I often joke that my family is the product of a federal jobs program. But it’s true.

In 1978, in the aftermath of New York City’s financial collapse - amid the oil crisis, Vietnam, Watergate, and nearly 10 percent unemployment - I was hired as a CETA artist. CETA, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, was a Nixon-era federal program designed to put Americans back to work. Thanks to the vision of a Bay Area arts administrator, artists were included. New York City went on to create the largest CETA Arts Project in the country, employing roughly 500 accomplished but underemployed artists.

​

I was placed in charge of the film and video artists. That’s where I met Ellin Burke, who

oversaw the writers and photographers. Together, we documented the project while identifying artists and community organizations for a film I produced called The Federal Artist. Ellin and I later married and had twins. So yes - my family quite literally emerged from a public investment in artists.

​

Decades later, after completing It’s Basic - a documentary about the Guaranteed Income

movement that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival - I was approached by Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY). When they learned I had once been a CETA artist, they asked if I would consider documenting their initiative.

 

CRNY was born in the wake of the COVID pandemic, which devastated artists across

New York State. In response, the Mellon Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and Ford Foundation made a bold, three-year, $125 million investment in artists’ financial stability and the organizations that rely on their work. The program provided $1,000 a month for 18 months to 2,400 artists statewide, and full-time, salaried employment - with benefits - to 300 artists embedded in community-based organizations.

​

The challenge of this film was scale and diversity: capturing artists across the state while

centering those whose work directly strengthens their communities. We also wanted to place CRNY within a longer lineage of public investment in the arts - from the WPA in the 1930s to CETA in the 1970s.

​

At its core, this film views artists as workers. It intentionally counters the myth of

the superstar artist by focusing on the many who struggle to make a living yet remain deeply committed to their neighbors and neighborhoods. In that sense, we approached artists as essential workers - people whose labor shapes civic life, collective memory, and social connection.

​

Visually, we made a deliberate choice to foreground the artists’ work itself. Rather than

relying on conventional B-roll, we used paintings, photographs, poetry, music, dance, and theater as interpretive textures - allowing the art to guide the film’s emotional rhythm.

​

While we could not ignore the traumas and political tensions that gave rise to this

experiment, we were equally committed to capturing joy, dignity, and hope. Finding the right balance - between history and immediacy, critique and celebration - took time.

​

Ultimately, we aimed to make a film that is accessible to everyone: students, artists,

administrators, and policymakers alike. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Art in America has always belonged to the people.” This film is an invitation to reconsider what it means to invest in them.

​

​