Arts Alive in Central Illinois

Last night I attended the annual meeting of ArtsPartners of Central Illinois, and I'm thrilled to announce that my good friends, Doug and Eileen Leunig were named 2012 ArtsPartners of the Year.  Most recently I've been working on an arts marketing committee with the Leunigs, along with Tracey Frugoli, Craig Stocks, Kathy Chitwood, and Suzette Boulais of ArtsPartners, helping to promote events in the Peoria area during National Arts and Humanities month in October.

One of the main projects of the campaign has been a series of images of local artists and arts enthusiasts which are airing daily this month on both WEEK-TV and WTVP-TV and which you can see HERE.

My slide, from a photo by Craig Stocks, was also featured at the meeting last night, and another picture of me appeared in the ArtsPartners annual report booklet, for my Marketing and PR for Creative Professionals seminar that I conducted at the Peoria Art Guild earlier this year.

I'm really inspired and grateful to be a part of the thriving arts community in central Illinois.

Art Works in Peoria: Update

For those of you who have been following my work with the arts community in the Peoria area, here's an update from Arts Partners on one of the projects I've been involved with.

Friends of the Arts,

We are pleased to report that Congressman Aaron Schock presented our Art Works in Peoria poster to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman this past week in Washington, DC. In a follow-up phone conversation with us, Rocco mentioned that he couldn’t be happier with his new poster (which is going up on the NEA walls) or with his conversation with Congressman Schock, who is a strong arts supporter and has voted in favor of maintaining funding for the NEA.

Thanks again to our many local area artists who submitted over 2,700 images to comprise this mosaic image. Special thanks also go to photographer Doug Leunig for letting us use his photograph of the skyline of Peoria and to George Brown of Bradley University for creating the composite image.