Whitney Ranson

The talk Whitney Ranson gave us was pretty good. I liked hearing about the inner workings of the Urban Art Commission because I’ve been thinking about participating in programs like it. I’ve done some similar projects through the Give Back program, but nothing I had to apply for. Now that I know how the selection process works, I’m less nervous about it. I also really appreciate how invested they seem in the whole process, making sure every step is clear, and the artist always has help if needed. I also really like the variety of projects they do, in terms of style and medium, it is so great that this program exists.

I do think she went in to maybe a bit too much detail. I was happy to hear about the Urban Art Commission since I didn’t know much about it, but I would have been more interested in hearing how it started up. I don’t think She was necessarily the person to ask, but I want to know how Memphis got the 1% funding for the arts, and did the Urban Arts Commission get created specifically to handle that? I didn’t need to hear every single step of the process, though maybe it would have interesting if she had shown us more projects as examples. Seeing the original sketch compared to the finished mural was surprising, so I wanted to see how often that kind of shift happens. Overall though, I’m glad we got a bit of diversity in there for our talks so we can see an example of a successful young person in our general field.