Allied Arts executive director departs

MOSES LAKE — LeAnn Pauley holds up the photo of a beaming infant.

There's a bit of a family resemblance. Which there should be. The boy is Henry, just short of 3 months old, and very soon, Pauley's headed to Mililani, Hawaii, to spend some time with him as his mother goes back to work.

"I'd given up all hope I was going to be a grandma, so I told my daughter if she ended up making me a grandma, I would be Grandma as long as she needed me to be Grandma," Pauley said.

Originally, the plan was to play Grandmother for a full year. However, Pauley's daughter probably considered the fact the family would be living together in a small, two-bedroom condominium and decided three months was long enough, Pauley noted with a laugh.

Pauley's last day with the Allied Arts is Feb. 9. She first joined the organization in June 2001.

When she returns to Moses Lake, Pauley hopes to devote more time to her own creative projects, something the schedule of being executive director doesn't allow.

"When you start into it … you think it's going to be part-time and because you love the arts, you assume everybody else loves and supports the arts," Pauley said. "While I think a lot of people do love the arts, the financial support isn't always there. So you spend an incredible amount of time worrying about money, how you're going to pay the bills and where you go from here."

Pauley first arrived in Moses Lake in 2000 to open a business. She accepted the position because she felt the schedule would fit in with her business, also in the arts. But the business experienced the same challenges Allied Arts faces, Pauley said.

"The support for the arts isn't where it would be very nice if it was," she said.

Pauley rattled off the major contributors to the arts program. It's about five or six organizations.

"When someone can sit here and list all their major contributors, that's a problem," she said. "I don't have to look at a list. There used to be more of them, and every year, we lose somebody else. And I think it's hard for people who really believe in the arts to understand

The lack of support is something Pauley sees across the nation.

"When people are trying to figure out where their financial contributions are going to go, the problems from hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and children who need things, those just feel more compelling to most people than supporting the arts," she said. "And so the dollars go in a different direction than the arts."

Pauley credits First Lady Laura Bush with keeping national support going for the arts, but in this state, the Allied Arts program no longer qualifies for state arts commission grants because the budget is too small.

"Places where we used to get money, we're not getting money the way we used to get money, if we're getting it at all," she said.

The lack of support extends to the arts themselves, she said, partly because some of the people directing the artistic organizations have taken on an elitist attitude and become intimidating to potential audience members, or the price of putting on the production is more expensive than ticket prices.

"They don't work well enough together, they don't see themselves as allies who are all in it together and could benefit from helping each other," she said. "There are all kinds of groups involved in the arts, but they don't really support each other."

Pauley doesn't see herself as accomplishing anything particularly major during her time as executive director.

"I've seen myself in this position as an encourager and a cheerleader, not as someone who's created anything," she said. She finds it frustrating to have so many elements be out of her control, such as level of interest in a performance, conflicting schedules or poor weather keeping audiences at home.

Her biggest disappointment is that she was unable to create a financially stable organization. While she's cut costs at every opportunity, she said, it's not the same as creating a budget where one is free from fear. She also wanted to create a comedy series to support the traditional series.

When she returns, Pauley plans to look for work.

"I'll probably be looking for something where I can go, I can leave and I don't think about it until I arrive and leave again," she said. "I really want to start concentrating on my art. It could be the painting, the pottery, the yard sculptures, the writing, but I'm happiest when I'm creating things."