“You have to care about and need to be involved in the place you live in. I’m not from here and now have an instant, just-add-water family of wonderfully weird little artists. I love them,” she says. “This is like a huge life raft that’s lifting us all up. I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere else.”

On the most recent Third Thursday, July 21, around 5 p.m. as Café Andiamo! began filling up with artists and art objects, Mandy was not there to direct traffic and lead the artistically talented but organizationally challenged group. She left earlier in the week for a brief visit with her husband’s family in Georgia, and things functioned fairly fine without her, further proof of the group’s ability to continue happening as a unit working with itself, not struggling to find a leader to control it.

“I love the freedom of Third Thursdays, but sometimes it freaks people out to not have charters and written rules,” she says. “But it’s working and if change needs to happen it will organically.”

As the group expanded and reached out to the community, other art organizations felt Third Thursday’s impact on the area art scene. Magill formerly participated in the Prairie Art Alliance and the Springfield Art Association, but though finding them beneficial to her artwork, had difficulty keeping up with the fees and methods included with the larger and older organizations. She’s not alone in her thinking. Differing artistic principles somewhat formed along generational ideas and artists’ ages, but also encompassing economic views, separate the newcomers from the established groups. The average age of Third Thursday participants compared to the SAA or PAA would no doubt be much lower and the average fees associated with participation in the older associations would certainly be higher than the zero amount needed to show at a Third Thursday. Differences aside, a significant intertwining relationship between the groups has already begun.

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