Paper Mache
Remember that overused quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results?”
Often wrongly attributed to Albert Einstein, the quote first appeared in 1981 in a Narcotics Anonymous guidebook for addicts trying to get clean and sober. So, what does this have to do with Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture?
Like many organizations, we are planning our programs and events for next year in our theaters and art galleries. As part of that process, we have realized that what we have been doing does not seem to be working and yet we have continued to repeat long-established patterns.
Rather than resign ourselves to the likes of the insane, we want to start with a clean canvas so to speak. We’ll keep popular programs like concerts with John Paris and Tom and Gay Galvin. We’ll host student art shows and live youth performances.
What else can we bring to the community that will inspire residents to come out for an experience that they cannot have anywhere else locally?
Is it time to bring a drag brunch series to Yuba-sutter? How about a major anime/cosplay event or a “Mama Mia” sing along or craft cocktail competition? Should we consider a Chalk Art Festival or a Yuba Sutter Has Talent event? We have even talked about bringing back the Yuba City Cultural Festival. We recently hosted art exhibits in our reopened galleries that few people attended featuring stellar indigenous artists and an internationally known Sikh artist with local roots. And then, “the most unkindest cut of all” was at our recent Veteran Artists exhibit opening reception when no one came to appreciate their remarkable work and to say “thank you” to these two men who between them served our country for over 30 years in three branches of the military.
So let us hear from you. Write to me at david@yubasutterarts.org or call the office to let us know what you’d like to see us bring to the community in 2022. Keep up with it all at yubasutterarts.org.
(Paper Mache is a weekly column about the arts community by David Read, director of Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture.)