My name is Cameron (Cam) Schitter and I am the child of two mothers. Don't be shocked. I have been, at one time or another, the child of up to 8 mothers. The stirrups of my dual motherhood are currently filled by concurrent grants from the NSF and NEA, respectively. Rather than antagonizing one another, these two, seemingly contraindicating, entities, tolerate one another in what some call complete harmony. If another project like this exists, I am unaware of it. You are thinking something to yourself. I can tell. This will clear up any questions you might have.

The National Science Foundation, expressing interest in my study “Artist at Work” had seen fit to give me 30 large to perform an exhaustive study of the behavioral changes an artist experiences when exposed to continuous funding. Specifically, how does an artist react when he is given money? How is the “artistic hunger” maintained in the obvious absence of “actual hunger?” How does one invoke the muse and convince her of ones sincerity when one has developed gout from daily consumption of sweetmeats? In the context of the actual numerics employed, to what degree can an artist's worth be determined as a multivariate function of monetary input, patchouli output, and prevalence of blasphemous themes in the work? These are all questions the NSF wanted answered. If the artist can be quantified, his work may be likewise understood numerically—that is the theory.

next