Connecting our Arts Community…to You!
Southern Oregon is a center of unique and diverse creative talent. From distinguished fine artists to outsiders, our area is home to award winners and promising new talent in a vast range of disciplines and host to an annual array of theater, music, food and wine festivals. As our trend of excellence and achievement continues, so do our collaborations; increasingly multifaceted, many events frame the primary work on display with a well-rounded presentation including music, wine tasting from local artisan wineries and gourmet catering using locally grown and made cheeses, chocolates and organic foods, all produced by award-winning artists in their own fields.
It is our goal to provide a comprehensive directory that will be a convenient hub for the promotion of local and regional artists, a scheduling and collaboration reference for galleries, venues and event planners, and a travel planning resource for visitors coming to enjoy the rich palette of Southern Oregon arts & culture. Further, it is our hope that this resource will both unify the broad spectrum of our arts community and convey a compelling sense of the vibrant arts scene in Southern Oregon which encourages travelers to come for a visit and sample our nationally and internationally acclaimed artistic and cultural offerings.
For more information on what’s happening now in the Southern Oregon arts scene, calls to artists and art classes and workshops, subscribe to Art Matters!. Facebook users can like SOAR’s facebook page to receive links to Art Matters! posts in their news feed. Twitter users can follow SOAR @SOARtists.
We welcome your feedback and hope you will contact us with your questions, comments or suggestions.
This site was created and maintained by Hannah West of Hannah West Design, LLC in Jacksonville, Oregon, and launched on January 1, 2010. Though usually referred to as “we”, it’s really a one-woman show. Born of my concern for the ability of artists in our area to continue creating under the pressures that have arisen in the last few years, the total of the modest fees we ask for listings in our directories (so artists can afford them!) falls far short of the time, research and love I put into the site and its blog every day. Below are a few ways you may be able to help support this endeavor.
Download and print our flyers to help spread the word to artists and the public:
Promo Flyer – Artists
Advertise: Southern Oregon businesses who would like to take advantage of our arts and culture demographics can learn more here.
Art Matters! content is brought to you by syndicating the blogs written by our southern Oregon artist members and aggregating news and announcements from state and national arts advocacy groups and news sources, as well as custom posts written by the editor. Some of these posts involve research and travel in addition to the time it takes to write and assemble them. We want to dispel the myth that “Art is a Luxury” by informing residents and visitors of the many ways art makes our community the wonderful place it is, write artist profiles and interviews and cover art events live, but this can be a challenge with a limited budget. If you would like to sponsor a post, please contact the editor to learn more. We’re sure there’s a topic you’d be happy to throw your weight behind, and we’ll give you or your business a prominent presence in the post. SOAR and Art Matters! are visited regularly by people from the Rogue Valley and around the world, with more discovering us for the first time each month – it’s a great strategy for advertising internationally while supporting the arts locally!