Portland Stock: Supporting Creative Community, Fostering New Conversations

In June 2009, Portland Stock made an unforgettable splash into the blogosphere and Portland art scene with this intriguing post: “Stock: Clear soup broth, investment, estimation, faith, gathering, accumulation, appraisal, cash, assets, a stem, tree, or plant that furnishes slips or cuttings. Ancestry, lineage. Merchandise.”

This creative, vibrant grassroots public dinner event boldly aspires to be and embrace each of those definitions. Each month, a community of arts lovers breaks bread, eats soup and funds a local art project with the proceeds collected from that night's dinner. The host venue changes with each event, as do its participants and project proposal submissions. Diners contribute cash ($10 for homemade soup and other local delights donated by People's Farmers Market, Fressen Bakery, and other local farmers). All contribute their opinions to feed a democratic process of determining which artist proposal receives the evening’s proceeds. Winning artists are obliged to report on project progress with a presentation at the next dinner event. By enabling Portlanders to engage in funding art projects, Portland Stock is able to support local creatives, fund small/medium sized arts projects that may not qualify for traditional funding and strengthen our city's arts community.

Portland Stock event. Photo: Katy Asher

Portland Stock was inspired by similar groups such as FEAST in Brooklyn, and the Chicago group InCubate's Sunday Soup granting program. Since late 2007, Sunday Soup has gathered people once a month to share a meal of local ingredients prepared by guest chefs. Participants here, too, pay $10 to fund small/medium creative projects that might not otherwise qualify for funding in traditional ways.

In an environment where governmental support for experimental art practice is minimal at best, and private support is dictated by the values and priorities of granting foundations, innovative and potentially controversial work is compromised in order to fit within categories deemed ‘fundable.’ With Sunday Soup, community participation in the grant funding and selection process is key.

What’s noteworthy about the Sunday Soup gathering is that everyone participates in some stage of the process. Participants not only directly fund projects and artists, but vote on the most worthy proposals submitted that month. Chefs prepare and discuss the food that feeds bodies and serves as the catalyst for networking, conversation and collaboration. It’s a wonderful model of community with the explicit aim to function “as a way of generating independent funding for creative projects, and implicitly critical as a way of generating conversation about the availability and distribution of resources within the mainstream arts establishment.”

(In December 2008 Portland’s own Marc Moscato/Brains, Brilliancy, Bohemia: Ephemera from the Dill Pickle Club was an awards recipient. There are also plenty of similarly inspired programs across the nation—be sure to check out the InCubate site to see who’s doing what where.)

Portland Stock organizers Katy Asher, Ariana Jacob and Amber Bell were fascinated by this model, and dreamed that it had potential work here, too. “The participatory and democratic aspects of the Sunday Soup model and its potential to encourage support for artist projects in Portland is collaborative, community-based, interesting and exciting,” notes Bell. Asher and Jacob connected in the Art and Social Practice Program at PSU and, after meeting Bell, knew that they wanted to work together on various projects. “We found ourselves super interested in the community-based model of making things happen.” The trio began hosting café style art projects in their living rooms, but soon discovered—and were inspired by—the FEAST and InCubate programs.

Photo: Katy Asher

The first Portland Stock event was held at galleryHOMELAND—an empty, for lease retail space that currently serves as an art gallery. Chairs, tables, lights—everything!—needed to be brought in to be able to host a dinner/arts event. About 35 people attended, which Bell calls “a nice start…not too overwhelming. We saw what was possible.” What was possible became evident as the second event's attendance doubled to 70 participants, and increased to 100 for the third. “It’s pretty satisfying for each of us," affirms Bell. "We are excited about it as an art event, but it’s also involved on a different level by serving good, local food, and enlisting the help of wonderful volunteers.”

Who Can Apply?

Each month, Portland Stock considers the first 10 proposals meeting their criteria to compete for the grant created from dinner proceeds. The proposal guidelines for Portland-based artists are simple to follow and complete: artists must provide four images and answer four short questions about their specific project. Artists may only offer one proposal per month and may not apply for an entire body of work, just one project. Each month has averaged about seven or eight proposals. Due the week prior to the actual event, proposals are then packaged for for diners. (You can view some of the proposal PDFs on the blog.)

Participants review artists' proposals. Photo: Katy Asher

In November 2009, 100 people attended the dinner hosted at Pacific Northwest College of Art. $540 was raised that night to fund a project by Public Social University that spans oral history workshops, discussions and related activities presented by a variety of speakers. “Public Social University began in 2008 as a collaborative project in Harrell Fletcher's Art & Social Practice class at Portland State University.” The group has created and sponsored free and all-ages public arts events in galleries and the public library. The group presented their project success at the January 2010 event held at the Armory, home to Portland Center Stage. That night, designer Forrest Martin won the grant with his proposed project Death Magazine.

Get Involved in Our Creative Community

Portland Stock takes donations of fresh produce for dinners, and loves volunteers for meal preparation, event set up and break down. If you’ve got a lead on a terrific space for hosting a dinner event, the organizers would be pleased as punch to hear from you, too. The future vision for the event is to secure a regular, centrally located meeting space, ideally with a kitchen and dining room. The group is also interested in doing some kind of exchange series with other like-minded events (like FEAST and InCubate), and to actively engage others to work together in some kind of creative partnership. “We want to connect with other people who are as excited about this event as we are,” beams Bell.

Rozzel Medina and Judy Fleming pitch their Oral History Project to diners.
Photo: Crystal Baxley

In the meantime, people are getting involved. Participation has peaked for diners/voters. Volunteers help prepare and cook on event day, an activity which is “always busy and fun,” confirms Bell, as is their menu planning and preparation. In the winter months, the group purchases produce with the challenge to always “plan delicious, varied meals that aren’t too expensive, but are interesting, local and unique.” This weekend, the team will be making lemon bars for 100 hungry souls who will gather in the PNCA Commons to dine, review and discuss proposals, and vote. Vanessa Renwick, Comrade Clover, Sarah Mirk with the Dill Pickle Club, Ashley Neese and Emily Lieb with LARKE each have propsals in the running. If you’re interested in attending, you need to RSVP at portlandstock@gmail.com as soon as humanly possible.

We’re thrilled that Bell, Asher and Jacob provide this community-inspired project each month. Portland's warm welcome makes it evident that neighbors are thrilled, too. Bell offers these thoughts on the growing popularity of Portland Stock:

What makes this event amazing is that it makes art so accessible and interactive—from the volunteering, to the dining, to choosing art for funding, for the participants, and for artists to answer four questions and have the opportunity to have their work supported…it’s a unique, exciting endeavor, and that’s why we wanted to do it here. We wanted to become an active part of the Portland art scene in a really cool way.

Event organizers shake hands with Mariah Maines and Jess Hirsch (left), winners of Portland Stock's August grant worth $500. Photo: Katy Asher

View Portland Stock proposals archived on its blog site, become a fan on Facebook, and follow on Twitter (@StockPDX) to continue to receive news of homegrown creativity, arts projects not typically found on the funding radar and community building centered on democratic process (and soup). Better yet: attend a dinner and help support local artists and creative projects.

The next Portland Stock event is on Sunday, March 14, 2010 from 6-8 p.m. in the
PNCA Commons, 1241 NW Johnson St. Dinner and Voting Rights = $10.