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Just learned about a group called These Birds Walk. They are a small publisher out of Oakland(!) whose goal is ‘to provide affordable art books that quietly exist somewhere between a discarded pamphlet on the street and a high end coffee table book’.

It’s a little bit hard to tell what the deal is from their website, but they do offer subscriptions to four photography books distributed throughout the year. I am not sure if you can only buy them in the four book sets or if you can subscribe and start your subscription at any time. The first year resulted in a series entitled ‘The Kin Series’(link no longer works 10/09). They are just starting on their second series.

It is neat to find similar ideas all burgeoning around the same time. It seems like their subscription series started right around the same time as ours.

Today was spent editting together the artist interview DVD for TPG6. For the first time seeing the whole project come together I was struck by how lucky we are to do this. TPG really is a conduit between artists and art lovers, and our job is to maintain it. It’s so fun to watch what comes through.

This was a question from an audience member at our talk at the Headlands. The idea was that many art collectors cherish the uniqueness of the objects they possess, and although some TPG editions consist of unique pieces, this is not a requirement for TPG projects. The moderator, Natasha Boas, fielded the question by noting the importance of the artist multiple in art history, as a way for artists to make money and spread their work among influencial collectors. As we represented the “least traditional” art model in the discussion, here are a couple less traditional ways to look at the question.

We view each artist’s project as the art piece, so the fact that each subscriber will not always receive a unique object is not necessarily our greatest concern. It is part of our agreement with the artists that the project will not be reproduced, so each art piece represents a connection between a specific artist, a specific group of subscribers, and a specific place in time.

Or to look at it another way, during the talk, Julio Ceasar Morales, co-director of the Queen’s Nails Annex, mentioned how his goal was that the art community would support the artist space as much, if not more, than the individual artists they represented. In both our projects, the framework for experiencing and creating art is as important as its individual parts. The framework is an artist’s work too. No one would ever argue that the social space and community Julio has created is less ‘special’ than the physical objects for sale. In fact, a convincing case could be made to the contrary; that it is more visceral, engaging, rewarding, and possesses a greater capacity for change.

Voting closed Friday and we had a clear winner.

Maggie Leininger is an artist based out of Oak Park, IL who is interested in exploring visual relationships between microscopic structures and social systems by decontructing/recontructing patterns through weaving. Her piece will be released at the end of the summer 2008.

Just found this: a good compilation of grants and residencies put out by CalArts.

Check it out here.Â

Here’s a list of some of the places (other than ours, of course) that we’ve found that are working towards breaking down some of the barriers towards entering the art market. Some of these have been mentioned on this blog previously. here and here. Most of them were mentioned in our talk, “Uncharted Waters: Understanding the Emerging Art Market.”

Working towards a more affordable entry to Collecting Art:

20×200: A Jen Bekman project out of New York. She’s trying to “create a place for collectors and artists to meet”. Once a week they publish two archival editions, one photograph and one print reproduction of a work on paper.

Tiny Showcase: Each week they pick a new piece of tiny artwork and turn the works on paper into a limited-run archival print production. It has quickly become really popular and they often sell out within hours of posting the new works.

Artocracy: Artocracy is a digital marketplace for original art. They have an interesting model, in that you can order framed artwork or a print directly from them OR you can purchase a digital print (as a PDF!) to print out yourself.
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Utilizing the Subscription-based model of distributing work:

Wholpin: A DVD magazine of rare and unseen short films, docs, instructional videos, foreign sitcoms, and other cinema hybrids 4 issues for $50

Fine Art Magazines are opening up project spaces for artists within their periodicals. They allow artists the opportunity to create “site specific” art using the medium of the magazine for the artwork. Arkitip and Esopus are two examples of this.

THE THING is a quarterly periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text. For $160 you receive four objects within the year.
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Putting the surplus in the market to good use:

Fine art adoption network‘s goal is to engage art enthusiasts who never thought of themselves as art collectors, and to introduce them to the experience and pleasures of owning and caring for contemporary art. Adam Simon (founder FAAN) said “The system that we have for disseminating contemporary art, known as the art market, doesn’t manage to get a lot of art into a lot of homes.”

Asked by Marianna Stark of the Stark Guide

The way that I answered this question was

1. do your research: the information is out there
and
2. make friends

But I think I can be a little more thorough here. I think what Eleanor Harwood added was important and a good place to start:

have a good package.

Make sure you have a complete package, including images, a cv, and an artist statement. I think, though, that it is also becoming more and more important these days to have a website. This site can be fairly simple. You can even use blogs, such as wordpress, livejournal, or blogger, which are very easy to use and have lots of free templates you can start off with. You can create categories or pages that will separate your different bodies of work. A website is a useful tool for the person viewing your work, in that everything is in one place, you aren’t clogging up email with lots of images, and one can view your growth over the years. Also, it helps increase your visibility as galleries can link to your site from theirs, allowing people to gain a better idea of who you are.

Also, going into the idea of making friends, it (a website) is also a good networking tool. You can trade links with people you like and you can keep in close contact with other artists who you respect. Making friends in the real world can be very difficult for some of us. It is very easy to say, “go make friends,” but that is sortof hard to actually accomplish sometimes. But online, it isn’t quite as hard. I am realizing more and more that the artworld is built on connections between people.

Davin Youngs, TPG artist #5, is a great example of this. He tries to update his livejournal with a new photo daily. He keeps up with friends and other artists by monitoring their RSS feeds and commenting on work he particularly likes. And he has found through this network some online projects that have well suited him. He is part of The Ones We Love, Fjordphoto.org, and Anything.

And now for doing your research: The opportunities are out there, you just have to find ones that suit your work. It takes a good amount of time and energy to do this, but art as a career is just that. Find galleries that work with artists like you and approach them, see if they have an open submission policy. We do. Eleanor Harwood does. SoEx does.

Lastly, I thought it could be helpful if I shared the places that we’ve found that list open calls. The only ones that charges money for submitting an opportunity art NYFA and Art Week. Most of them are free to view: Arts Opportunities Monthly and The Art List both charge fees. I haven’t found a great resource for artists in the Bay Area; it seems as though there’s a hole since the shut down of Artist Resource. Many people look down on open calls, but it is a good way for artists to start establishing those all-important connections and getting their work out there.

NYFA
Rhizome
A Singular Creation
Art Deadlines List
Arts Opportunities Monthly ($20 a year- sent via email monthly)
Art Source
Art Week
Chicago Artist Resource
Fecal Face (under forums: Calls for Artists)
Del.icio.us (with tags: /call_and_events, tag/opportunities)
Fjord (under “member news”)
Klog!
Arts Opportunities
TheArtList ($15 a year to view)
PortlandArt (mostly has Oregon-only listings, but occaional national listings as well)
Zurco

Yesterday evening we had the honor of joining a panel of some really great people. It was a great experience for us, not only in the opportunity to spread the word about The Present Group, but also to discuss with a diverse audience what it is to be in the art market today and how that could be and does seem to be evolving or changing. We were asked some great questions, and because it is sometimes hard for me to answer them on the spot, Oliver and I are hoping to address some of these questions over the course of the next few weeks on the blog.

Thank you to everyone who came out and joined us!

Happy Monday.