<< BACK TO JOURNAL

Sometimes you know projects are touching on something important at the time that you are doing them, but then they sort of quietly slide from your consciousness.  Other times projects have a sort of rhizomatic quality to them, growing beneath your feet both in terms of importance and reach.

State of the Arts seems to be one of those projects.  It keeps showing up in unexpected places, hanging out and creating dialogue everywhere it goes.  At the end of last month, down in southern California, it was part of a show and lecture series put on by the graduate curatorial practice students in the Master of Public Art Studies Program at the USC Roski School of Fine Art.

The show description:

The project explores issues of artistic production and labor, and is motivated by a keen awareness of how the current economic situation applies particular pressures on the many connotations of artistic “work.” It is a crucial moment to reexamine the shifting value, both economic and cultural, of artistic labor and to explore the ways in which artists navigate, resist, and reproduce these values. Each of the participating artists in the exhibition implement distinct methodologies for transforming the economic conditions of their artistic activities: from reflections on artistic practice as labor and entrepreneurial venture; to developing practical contracts that enforce artist fee structures; to resisting the speculative art market by offering unlimited multiples; to conceptualizations of artistic service provision, among others. Beyond evidencing economic models, the exhibition aims to reveal the shifts in political and social dynamics that artists face when negotiating the conditions of production, reception, and consumption of art.

Here’s another!  Project Dispatch was started in the fall of 2009 and is run out of DC by two Corcoron graduates: Chandi Kelley and Rachel England.  They were looking for a way to create a small revenue stream for artists, but it sounds like the project is more about mandating the artists to continually make small works and get their work out to a broader range of people, creating a new group of collector/artist relationships.

It’s a slightly different version of the subscription art model.  Subscribers choose not only the price point they want ($25/50/75 per month) and the number of months they want (3/6/12 months), but they also choose from the group’s current list of 21 artists to get all their works from.  They do, however, have an option to randomly get work from a different artist each time.  Then on the artists’ side, they get a list of people to make work for every month and the artists are responsible for sending out the artwork to subscribers.  The Project retains 10% of the sales, but passes on the rest to the artist.  Artists pay a small membership fee of $18/year to be listed.   It is fun to see how flexible the subscription art model can be.

There is a lot of talk about what artists should do to make the conditions under which they work a little bit better.  We’ve been part of those talks, notably around the time that we were working on State of the Arts with Joseph delPesco.   However, often those talks end with big dreams, sometimes that are just too big for anyone in the room to tackle willngly.  In contrast, TPG11 artist Helena Keeffe has taken it upon herself to make a small stand for herself as an artist and the conditions she will work under.  She does this by saying no.

I don’t think demonizing institutions is the answer. If I’m an advocate for any one strategy it is giving oneself permission to say no.

Read more on OPENSPACE >>

In her recent response to a conversation that took place at the SFMOMA, she shares the letters she has written rejecting invitations and calls to shows.  Her individual campaign, where she calls on the organizers to recognize that exposure is not always enough compensation, especially for artists that are project based, has resulted in some small changes from those putting on the shows.   It helps that she is very polite in her address, just sharing her point of view without demonizing those who have imposed the conditions that she is choosing to reject.

In the end, most people are just trying to figure ways that these systems can support all that are involved and not bankrupt anyone.  We all have blind spots until someone points them out.  And sometimes small efforts like these might in the end make the most difference in creating an art world that works for everyone.

LxWxH is an art subscription project founded by Seattle artist and curator Sharon Arnold, which came out of the idea that (perhaps in the tradition of local agriculture movements) art should be sustainable, and accessible. Similar to the Art in a Box and Community Supported Art models of subscription art, each issue is one box containing two pieces by two artists, but they have the bonus of a short essay by a local writer.  Artists have the option of creating either editions or individual works for each box.

Subscriptions are $700 plus shipping, or $130/backissue plus shipping.
Seems to be a trend of art subscriptions getting more expensive as people figure out the best way and most sustainable ways to keep the practice going…

The current issue of Art Practical has an excerpt of a conversation between AP contributors Zachary Royer Scholz, Elyse Mallouk, and Patricia Maloney and artists Aaron GM (TPG 18) and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez that took place at the Art Los Angeles Contemporary Fair.  It was one of several conversations held over the weekend of the fair as part of “In and Out of Context: Artists Define the Space between San Francisco and Los Angeles,” a program that invited artists to consider the two cities as a continuously evolving constellation of dialogues, shared interests, and overlapping approaches. You’ll be able to listen to the full interview on Bad at Sports starting Sunday, May 22, 2011.

AGM: “I want to reflect life or this affirmation of life. You know, this optimism of transcendence in the mundane and in the domestic. That’s the space I like to dwell in, reinvent and play with. There’s a lightness and playfulness in that space.”

Read more on Art Practical >>