By Lauren Kotkin, ASF
To some, they are sweet, gooey marshmallows. To others, they are cause for artistic inspiration. No matter how you slice it, Peeps candies are the featured subjects of the hugely popular annual diorama contest held by The Washington Post, as evidenced by the hundreds of entries each year and thousands of fans across the country.
A few years ago, I served as the Peeps Curator—or Peeps Wrangler, as others like to jest. That is, I contacted the forty-odd contest semi-finalists and finalists and invited them to display their clever, sticky creations at Artomatic, a five-week arts event in the DC-metro area.
Artomatic is the Wild West of arts events. If you can imagine—and organize—it, it can happen at Artomatic. The recipe is simple: take 1,000 visual artists and give them each a 10’ foot space to hang their artwork in an empty office building. Add performers in the evenings, workshops for kids and adults on weekends, invite the public and poof! You’ve got an arts happening. This year, Artomatic is expecting more than 75,000 people to stream in from across the region to take in a diversity of artwork, music, dance, fashion, poetry, and, of course, the Peeps dioramas.
Local art critics always begin, end, or punctuate their reviews with the phrase “love it or hate it” because of the unjuried, potluck nature of the event. But I love it. The diversity of human creative expression—whether some think of it as art or not—is unmatched. And as an Artomatic volunteer, I love dispelling the unfair stereotypes of this city; creativity is actually alive and well in a metro area that the rest of the country thinks of as more suited for, well, a suit.
Equally important, Artomatic has proven its power to bring attention to transforming neighborhoods in DC. In 2010, ASF held a session at its National Conference called “Artist Spaces + Community Transformation.” As was discussed in the session, arts spaces bring attention to neighborhoods in which philanthropists, businesses, and individuals can invest time, money, talent for the benefit of a community’s long-term economic development.
At Artomatic, there is no “they,” only “we.” The nation’s capital is our community, and we all make it happen.
Senior Program Director Lauren Kotkin joined ASF’s educational programs team in 2007 and plans conferences, seminars, conference calls, and webinars. Before moving to Washington, DC, in 2005, Lauren was the education director of a children’s museum near Boston, managing the facility and developing and delivering programs for educators, museum colleagues, children, and families. Lauren is an artist and exhibits and volunteers for Artomatic, an annual month-long art festival in Washington, DC.
