One last shout-out before logging off for the night: a very heartfelt plea to join me in supporting the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an excellent group dedicated to the fine art of boundary-blurring creativity. Here’s the official letter from the IAF board:
Dear All,
Only a few nights remain before the turn of the year, providing the opportunity to thank you for your help and support, and to share with you all that the Interstitial Arts Foundation has done during 2008:
- Interfictions, the critically acclaimed Interstitial Arts anthology, was released in 2007 and quickly named to this year’s Tiptree Award honors list. We have the next volume, Interfictions II, underway for publication in 2009 – with hundreds of submissions from all over the world being read this month by editors Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak.
- A chapter of the Interstitial Arts Foundation has been started in Boston, with the help and able direction of Wendy Ellertson, one of the IAF’s board members. They have begun meeting regularly, and are planning a visual arts-oriented salon.
- Speaking of salons, we’ve hosted two exciting salon discussions this year through our website . Lively online conversations have enabled people to explore across disciplinary boundaries, and find new places and ways to connect and express themselves.
- The IAF was also present at Readercon in New England and WisCon in the Midwest, holding get-togethers with people interested in interstitiality and the arts. Connections were also made with other arts organizations in New York City; Amsterdam; Paris; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and Boston, Massachusetts.
Supporting all of this were a variety of activities, including the very successful online auction led by K. Tempest Bradford that led to IAF’s own dedicated auctions site at www.iafauctions.com; the launch of our own reading group at Goodreads.com and on Facebook.com, and raising funds for and awareness of the IAF around the ‘net. Supporting the IAF salons, website, and blog is a newly-formed web committee, made up of volunteers like you.
In February, the IAF Board of Directors met with local IAF supporters and friends in NYC at a tea hosted by Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner, and conducted some long-range planning using the input gathered from attendees.
Throughout all of these activities, we’ve been reaching out to friends and supporters and getting more people involved in interstitial arts. Our success has largely been made possible by the support we have received from people like you.
In the upcoming year, the Interstitial Arts Foundation has several new programs in the works, including:
- A new IAF blog and web presence. This will add more views of interstitial art from new voices, and will help us highlight the range of IAF activities across North America and even around the world.
- An online Art Show is being planned, to build greater awareness of interstitial art that is visual in character and support the work of visual interstitial artists.
- More salons are also being planned on a variety of topics, including academia.
- …and, of course, the next volume of Interfictions.
To make this all work, we need you! We look forward to meeting everyone as we expand across the country and across other boundaries in the arts. We want to invite new ideas, new perspectives, new members, and new and renewed support for the IAF. Your emails, attendance at IAF-related events, volunteering, and financial support have been vital to our success. Please take a moment now and consider making a gift to the IAF, so we can make 2009 as much of a success as 2008 – and thank you for everything you have done already.
When you contribute $25 or more, you become a “Friend of Interstitial Arts.” You can make an online donation immediately by going to our Click & Pledge page. If you’re making a donation by check, please make it payable to Interstitial Arts Foundation, Inc., and send it to: P.O. Box 35862, Boston, MA 02135. Please include a note with it giving us the URL you’d like us to link to from your name on our “Friends of IAF” page, if you’d appreciate such a link.
Sincerely,
Deborah Atherton (Secretary)
Wendy Ellertson
Ellen Kushner (Vice President)
Victor J Raymond (President)
Stephen H. Segal
Delia Sherman (Treasurer)
The IAF Board of Directors