BY JESSICA RODRIGO The Las Cruces Bulletin What do gallery owners, tattoo artists, muralists, sculptures and graffiti artists all have in common? They all represented parts of the art community during the Talking Stick Institute’s Benchmarking Workshop. Sponsored by the New Mexico State University small business consulting course and held in the Otero Room on the lower level of Corbett Center the workshop was a two-part endeavor to build the Las Cruces arts scene. The Talking Stick Institute (TSI) was put together by Professor David Boje and doctorate student David Tobey after an observation was made by the duo that many of the South­ern New Mexico small businesses were going outside of Las Cruces for business counseling. The two offered workshops to small businesses on how to market themselves, tell their business story and perfect their pro­cesses. “We thought that one of the things that wasn’t happening here in Las Cruces is that small businesses weren’t talking and listening to each other,” said Boje about the founding of the TSI. “So the Talking Institute gets them together in a common place and they pass the talking stick, getting students to actively listen and get the business people to listen to each other.” This semester as part the management course, Boje put his small business consulting class composed of undergraduate, masters and doctorate students to work with the community and strive to make the arts the primary identity of the Las Cruces. The class has been divided into groups working with individual clients in the city ranging from solo artists to groups of artists like the City of Artists Promotional Association (CAPA) and Art­Forms. This semester has been focused on the business of art, where as the last few workshops have focused on a wide range of businesses. After some people from the arts community approached the professor and asked for some help in the arts scene, Boje and Tobey made the decision to aim their efforts towards putting Las Cruces on the map for its arts. “I went out and went to lunch, had everybody over at the house, met some other artists,” said Boje, “and I was getting pretty much the same grand narrative that there had been a lot of attempts to organize in the past and they had created little spurts of activity or maybe a special event that recurs but nothing that was really bringing anything together.” The first of the two workshops, “Pitch to win,” brought together more than 25 members of the arts com­munity to discuss what can be done in Las Cruces to improve its iden­tity. The event occurred on Oct. 1 in Guthrie Hall on the NMSU campus and marked the beginning of a long­term project of Boje and his manage­ment students. Each workshop is designed to try and answer spe­cific questions that lead the root cause of the problem – the lack of an arts scene in Las Cruces. A few of the remarks made at the October workshop pointed fingers at the absence of cohesion between art­ists, art groups and the art galleries. Juan Carlos, a local poet, mentioned that there are many galleries here in town, but they seem to work against each other instead of work­ing together. Others said that it’s the lack of know how that is creating the delay in growth of the arts community. “Artists don’t know how to pro­mote themselves or their work,” said Susan Frary, metal sculptor and marketing committee chairperson for CAPA. “They want it done for them.” Suggestions for accomplishing the grand task of pro­motions included asking the city for funding. This fund­ing would help design and print brochures to be put in the Visitor’s and Convention Bureau, local hotels and other points of interest for tourists. However, after manage­ment student Jessica Overby visited with the Las Cruces Visitors and Convention Bureau, it became apparent that the bureau did not see the arts scene in Las Cruces as important enough to generate money for the city. The workshop opened up many eyes and ears of gal­lery owners and local artists of the problems that are pre­venting the arts scene in Las Cruces from growing to its potential. No matter what the reason however, the group agreed unanimously that there is a large and growing arts scene in the city, but its needs molding and discovery just as any piece of good art does. “I feel like we have made tremendous progress here tonight,” said Ruth Drayer, painter and numerologist, of the events that had taken place and the wealth of com­ments and ideas that had been exchanged. At the benchmarking workshop in November, the group took a look at the 2007 publication of American Styles Magazine for possible cit­ies to benchmark against. In the Top 25 Arts Scenes for small cities and towns (populations fewer than 100,000) were two New Mexican cit­ies – Santa Fe and Taos. Though the cities are very prominent in the arts, the participants felt that it was diffi­cult to deem the cities as comparable because a lack information regard­ing demographics of the city and of its information on its residents. “I don’t know how much sense it makes to benchmark against a place like Santa Fe,” said Cati Waterman, program coordinator of the Doña Ana Arts Council. “I would love to see a vibrant art scene where an artist can still afford loft space, and when normal human beings can still buy the art created and at the same time allow our artists to make a reasonable living.” Waterman expressed that it would be important to find out what other things the cities have to offer other than the cost of living in order to follow their footsteps and that it should be noted that the city we benchmark should be similar to Las Cruces. Cheryl Fallstead, member of ArtForms, felt that it was important for Las Cruces to be aware of these kinds of polls so that they can be represented by the distribution of votes. “If this magazine was asking its reader’s to vote then somehow we need to be aware of things like that and get people to vote,” Fallstead said. “We have to know when something like this is happening so that we can get all our supporters to vote because if we don’t get our name out there on some list, people aren’t going to be aware of us.” The workshop ended with a round of recommenda­tions that could be made to the mayor and the city man­ager to help improve the Las Cruces arts scene. Many of the ideas were simply to educate the public and to communicate with the city government to inform them about the importance of art in the city. Others suggested specific vehicles of promotions such as an art directory that includes all artists, art groups and galleries in Las Cruces and Doña Ana County with contact info, or more juried art shows throughout the year. A recurring idea that has been making a huge impact in other cities is the plan to transform one of the old empty buildings Downtown into an “artist incubator,” as Boje puts it. The building will house several artists’ studios and be open for studio tours and for the public to visit. Boje and the group said they hope to see more effort put into the Las Cruces arts scene and watch it grow from a blank canvas to a recognized piece of art that leaves an everlasting impression on the people who visit this city and the people that make this city what it is now. “Right now,” Boje said, “I think that there is momen­tum in the community to develop that arts scene identity and it’s just a little bit under organized right now.”