New Nonprofit and Call for Artists

Thought you might like to know that The Kingstad Gallery is holding a new Call For Artists and a new group/nonprofit forming...Here's a bit of information about it:
Regional Arts & Music Project (RAMP) is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to entertainment and education. Our focus is on artistic development, educational opportunities, and accessibility to all arts genres through performances, exhibitions, and events for the community and the Portland Metro region. RAMP includes The Kingstad Gallery, Beaverton Civic Theatre, and Jester Comedy Club, and makes it's home at the Kingstad Center in Beaverton, Oregon.

Here's the new Call:
Parallel & Convergent: Stories of Labor & Art
Exhibit dates: 6/5 – 9/5/09 Application deadline: 5/15/09
The arts and labor movements travel parallel paths, often converging at startling points in history when art reflects the lives and struggles of the working classes in extraordinary detail.
The conditions of workers have been portrayed by artists since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and even earlier by songwriters and musicians.
The arts have supported, documented, and benefitted from labor movements and government programs, such as the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal in the 1930s.
If history is an indicator of the future, then we are currently experiencing the same fertile ground for artistic expression, collaboration, and expansion as witnessed during the 1930s.
What are the parallels between then and now?
How are the challenges of today reflected in our art?
How is your art reflecting the current climate of job loss, tough times, and potential for reinvention?
How are the arts again uniting, inspiring, and moving us forward?
Artists are often viewed as other, and not really made of the same stuff as the rest of society. If there is truth in the cliché of ‘the starving artist’, it is that the creation of art is, after all, labor.
Works that address issues of labor, making ends meet, issues of family, the work of the artist, and the arts as a tool for inspiring cultural expansion, will be represented in this timely exhibit.
For information, please contact:
Lora R Fisher, Director The Kingstad Gallery, 15450 SW Millikan Way, Beaverton, Oregon 970065 Lora@kingstad.com http://www.kingstad.com/gallery/gallery_home.html