Spring 2006
Fractured Atlas Quarterly Newsletter
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The Accidental Activist
It was a cold January day in 2003. Kathryn Blume was depressed by the weather, the state of her acting career and most of all, by an escalating American offensive against Iraq. Disillusioned but indomitable, Blume decided to take matters into her own hands.
Along with fellow actor and co-creator Sharon Bower, Blume began a series of conversations with colleagues across the globe. Their idea: organize staged readings of Aristophanes'...
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Campaigning for Affordable Healthcare
by Adam Natale
Fractured Atlas has launched a pilot program intended to improve the quality of life for many thousands of artists across the country. The Greater DC Area Health Insurance Awareness Campaign aims to prove that artists are a generally healthy bunch and are therefore an attractive group to insure. After surveying local artists and compiling data provided to us by residents of the Washington, DC area, a public awareness campaign will be aimed at...
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National Healthcare Update
The American healthcare system is a spectacular mess, and artists are disproportionately underserved by our current employer-based model. Meanwhile in Washington, Congress is facing a handful of proposals that would radically alter the market for health insurance, especially with respect to self-employed individuals like artists. Here are a few of the bills that Fractured Atlas is watching closely:
The Small Business Health Fairness Act of...
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Silk Parachute or Broken Umbrella
by Diane Vivona and Steve Gross
Over the last decade, being prepared for a career in the arts has become an increasingly prevalent issue for artists entering the professional world. While talent, drive and some good luck may have been the founding features of success for artists in past decades, these elements don't seem to be enough these days. Why this shift has occurred can be traced to a number of factors, many of which are not limited to the art world: Changing...
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Toasting to Community
Artists, in grant applications, social functions and mission statements, toss around the word "community" as often as possible. Community, it seems, is something that one talks about, but rarely invests oneself in. Those of us fortunate enough to live and work in New York City enjoy the largest concentration of artists per capita of anywhere in the world. We come in contact with fellow artists everyday — sometimes not even...
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Voices Together
My name is David Ippolito and I'm a very lucky man. For the past 14 years, I've been known to hundreds of thousands of people as "That Guitar Man from Central Park." I am fortunate enough to be able to do what I love to do, though the marriage between art and commerce is often a rocky road.
I believe art should be a mirror which reflects the world around us. But in 2005, I organized a group of friends and fellow artists to go a...
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