The Anonymous Questionnaire

Get one of these in the mail?

It surprised me as much as you.


All of the issues on the questionnaire
were raised by the bylaws committee
earlier this year,
and ultimately,
none of them were approved
by either the committee or the board.

But if you study them,
you will find that
many of them are not really bad ideas.

Perhaps,
as some committee members said,
these kind of issues
are more appropriate
as board policies instead of by-laws.


But, incredibly enough,
the board has no policies
to guide academy administration.

Zero -- nada -- nothing.

So, for example,
no attention is paid
to all of the class and workshop policies
which were passed by the board in 2004.

There are no guidelines for doing anything,
so the P&C is not being run by its board or its membership,
it's being run by the office.
(i.e. the President and the Executive Director)


Which is not a disaster,
as long as everything keeps running smoothly
and there's money in the bank.

And if there is a majority voice at the P&C,
it says loud and clear:

"Leave me alone, I just want to paint!"

But eventually,
it would be a good idea
to make the committees,
the board,
and the quarterly meetings
viable institutions once again.

Because eventually,
if members
don't participate in their own organization,
it's not going to serve them
or the kind of art,
that is found here
and nowhere else in Chicago.

Exhibit: Andy Chan

Andy Hoi-Csiu Chan
229 W. Cermak Road
Chicago, Illinois

In many ways,
this is the most important exhibit
the P&C has had in twenty years,
and also the most characteristic of what 'art'
meant to the earliest members of the club.

Even if Andy Chan comes from an Asian,
rather than European,
tradition of painting,
which I have written about
here



So here's a whole bunch of pictures
which I will augment
over the next week or so.





This is the earliest piece in the show,
made before Andy was 24,
and even before
he studied in Hong Kong
with a master of the Lingnan school
































































































































































(and it's also the most flowers
I've ever seen in our hallway)

Exhibit: Marion Steffy

(Photograph by Marion's husband,
Jim Nieds)

Exhibit: Charlotte Arnold