ABOUT T.A.A.

The Artist Archive provides information designed to help students answer questions relating to a sustained career in the arts. Our conversations with artists provide insights into many aspects of the working artist lifestyle. We approach artists as potential role models for students considering careers in, or outside of the arts.

Our diverse topics of conversation cover:

• Management and Organization
• Nurture and preservation of creativity
• Sustainable career and business expectations
• Continuing education.

TAA achievements:

• 40 artists of varying mediums included in the archive.
• We are working with three universities and involving students in the production of our films.
• We support and bring awareness to community arts organizations by producing films about their accomplishments.

The Artist Archive is a 501(c)3 organization sponsored by the Independent Film Project (IFP). We are endorsed by the New York Department of Education as well as the Percent For Art Program and the Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Artist's Archive (TAA) creates and maintains a library of original documentary-style feature video productions capturing the works, lives, inspirations and words of New York's contemporary visual artists.

This audio-visual library provides a comprehensive resource of information, images and ideas concerning publicly/privately-displayed works of contemporary art and their creators to students, educators, and the larger art-viewing and art-consuming public. The video productions that constitute the library incorporate footage of key works of art, accompanied by insightful commentary by the artists themselves, and where appropriate, other source information to facilitate a deeper understanding of the history and the ideas behind the creative works that permeate our community, but which might otherwise remain mysterious and undocumented.TAA will strives to foster greater understanding of the meaning of New York's public artworks and the artists who created them, and to present the challenges, rewards and realities associated with the pursuit of a life devoted to visual art for public consumption.

The Artist's Archive is a not for profit organization* comprised of videographers, artists, educators and other professionals who value the contribution of artists to the public discourse and to the New York experience.

Why TAA is needed?

At present, we at TAA are unaware of the existence of any resource of information concerning New York's public/private artworks or the artists and inspirations behind those works.It is thus the goal of TAA to create, from the ground up, a comprehensive video library of documentary-style films, telling the stories of New York's publicly displayed works of art to the viewers, students, teachers and consumers of those works, and to describe with moving images, words, sounds and interviews, the personal stories of inspiration behind them.

What will the Archive contain?

TAA was founded by film-maker journalists who are also art lovers. These filmmakers are shooting, editing and producing a series of video documentaries of artists, each documentary focusing on the life, works and ideas of one artist who has created and displayed at least one of his or her works in a public/private place in New York City.In these documentary films, the artists themselves tell the stories behind their personal journey from the concept to realization of at least one work of art.The documentaries will also include footage of the completion of a work, and its public/private display someplace in the City, including the process of installation of the work in a public/private space, and its unveiling, where applicable, and will often include where appropriate insightful public commentary and depiction of societal impact on the community.TAA will select a variety of artists who will ultimately represent the full spectrum of diverse backgrounds, ideas and techniques that make up this City of visual creativity.

Will the videos that comprise the Archive be of high quality, and if so, why?

TAA strives also to maintain only the highest quality production values for its original documentaries.TAA began with, and will continue to grow by employing, only filmmakers whose extensive backgrounds and technical proficiency will bring to TAA the highest level of professionalism and expertise in planning, shooting and producing the various documentary projects that will constitute the archive.Each project undertaken by TAA will employ an experienced production team made up of documentary specialists, writers, producers, directors, interviewers, technical crew and/or administrative staff.In addition, an educational consultant would oversee the parameters of the artist interviews, enhancing the educational usefulness of the documentaries.This core philosophy and practical approach will ensure that each video documentary is informative, aesthetically excellent, educationally useful and independently marketable.

For what audience will the Archive be of use?

The resulting TAA Documentary Library will be made available to an audience of students, teachers, and other members of the enquiring public, as a reference resource, as well as an independent library of creative works with their own independent artistic value. These video documentaries will also be made available to the artists themselves, to utilize as promotional material and introductory representations of their work, and where applicable, to communicate more clearly the artists' themes or missions to the public. Ultimately, the TAA Documentary Library will stand as a permanent record of the artists, their works, and the motivations behind the works, for generations to come. Students will experience and learn from it, researchers will investigate with it and source to it, and through it, private and public art-supportive foundations and government agencies will have access to concrete information concerning how their monetary support has been put to use by the artists they fund.

To broaden the appeal of the Documentary Library, TAA core production group will ultimately also seek to package and catalogue completed interviews with translated subtitles for multi-lingual application, transcribe the interviews to text format, and optimize product marketability for all forms of communication and media (i.e., broadcast and Internet access).TAA will further focus on optimizing the usefulness and accessibility of the archive by exploring all available media formats and emerging technologies beyond video cassette and DVD formats, such as streaming video and internet delivery.

Where will the financial support for TAA come from?

TAA will develop sources of funding through grant applications, foundation research and fund-raising events. The organization is in the process of applying for official nonprofit status and is developing all required related legal and organizational support and documentation. Presently TAA is creating relationships with artists in the "Percent for Art" program, and [insert public endorsements here] have already endorsed the efforts of TAA.>Having already conducted 17 interviews of subject artists, now in post production phase (see Sample Video on this web site) positions TAA well to pursue a variety of available grant opportunities.

How will people learn of the existence of the Archive?

Once appropriately established, TAA will mount an aggressive public awareness campaign, reaching out to publicity sources such as television, radio, internet and print media to establish an audience base.

This is our mission and the outline of our plan to accomplish it. We are eager to move the project forward, and we are grateful for any and all support, in any form. Please contact us at TAA.

The TAA Team