The City of Santa Clarita now has appointed five people to be Cultural Arts Comissioners. The Cultural Arts Commission had 16 people apply for one of the five positions to be an Arts Commissioner. Each of the 16 people presented an application and three letters of recommendation to the Ccty council members. All five city council members read all of the applications and letters of recommendation and each council member could choose one person to be their nomination for one of the art commissioners. The city council chose four men and one woman to be Art Commissioners. The names of the new Arts Commissioners are: Michael Millard, Paul Strickland, John Dow, Eric Schmidt and Sandy Fisher.
Of the five chosen three are music educators and two are visual art people. The responsibility of these five people chosen to be Cultural Arts Commissioners will be to encourage the appreciation of and participation in the arts among community members and organizations.
Creativity, leadership and vision will be needed of all five new arts commissioners to make the arts inform and sustain the people in our community to understand and appreciate the importance of the arts. The residents of the Santa Clarita community will now wait and see how the five new arts commissioners will provide unique relationships in the arts for the community.
As the new arts commissioners establish their agendas for the coming calendar year we can anticipate sometime in the future to be able to call members of the arts commission with questions about the local theater scene, arts education in the public schools, or even where to get a painting appraised. Let’s all give the five new arts commissioners a warm applause for their interest in giving their time and expertise to creating some new art programs for all of us in Santa Clarita.
Jaylene Armstrong is a retired Art Educatior from Madison, Wisconsin. For more information or if you have questions, please call 661-255-3050.