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New Group Seeks to Help Struggling Uptown Artists

By DNAinfo Staff on September 20, 2010 6:26pm

The Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance is a partner in UMAST, a group that seeks to help struggling artists in Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood.
The Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance is a partner in UMAST, a group that seeks to help struggling artists in Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood.
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Flickr/artstroll

By Jon Schuppe

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — A new organization wants to make it easier to be an artist in Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood.

The Upper Manhattan Arts Services Team, or UMAST, formed in September to give artists a place to share advice and learn how to promote and sell their work.

A partnership between the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and Harlem Arts Alliance, UMAST runs a weekly program of events focusing on developing artists’ careers. Subjects include networking, grant writing, fundraising, copyrighting, building websites and creating digital portfolios.

Those are the things that come easier to artists living downtown, the hub of New York’s art scene, coordinator Andrea Arroyo said.

"There’s a huge arts community up here," Arroyo said from her home in Washington Heights. "We want to showcase those artists and give them a much opportunity as possible to join the mainstream."

Arroyo, who moved to New York from Mexico 25 years ago, says she wants to share what she’s learned in her struggle to become a well-known and respected visual artist.

The programs, and Arroyo’s salary, are funded by grants from various private and public arts and business groups: the New York Community Trust, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corp., JPMorgan Chase Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.

So far, UMAST has enough money to continue its weekly programs at least through June 2011, Arroyo said.