Where ART Lives Magazine Volume 4 Number 1 | Page 44

Reflecting on a decade of Terrain
Luke Baumgarten - Terrain Co-Founder
The Terrain event in Spokane, WA features a ton of art, music, literary
performance, dance and film created by local artists. The event didn’t
start that way with this being Terrain’s 10th year it has grown
significantly and so has the patronage and art sales.
If you attend Terrain you will see thousands of people gathered to see
what our region’s young and emerging artists have been up to this year
and, more generally, to celebrate and support the act of creation. At
the event patrons get a chance to meet artist whose work they admire,
and hopefully make a couple of new friends.
Every year when it comes time for Terrain to ask local media outlets to
cover our event, they usually ask, “What’s new this year?” It’s a really
hard question for the organization to answer because they hope that if
they are doing their job right, the main thing you notice is the art and
the performance. Terrain doesn’t feel that they are story, or at least
they don’t feel they should be. So when the question comes up, they tend
to talk about incremental changes. Making things better and easier and
faster for people. The line was shorter than normal this year and, once
you got inside, the space was a lot more open, allowing people to browse
without feeling rushed. It’s hard to see, in the moment, the big
changes.  
Zooming out, though — with a couple weeks of hindsight, after looking at
the numbers and reflecting on the way this year came together and the
people who showed up — it’s very, very clear: Spokane is a completely
different place than it was when we started Terrain in 2008.
It’s so much different than even 5 years ago.
Terrain feels fortunate that they have always had good crowds. They’ve
grown over the years and they also gotten a lot more diverse. It isn’t
just artists supporting other artists, and it isn’t just friends and
family. People are coming from all over the region, and even outside of
it. There were folks who drove over from Seattle, and up from Boise.
And when those out-of-town folks get to the event, they’re seeing a
vast cross-section of our whole community, not just a sliver, including
way more people of color and GLBTQA folks than your average evening out
downtown. It’s truly incredible.
44