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Join local artists, educators, unions, activists and workers to celebrate the recent excitement and organizing success of Adjuncts at SFAI, CCA, St. Mary’s College, Mills, Dominican University!

Performances! Installations! Speak-outs! Readings! Food! Art! Books! Socializing! Community-building! Help cultivate a cultural front for ongoing activism in arts, education, work and life.

We’ll be there begging people to fill out surveys for Compensation Foundation and trying to show some stats through live action visualizations. We’ll see how that goes.

Participating artists, adjuncts, workers, groups, organizers, cooks, beer-makers and people include:
MC: Irina Contreras
Cara Emily Levine
Danielle Wright
Carrie Hott
Congratulations Pine Tree Podcast (Kate Rhoades, Maysoun Wazwaz)
Jessica Tully
Jessica Lawless
Christian Schoff-Nagler
Jennie Smith-Camejo
David Buuck
Stephanie Young
Ann Schnake
Compensation Foundation 
SEIU Local 1021
Give Me Cred!
Peak Agency
La Pocha Nostra
Kristi Holohan
Lauren C Elder
Amanda Jane Eicher
Chelsea Wills
Catherine Powell & The Labor Archive
Bay Area Strike Debt
Debt Collective
Fight For Fifteen
Chris Higgenbotham
Adjunct activist’s agit-prop from around the country
Keith Hennessy
Mess Editions
Words of Resistance
Critical Resistance
Modern Times Bookstore Collective
Joe Berry
Helena Harlow Worthen
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
Grace Chen
Zach Ozma
Adjunct Action Bay Area
Amy Rathbone
Francisco Grajales
Leslie Dreyer
SFAI Poster Syndicate
Shaping SF

It’s not always true that if you build it, they will come. We get it. Surveys aren’t always so fun to fill out. But maybe if we come together in small groups, share food and drinks, and commiserate it will be a little more fun. That’s why we are asking you, individually or in groups, to host a potluck for your visual artist friends ideally in the first weekend of February and fill out Compensation Foundation’s “Bay Area Artists Report!” and anonymously contribute your experiences towards a better infrastructure for self-advocacy for artists.

The “Bay Area Artists Report!” is an effort to gather and make apparent how visual artists working in the Bay Area are compensated, what they value most, and what hurdles they face.  It’s the time of year for digging through old receipts and bank statements to appease the IRS, so what better time to put that effort to use for a common cause?

Artists and organizations across the globe (W.A.G.E., Visual Artists Ireland, CARFAC, Brooklyn Commune) are advocating for transparency and the establishment of standards when it comes to compensating artists for their labor. Our hope is that by contributing to a clearer picture of what’s happening here and now, we can help pave the way for a shift in cultural values and expectations.

We are working on securing beer and/or wine donations for fun. If you would prefer not to host something in your house, we can pair you up with one of several Bay Area organizations that have offered up their space. Please let us know if you plan something so we can track our progress and make sure to get you what you need!

 

Thank you!

Eleanor, Helena, Oliver

P.S. In an ideal world, these potlucks will occur in the first weekend in February, but anytime in the next couple of months would also be great.

For quite some time, Oliver and I have been talking about a project we’ve been calling Show Me the Money.  Sometimes our projects take a lot of time living in the back of our heads before they become a reality.  Years ago, we were thinking that it would be great to diagram out how the money works for different types of organizations, businesses, and artists in the art world just so we could simply see it.   But that didn’t happen, or hasn’t happened yet.

At the beginning of this year, we started thinking critically about The Present Group and how it could change and adapt so that we could become more stable (more on that later).  During this time, I started thinking again about Show Me the Money and how I wished I had already done it, how it seems so necessary, how I can’t believe someone else hasn’t done it. So I went ahead and emailed one of my favorite Bay Area platforms for conversation, the SFMOMA blog, to see if they were interested in the idea. Turns out, they were.

So today, I’ve posted a little introduction to the project as a whole.  I’m really excited and slightly nervous about it all, but I am really looking forward to it.  With a little bit of optimism and hope, I’m about embark on asking people to talk about a subject that almost everyone avoids: money.

Here’s a snippet:

The visual arts, as a discipline, is sometimes seen as a place where one can and should freely explore and produce independently of the market. It is with this optimism and drive to work without financial reward that so many people pursue the creation of their own organizational structures. This freedom can be a fertile and productive place from which to practice, but it comes with a price of perception and expectation: creative work is generally under-compensated (because you were going to do it anyway), general operating costs are ignored in funding proposals, installations are installed without fees, and exposure is offered as payment all throughout the chain.

..There is a prevalent belief in our country that if you work hard enough you’ll be able to “make it.” If you do something good long enough, people will notice. But as any artist, small businessperson, or organization head will tell you, this just isn’t true.

read more on Open Space.

A couple of weeks ago I made the claim that the Bay Area is the Capital of Art Subscriptions.  I still think that holds true.  HOWEVER, the mid-west is a burgeoning center for them as well.   After the debut of mnartists.org and Springboard for the Arts’ Community Supported Art last year, two more CSA style art subscriptions have popped up:  CSA Chicago and Risograph CSA.

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CSA Chicago is a program run by Threewalls.  It asks shareholders to invest directly in the arts community with a “buy local” mentality. Each share costs $400 and subscribers receive 6 artworks over three months. Each artwork is a limited edition of 50 and shareholders receive a random selection from participating artists. Subscriptions are limited to 100 per year. CSA Chicago’s season is from April to June 2011.  The pilot year of participating artists include Conrad Bakker, Sara Black, Edie Fake, Jessica Labatte, Laura Mackin, Eric Fleishchauer, Aay Preston-Myint, Pamela Fraser, Steve Reinke, Dan S. Wang, Jason Lazarus, and Jesse Harrod.

Included in the monthly box:
2 signed and numbered original works of art by contemporary Chicago artists (6 total over three months)
Coupons and ephemera from local artist-run and creative businesses
Essays contextualizing the work

They will be having a launch party on April 30, 2011, in conjunction with Art Chicago/NEXT Art Fair from 6 to 9 pm. The event will feature food, drinks, music, the 1st editions of all 12 works for auction and a chance to meet participating artists.

There is also a special deal if you sign up before April 30th ($50 off)

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Risograph CSA is a project out of Grand Rapids, MI.  I think it will be run by and out of the Division Avenue Arts Collective.  The Risograph CSA project will commission 6 artists and artist groups to produce prints for an art subscription service. A total of 60 editions will be made per image on a Risograph Digital Duplicator. Of those, 30 will be available as subscriptions at rate of $120 per year for 6 pieces. Remaining editions will be given to participating artists and sold individually. If the subscription sells out, each artist or group will be paid $400 and 50% of the sales from the individual pieces.

Collectors will have the opportunity to pick up their newest acquisitions at the bimonthly CSA pickups and listen to a talk by the month’s artist. These events will be held in conjunction with that month’s Sunday Soup to augment that evening’s programming.

At the end of the second year there will be a retrospective gallery show at The DAAC featuring each of the 12 works commissioned by the Risograph CSA Project.

Unfortunately they don’t seem to have a website or they are not quite up and running yet.

Nathaniel Stern takes a look at this new book by Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham, co-editors of the CRUMB site and list (the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss

Good to know