketing, sociology or political science, the fields in which my work on the New Eden Project are situated, makes the visionary argument that much more valid a label; although as stated previously my father’s background is in architecture and my training as a painter does involve appreciating design as a principle of aesthetics, regardless of its functional application–which in this case deals with how a building functions in relation to its organizational management, operational utility and cultural affect. The closest thing to the New Eden Project I have come across, in fact, are the proposals of Peter Joseph, coordinator of the Venus Project and visionary founder of the world Zeitgeist Movement.
In terms of a dialectic, although there are many points of divergence between my and Joseph’s work, even a cursory comparison will reveal that what the two visions share in common is an integral approach to creative problem solving and an ecological sensitivity to the convergent crisis of these awfully troubled times. Being an artist, however, I have tried to imagine our ecological transformation into a sustainable world construct as a global arts and crafts movement–a global renaissance revival–with Columbus, Ohio serving as the central pillar, the central column (as in Column-bus or C-bus), in that potential reality. What’s not to love about that? ©olumbus, Ohio, the he-ART of et all!
If you are at all familiar with the history of the 20th century it should come as no surprise a vision like mine has from The Great State of Ohio emerged. Ohioans have defined the 20th century, essentially, which I would argue makes it our legacy to become the archetype for the 21st century as well. You want a champion for the arts? You need to embrace me. You want a champion for Columbus? You need to embrace the New Eden Project. You want to rebrand Ohio? You need to embrace my renaissance foundational Logos–the only one of its kind in the world, ever (see enclosure). Ultimately, you need me. And I need you, too. For together we can show the world what the Spirit of Columbus has to offer. Together we can make the necessary amends to make beauty an ethical imperative and volunteerism a new cooperative grassroots art forum. Together we can build a mountain.
Most sincerely,
Darren Grundey
Renaissance Ambassador
(614) Oh!
Email: Renaissance2012@gmail.com
http://www.DarrenGrundey.com
For those reading this on the http://www.ColumbusUnderground.com community forum, if you know of any other individuals, publications or institutions you think should receive this form letter, please, pass the information along. If you would like more information on the New Eden Project, or would like to get more involved in its development and promotion, feel free to contact me at the above email address. Thanks!
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