The art of the question

When I was preparing to come to Haiti, I had a lot of questions about Haiti's art scene. Given that the arts are often the first to lose funding in the U.S., I wondered what keeps the creative drive alive in a culture that faces so many material challenges. Over the last few days, we've had the opportunity to explore several different genres: metalworking, music, painting, beadworking, sculpture, dance, and woodworking.

The first artisans we visited were primarily commercial, and I wondered if the answer to my question of what vitalizes the arts here is simply the fact that it can be lucrative. (I'm not sure if it's still true, but at one point Haitians were producing handcrafts that were sold throughout the Caribbean.) Is money truly what keeps creativity alive, when it comes down to the essence of survival?

However--and quite fortunately--it turns out that Haiti is not a land of easy answers. The joy of creation has been more than evident in the work of several of the artists we've met here, and it seems that art is alive and well beyond the marketplace.

This is a rather simplistic outline of the question, but I've again run out of computer time...and I again welcome your thoughts on the matter.