Easier said than done.
This is because outside of the Art World, there is little money poured into consistent jobs for creative work. Artists are categorically understood to be people who make art objects. Since art objects are not thought to have utilitarian value, art is often considered a luxury good. The public perception of an artist's role is arbitrarily limited to being makers of luxury goods, and so the existing positions and platforms for creative work are limited. There are opportunities for one-time projects, but few options for stable work beyond isolated commissions. We are not accustomed to working with artists in non-arts industries over long time frames, in scenarios without a singular art project. For this reason, people who do not have access to or relate to the Art World may find it difficult to envision interacting with artists professionally.
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Artists' task is to expand world views, which is not always measurable.
It is frequently overlooked that visual artists are not only trained in craft and technique in order to make cultural products, but are also seasoned critical and creative thinkers. In this respect, artists and the creative work they offer challenges the public to consider new ways of approaching the nuanced world around us- and this creative power can be distributed in many different ways.
Because the nature of creative work is so embedded in symbolic (Lukacs, use-value, it is difficult to qualify as a necessity for all people. The 85-91) perspective and knowledge base that artists bring is nuanced and impossible to truly to define. Asn a capitalist society whose value system is rooted in efficiency, measurability and rationalism as the means to profit, it is an uphill battle to convince governments, individuals, and companies to fund long term, highly subjective projects that have no immediately measurable profitability or benefit for its participants.
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The role of the visual artist in contemporary Western society is continually evolving. Contemporary artists benefit from the widely accepted mentality that the definition of art is always expanding. The industry, and eventually the public become open to abnormal, avante-garde events under the legitimizing umbrella of art. In an era of the interdisciplinary workforce, where we see the emergence of fields such as Behavorial Economics and Architectural Sustainability, different professional practices converge in order to address the interconnectedness of society. When two or more fields come together they gain the ability to address more structural issues. There is no reason that artists should be isolated from this interconnectedness. If we can expand the way artists relate to other fields and types of people, the identity of the artist will mean more than maker of cultural products, but contributors to systemic change. The Embedded Artist Project is one example of artists working in this way. Through a collaboration between the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the City of Chicago, the program "embeds" contemporary (Embed- artists in city government with the goal of bringing "new perspectives, ded Artist mindsets, and processes to develop and execute projects that have a Project) lasting impact on the future of Chicago." One of their projects lead by the artist Frances Whitehead, called Slow Cleanup, uses low cost solar energy techniques (phytoremediation) to repurpose abandoned gas stations throughout Chicago. Whether or not this project is considered an artwork is not of crucial importance to Whitehead, but her role as an artist within the project is unique. In an interview with Claudine Ise of Art 21 Magazine from 2010, she says, "Artists are modeling new potential roles, without any certainty [...] I believe that even when I do design, or landscape, or sustainability, or city planning, I do it differently than the people who were trained to do that, because I have a different knowledge, a different habitas than them. I'm redirecting art practice and it is a critical redirection, but critique is not the end in itself."
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