Cultural Placemaking Through the Arts - Ara Barlieb and Pamela Wallace

Annotation Ara Barlieb and Pamela Wallace are artists originally from the Lehigh Valley. Barlieb and Wallace are film artists who also work with a local theater company. They create non-profit, non-commercial, documentary film work, which they have done together since 1989. They have worked with Crowded Kitchen Players since the company's founding in 2000. Wallace is a publicist and does work with the Crowded Kitchen Players. Barlieb directs and writes many of the plays for Crowded Kitchen Players. In this interview, Barlieb and Wallace talk about the unique contributions that local, non-commercial artists make to the community and to the arts. They describe the threats facing independent and non-commercial artists in the contemporary moment, about the perception that local art is not refined, and about the challenges of making a living for young artists today. This interview is part of a series of interviews conducted by Lehigh University in collaboration with area artists Doug Roysdon (Mock Turtle Marionette Theater), Anna Russell, and Avi Setton. These interviews were supported in part by the Lehigh University Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative. An oral history interview is an act of memory and hence both highly selective and highly subjective. While it accurately reflects what a narrator remembers (or chooses to tell) of his or her experience and viewpoints, it may not accurately represent what actually transpired or what another person may have experienced. As such users should subject interviews to the same degree of critical scrutiny they would any other historical source.