Our Cultural Center
A 30-episode Web Series about a cultural center that struggles to stay afloat. My concept for this production was to show how the golden age of art making was ending. I wanted to highlight all the great art that was happening around us and highlight the lack of support it was receiving.
Art can do so much, but without funding it is not sustainable. This series was dedicated to feature the work of a local artist in every 3rd episode, and we partnered with a local Art center to help promote both of our efforts. Selected to feature in both Miami and La WebFests in 2014 you can find the series on YouTube.
VICTORIA CRAFT
is an enthusiastic, cheerful, and oft times mayhem-producing art center executive who is familiar with foisting her problems on others. Victoria is passionate about art and beauty, loves being around creative people, and doesn’t have a clue about how to run a business. Her marriage with Randall fell apart largely due to the fact that she saw Randall as a marginalizing jackass who never truly appreciated her vision.
RANDALL VANDEBERG
is a calculating attorney who can come across as being sleazy. He is a successful attorney who specializes in personal injury law and sees the arts as frivolous. Randall sees himself as a mature, sober person and values money, status, and success usually for very pragmatic reasons. He is distrustful of emotion and embarrassed by his ex-wife’s impulsiveness. He married Victoria because he was attracted to her playful spark, but he also hoped she would grow up over the years. He and Victoria have known each other their whole lives and were married for 10 of those years. This history makes life difficult at times for him to be around her due to her nasty habit of seeing through him.
PETER BOMBA
is an earnest, genuinely talented intern from Wyoming who is in way over his head in Chicago. In his early 20s, Pete is fresh-faced and innocent. He is a painter and illustrator who developed a unique style growing up in Wyoming, but grew eager to escape to the big city. He is enthusiastic but very green, and not at all prepared for the realities of the art world. He wants to make friends, create art, and have fun. Why should there be conflict in any of that?
LOUIE
is a gruff, nose to the grindstone-type artist who prefers to block out distractions and focus on his work. After having found interest in creating sculpture while working in a scrap metal yard he met Vicki, who opened up the basement of her mother-in-law’s newly acquired office building to him where he stumbled into fame as a Chicago artist. Twenty years later he has a studio, a place to teach, a gallery space, and living quarters all in one: The Craft Family Art Center. All of this earns him the title, emeritus: Artist-in-Residence. Despite his success as an artist, he’s still living underground, welding long into the night struggling with the idea that at any moment this can all be taken from him. Louie maintains his Chicago-based humanity and comes across as more of blue-collar, Bears football loving sort.
KATEE CRAFT
is a very attractive but arrogant receptionist whose high opinion of herself does not correspond to her abilities. Katee is a woman on a mission. Her mission: never go into the arts. Once she gets her business degree, she plans to go out into the real world and make her fortune... one rich businessman at a time. She thinks the arts are beyond silly, and a waste of time for everyone involved. After all, when is the last time anyone sold any art? She is Victoria's niece, which, incidentally, is the only reason she has and continues to keep her job.