AIR (Arts Incubator of Richardson)

Interview with Pat Porter,
Former Executive Director of NTBCA (North Texas Business for Culture and the Arts) now known as Business Council for the Arts
(by Ekaterina Konovalova)

As Founding Executive Director of NTBCA (North Texas Business for Culture and the Arts) now known as Business Council for the Arts, Pat Porter has more than 50 years of art advocacy experience. Pat Porter started her career at the Dallas Museum of Art as the Director of Public Programs and Publications, and she later joined Southern Methodist University as Associate Vice President for University Relations and was also Co-Founder and Director of the Tate Lecture Series for five years.

She founded NTBCA in 1988 at the request of corporate leaders in the Dallas Citizens Council and Raymond D. Nasher, Chairman and pioneered and successfully implemented numerous programs, including the Leadership Arts Institute, On My Own Time, ArtWorks, The Art of Business, and the Obelisk Tribute. She is a dedicated spouse of a talented journalist and a former art critic, Bob Porter, and the mother of three artists.

1. Why did you decide to be a part of AIR?

I am a life-long resident of this area. Our children went to Richardson schools. We moved here because we thought this was the most supportive, substantially artistic environment that we could find for our children. We moved here in 1963. I wanted to be supportive of the city of Richardson because they had given us so much. I also wanted to be a part of a like-minded group of advocates who realize that you can’t be a successful city municipality without a strong cultural brand and Richardson has that. I am also charmed and delighted by the idea of an entirely new arts incubator in this part of the country.

2. What is art for you? How would you define art?

a. Truth, expression and revelations of the essence of a time and place as seen through the eyes of one who discerns change and community striving in a manner ordinary people either miss or confuse.

b. Art is that sound, movement, tone of voice, phrasing or community of those that can change your view of the world.

3. Who is your favorite artist (painter, musician, dancer, performer, etc.) and why?

James Galway, his flute is the voice of angels; Yo Yo Ma, the sound of the cello releases endorphins that calm and inspire me; Meryl Streep, an elegant, gifted performer who transports me; Van Gogh, the eternal vision of transcendent beauty sparked by madness and the vision  that must grip all true artists. But it was madness that inspired him to look at the haystacks and see not haystacks but bursts of color and wildly eccentric straws flying everywhere.

I don’t understand the passion that keeps them [artists] moving forward when they meet denial and criticism constantly. I don’t understand how they reach inside themselves every day and come up with new inspiration. I don’t understand anything about the artists, but, boy, I am eager to support them because they are all I have.

4. What is your favorite quote about the art?

My favorite quote is by James McNeill Whistler: “All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.” Artists have to create, they can’t help themselves, and yet every day they reach inside themselves into this place of stillness and they bring forth yet one more very beautiful thing.

5. What advice can you give to an aspiring artist?

I don’t think that I am competent or capable of giving an artist advice. However, I can give them this counsel: take a good business course, take some good bookkeeping courses, take some good marketing courses because what you have is a product, and the selling of art need not be artistic. It needs to be business. It needs to be something that you work at every day. In addition to creating that art, you have to create your persona. I also think that artists need to affiliate themselves and be collaborative with other artists. They need to be a gang that knows what their vision is and that they are moving forward. I know that art is a solitary creative process but I also know that we get energy from other ideas that are flowing around us.