I've spent nearly FIve years among Seattle's visual artists, and I've come to realize that in the delicate and slightly mysterious formula that dictates whether or not an arts scene becomes something to be taken seriously, money is just as crucial as high-mindedness, creativity, and skill. That the arts are lively in Seattle is a good start, but it takes investment, cold hard cash, to keep artists going--to keep them, perhaps, from leaving for places where there are more collectors, more public money, better grant opportunities.

Which is why on Wednesday October 8, The Stranger will award $5,000 each to a visual artist, a theater artist, a writer, a member of the filmmaking community, and an arts organization that has gone beyond the call of duty. We're giving away $25,000, and not one cent of that money comes with so much as a single string attached to it. Instead, it's five grand to encourage, to promote, to say thanks for making Seattle arts that much better.

There is very little money for arts in Seattle that is not tagged to some specific project; certainly there are a good number of artists making a living, however quiet, at visual art by taking public art commissions and being involved in community projects. But this is not what moves a city forward in artistic significance. A city does not rise on Pigs on Parade, nor on Salmon in the City, nor on afterschool dance programs for at-risk kids. This kind of arts-as-therapy is the legacy of the culture war, when the National Endowment for the Arts decided it was too risky to fund artists directly (goodness, they might go and photograph a man with a bullwhip stuck up his ass). But tying art to social work is wrongheaded and cowardly. What artists need is room to breathe, room to do what artists do. Just showing up for First Thursday or First Saturday or Second Saturday is not enough.

Artist Trust, bless it, has been giving artists significant fellowships for years, but outside of this, most arts money in Seattle is given to institutions rather than artists. We've got nothing against institutions--we're giving one of our awards to an institution--but we want to give a good chunk of money to a few individuals who we feel are underknown, undershown, underfunded, underpraised. We want to give money to artists for whom it would make a difference; although even the most "emerged" artists could very well use $5,000, we want this money to be a career boost rather than a career affirmation. We want to give an artist money to pay the bills, to put up a play, to take a mind-expanding trip to Brazil, to stop taking temp jobs for a few months and finish that book. We want to take a break from our relentless critique of Seattle's cultural life to thank some people for making that life a whole hell of a lot more stimulating.

Our model for these awards is the MacArthur "genius" award--meaning that there's no application process. Rather, we're pairing the opinions of as many people who want to communicate with us (genius@thestranger.com) with our own vast knowledge of what goes on around here to "tap" the first generation of Stranger geniuses. We'll announce the winners on October 8, and on Friday October 10 the public will be invited to an exhibition featuring the work of those artists and what promises to be a lively arts blowout party/bash, with DJs and live music. At this party we're throwing for the entire arts community--and the public--we hope to parade the Stranger Genius Award winners in front of as many curators, collectors, patrons of the arts, and arts administrators as we can.

Why are we doing this? Because there's no use sitting around and waiting for government spending on artists to increase. And because we can't bear to read one more time that Seattle's art, theater, film, and literary scenes are "burgeoning." The arts here have been in a state of adolescence for too long, simmering without coming to a boil, and it's certainly not for lack of interesting people creating interesting work. What keeps an art scene, in whatever genre, from reaching a state of real generative self-sufficiency is a lack of money.

And finally, the Stranger Genius Awards are also a way for us to give something back to the arts community. We sometimes have a prickly relationship with artists and arts organizations because we cover the arts. Unlike the crowd of friends, family members, patrons, and hangers-on at openings who can smile and say, "Nice work!" even if they don't believe the work they saw was all that nice, we have to go back to our offices and let our readers know exactly what we really think. Sometimes we have to say, "Not very nice work," or "Near-miss work," or even "Totally crap work." So we're always delighted when we find something we love, something we can get enthusiastic about, something we can order our readers to run out and see. The Genius Awards are another way for us to bring attention to, and recognize the contributions of, the outstanding artists in Seattle.

The Genius Award winners will be announced in the October 9th issue of The Stranger, and the awards themselves are made possible in part by the generous support of Lucky Strike. We hope you'll come to the party, view the art, and congratulate our local geniuses.