Hey, I'm Graham Masters; founder of the Artichoke Initiative. We are a fledgling art and fashion collective in jeopardy of losing our base of operations/artist-in-residence gallery. First, the spiel..The Artichoke Initiatives' (A.I.) mission statement is simple: Connect artists with the Calgary business community at large. As a DeVry Business School graduate and practicing studio artist I am in a unique position to bridge the gap between these two very different worlds. Artists for the most part are terrible entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs sometimes lack the vernacular to express their creative ventures. A.I. strives to introduce the business community and art enthusiasts to a massive community of Calgary based artists. Any scale of project is possible given our numbers; commission work, commercial murals and charity auctions just to name a few. This is a grass roots movement that is in grave risk of being killed off. Due to rising costs of maintenance and rent inflation our live-in artist residence/gallery (which we lovingly refer to as "The Bunker") will not survive much past May. Please do not let another independently run cultural institution be destroyed due to lack of funding. Come check it out, the paintings and clothing line speak for themselves.

Sincerely,

Graham J. Masters

Minister of Propaganda