- Tonight we have a
conversation with two graduates
of this program, the MFA
Fine Arts program at SVA:
Julie Schenkelberg and Paul Amenta.
Conversationally moderated
by Anna Ogier-Bloomer,
who's Assistant Director of
Career Development here in SVA.
Anna was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.
- [Man] Ooh, Ohio.
- Mm-hmm!
She got an MFA in
Photography and Related Media
from Parsons, and a BFA from
the School of the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston
where she was recipient
of the Yousuf Karsh prize of photography.
She has exhibited in galleries
and museums nationally,
including the Bridge Art Fair in Miami,
the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati,
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
and at the Attleboro Arts
Museum in Massachusetts.
Her solo and two-person shows include
exhibitions in New York,
Cincinnati and Wellesley, Mass.
She's received grants
from Chashama in New York,
the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
and CSArts in Cincinnati.
Her work's been published in
Feature Shoot, Refinery29,
Huffington Post, BUST
Magazine, The Daily Mail,
Redbook Magazine and numerous
other online publications.
Anna is on the Graduate Faculty at SVA,
and she has been an
adjunct assistant professor
at CUNY, City University of New York.
Please join me in welcoming
Julie Schenkelberg, Paul Amenta
and Anna Ogier-Bloomer.
(audience applause)
- Thank you, Mark.
Thanks for letting me take
over your class tonight.
Thank you so much to your
amazing staff, Allison, Pam
and Aya, for helping me
put this together tonight.
So tonight I know some of you
are students in the class,
some of you are other guests.
We're so excited that
you're all here tonight.
We're changing the format a little bit
of the usual Artist Talk,
so I'm going to introduce
our two guests this evening.
And while I give you their
BIOS, I'm gonna show you
some slides of their work, their practice,
and then we'll sit down and
have a conversation about
what it really takes to create
a sustainable arts practice.
Because our two guests both
are able to live off of
their creative practices.
So they're not doing a day job,
they're essentially living the dream.
So we wanna hear about
how they've done this
in very, very different ways.
Okay, so let me just launch
into some slides here.
Okay.
So first, Julie Schenkelberg
grew up in the post-industrial
landscape of Cleveland, Ohio.
Her mixed media installations
start with furniture,
dishware, textiles and marble
combined with concrete,
resin and construction
materials to transform
notions of domesticity and engage
with the American Rust Belt's legacy
of abandonment and decay.
Using the home as a playground for formal
and conceptual subversions,
the work aggressively disrupts
cohesion within the physical sphere.
Familiar furnishings rekindle
memories or premonitions
of collapse, suggesting
both the utter destruction
of war, calamities or urban decay,
but also the uncanny juxtapositions
of fragile substances
such as cloth and China
with industrial materials
such as rusty metal, heavy
concrete and tool-made marks
like drilled holes and
chainsawed indentations,
which she doesn't entirely
herself, I have to add.
Schenkelberg was born in Cleveland,
Ohio, and splits her time
between the Midwest and New York.
She received a BA in Art History
at the College of Wooster
in Ohio, and an MFA in
Fine Arts here at SVA.
She's represented by Asya
Geisberg Gallery in New York,
and her large-scale
installations have been displayed
in solo exhibition at
the Sculpture Center,
the Mattress Factory
Museum of Contemporary Art
in Pittsburgh, which this image is from;
UNTITLED Art Fair in Miami,
SiTE:LAB in Grand Rapids
and many more.
She's received numerous
grants from institutions,
including the Harpo
Foundation, the Fry Foundation,
ArtPrize, the Slavic Village Foundation
and the National Endowment for the Arts
and has been a finalist for both
the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant
and the knight Foundation grant.
In 2014, she was awarded
the $20,000-jury prize
for installation art at
SiTE:LAB and was just recently
announced as the 2016 Efroymson
Contemporary Arts fellow,
a distinction that carries
with it an award of $25,000.
She's been an artist-in-residence
at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art,
the Mattress Factory,
the Myers School of Art
at the University of Akron and Oxbow.
She's been visiting faculty
at a number of institutions,
including Rutgers
University, Kendall College
of Art and Design, the
University of Akron,
and is currently on faculty at the College
for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Coming up in 2017, she
will have solo exhibitions
at ProsjektromNormanns
in Norway, PLUG Projects
in Kansas City, and Asya
Geisberg in New York.
And these are just a few more
images from the recent piece
that Julie did at SiTE:LAB with Paul.
Okay, Paul Amenta was
born in Hammond, Indiana
and attended Grand Valley State University
where he received a BA in
Sculpture and Printmaking.
Sorry, BFA.
He then earned an MFA in Fine Arts
at the School of Visual Arts.
He spent eight years here in
New York and was represented
by Marvelli Gallery.
Amenta then returned
to Grand Rapids in 2006
where he served as an adjunct
professor at Kendall College
of Art Design, an
experience that directly led
to his forming the non-profit SiTE:LAB,
a curatorial initiative
that brings together
outstanding installations,
sculpture and performance artists
to create site-specific works
using abandoned structures
in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
SiTE:LAB works closely
with Habitat for Humanity
to transform spaces and
building slated for demolition.
SiTE:LAB recently received
the ArtPrize Award
for outstanding venue for
the fifth year in a row,
woohoo, and his own
piece, Hybrid Structures,
in this year's iteration,
a collaborative piece
created with artists Alois Kronschlaeger,
another SVA alum, and
Ted Lott, was a finalist
in the ArtPrize jurors
shortlist for installation.
His creative practice has
grown to include organizing
large, collaborative
exhibitions in vacant structures
in Grand Rapids, including
ActiveSite projects,
Michigan - Land of Riches,
and the numerous SiTE:LAB projects.
Amenta's work in SiTE:LAB
have been acknowledged
in publications such as The
New Yorker, The New York Times,
Art Form, Art News, Art
in America, Art Net,
Hyperallergic, High-Fructose,
Sculpture Magazine,
The Creatives Project,
Art Journal and many more.
Recently, Amenta received a
grant from the Fry Foundation
and a major grant from the
National Endowment of the Arts,
our town program, which
would be used to support
SiTE:LAB's educational initiatives.
So I'm very thrilled to
have the two of you here,
let's have a conversation.
(audience applause)
As many of you know, we're
gonna be using these mics,
and they're not projecting our voices.
It's a fake mic.
So we're going to speak very
loudly so everyone can hear us.
And after we've had a
bit of a conversation,
we'll open it up to audience questions.
We do wanna hear from you.
And when that happens, we'll
be sure to pass this mic,
you do need to use that.
So just to get the
conversation started off,
since we do have a lot of current students
who are very fresh students,
recent graduates in the room,
can you talk a little bit
about what that experience
was like, leaving graduate
school and kind of how
the next several years
were informative for you
or how your career kind of progressed.
- Well, I was thinking a
lot about that question
because I came to SVA as an older student.
And so I was in my mid-30s.
And I came with an experience,
eclectic experience
of being out in the work world, having had
an art history degree.
And one thing was, was
that I already had a skill
that I could make use
of after grad school.
I'm trained as a professional
set painter for theater.
So I went straight into production as soon
as I got out of school, and I knew that
it was gonna be a rocky first year.
So most of that time I spent making money
and trying to make enough
money to find a studio.
And that was the series
transition out of school.
And a lot of my, our prior
practice as an artist
began thinking, is this
the place where I belong?
Where do I make my work?
Is my work about me and
not where I make it?
And those were questions
that I began to develop,
including applying to everything I saw.
That was also something.
- First, thanks for having us here.
Thank you to Anna for inviting us
and it was a pleasure to
meet some of you today
in your studios, thanks for inviting us.
For me, that sort of
crucial moment of coming out
of grad school, out of
SVA, which was a really
formidable time for me,
I think back to this
very unique moment where
I no longer had the studio here at school,
I was also, you all know JP, right?
I studied with him, we
were students together,
but we also were co-workers.
I spent just over two years sharing
that little office with him.
So I got to know him very well.
But in that moment of
transition, so I got picked up
by Marvelli Gallery
right out of grad school,
which was exciting and amazing,
but I didn't have a studio.
So I would work from nine
to five in that office,
and when JP would leave,
I would push all of our desks together,
Mark's predecessor, David
Chiree, who was our Chairman,
I would push all three
of our desks together
and that would be my studio.
And I co-opted that
space for about a year.
I produced two shows inside that
little office space up there.
So that was my transition
out of grad school.
So I think the moral
of that story is you do
whatever it takes to make the work.
- I think that's a really good point,
that you do have to do whatever it takes.
So both of you have done
that in so many ways.
So what are the ways in
which you've been able to now
sustain your practice over
the last several years?
How did those method lead
to new work that you've made
or new opportunities?
I think for Julie it might be
more about your own production,
and Paul, the formation of a non-profit
and curatorial endeavors.
- A sustainable art practice.
Oh.
(chuckles)
That's a big question.
I mean, all of a sudden we realize
we're born into this, right, at one point?
So by the time you get out of grad school,
you're like, okay, I am
an artist, I'm totally
committed to this.
I picked this program,
I picked this medium,
and I realize that there were
gonna be a couple of years
of just figuring it out and
figure out still who I was
as a person.
And luckily, I came out of this school
with a good sense of
the story I was telling
as an individual, and that
was the strongest part
that carried me over the
next, I guess it's only been
five years, but sort of New York
is like that.
It takes you and it polishes you down
to exactly what you wanna
be or where you should be.
And for my practice, I continued...
One point I really wanna make here is that
there is not one way to be an artist,
and that's something that...
I mean, we're programmed as in
our gender or in our practice
and you can be even on the
outside of what's normal
as an artist.
And that was one thing
that I found about the way
I treated my media, my
space, where I identified
where I was from.
Those things became more
real being in this space.
And they would start to
frustrate me and I'm like,
I just wanna fit into the art world,
where I go into the art
world like a puzzle piece.
And it's absolutely not true.
As unique as our practices are
is as unique as the path is.
So that's what I sort of
spend a couple of years
being like which direction am I going.
And I figured out I don't
need a studio all the time
because one thing is, is I am my studio
and I also have a pad of
paper at my hand at all times.
Those ideas aren't going
anywhere, as long as
I'm making some kind of mark.
So I figured out how to move
money around really well,
as we do here, whether it be
subletting the various spaces
that I had or...
What became fascinating
about my practice was,
you think as an artist, I did, I was like
oh, I'm wasting my time doing
all this administrative work.
I'm wasting my time taking
the subway to my job.
Well, I turned all those into
interesting opportunities
as to what I did wanna do and constantly
working those problems out.
I had a fascinating job.
I worked in production here.
I used to run Scene Shops
before I came to New York.
Major productions with lots of scenery.
I was in charge.
And I was in charge of every
surface that went on the set,
so I was used to organizing things.
And I have my own methods of organization.
So over time, I began to,
like, go back to my roots
and figure out why can't I
apply this to my practice?
These are things that
serve me well in my job,
and so I would do
commuting around the city
to production jobs, like I
painted sets for Marc Jacobs,
I did things for Lady Gaga here,
I did productions that
went into the Guggenheim
and I would laugh because
I'd be like I'm totally
on the outside, behind the
scenes, I painted that thing
and it's in the Guggenheim,
and it was like maybe
a black shiny surface for
like a cocktail party.
I mean I'm sure others of you are involved
in this world too, in
fashion and photography,
so I was really disgruntled with that.
And after a while, I
was like this is cool.
And then I would get a project.
I would either, I did
have the good fortune
of being picked up by
Asya Geisberg Gallery,
and I've been with her,
this is my seventh year.
So I always knew that I had
a show coming up with her.
But where I was going to build it,
what material I was gonna use,
those were things I didn't know.
But those became secondary because I knew
I always had the idea.
So once I had the idea, I
would find the material,
the space, the money.
And I think that's what I wanna stop with.
- So sustainable practice, right?
That's the context of this.
So for me, it really was
an issue of just survival
versus a sustainable practice.
I mean, for four years out of grad school,
I was with a gallery.
I showed regularly, I even
sold work on occasion,
even enough work to quit my job with JP.
I had to say goodbye to JP, which was sad.
But I got to work in the
studio for a couple of years,
and then I got hot potato from the gallery
and I had no other leads.
I thought it was sort of the gallery's job
to sort of take care
of me in that sense of
what was gonna happen next, right?
Like opportunities.
And I realized that he
really wasn't doing that
sort of thing, and so I
had to take it upon myself
and I had to sort of, in
many ways, to reteach myself
how to survive out in the world.
So I was applying for
everything and you'd make it
to a final on something
and you wouldn't get it,
and then I started
turning towards teaching
to earn an income.
Had a unique opportunity.
One of my, he wasn't a classmate
of mine but we overlapped
in grad school, Joe Fig, who was running
the summer residency program
in the sculpture department,
invited me to teach a class.
He called me one day and
said, one of the faculty
dropped out, this was a week
before the semester started
and he asked if I would be
interested in taking a class,
and I said absolutely not, I
have no interest in doing this,
not interested in teaching.
And he just begged me and
then finally, I gave in
and realized it seemed
like, when I enjoyed it,
it seemed like the students
were getting something
out of it, so I decided
to sort of look into that
as an opportunity.
A couple more opportunities came my way.
I snatched them up and
then so I was starting
to build this teaching resume.
And then I was offered this teaching job
in Grand Rapids, Michigan,
which is where I'm from
or I lived for a good chunk of my life,
and it was a one-year,
temporary, full-time gig,
and I thought it would help me
build my resume a little bit,
so I took it with plans
of moving back here
immediately after.
And they kept hiring me
back year after year,
about eight years went by.
(chuckles)
I was still living in GR.
So what I realized if I
was going to stay there,
I had to find a strategy
to survive as an artist,
do the things that I wanted to do.
There's obviously not the
art market in Grand Rapids
like there is here in New York.
There's not the opportunities for somebody
who does site-specific interventions
like there are here and other places,
so I had to basically invent
that category of opportunity.
So along with a couple of students,
we found a 10,000-square-foot
abandoned space.
We mounted an exhibit,
invited all of our friends
and family to it,
and 500 people showed up
to a one-night opening
of site-specific work,
mostly student work.
And I thought I might
have hit on something here
in this region.
So I kept doing these projects.
I was doing two or three projects a year,
and they just kept growing
exponentially each year.
I was able to raise more funds and so on,
and that sort of has sustained
me or sustained my survival
as a site-specific artist in the Midwest.
And it's created lots of opportunities
for me moving forward.
- That's great.
So you sort of already answered
part of my next question,
but I'd love to hear about an
opportunity or an experience
or connection that you made
that led to really exciting
step forward or another opportunity,
and maybe what are the biggest challenges
that you have faced working
to create and maintain
that studio practice as the center
of your professional life?
- Yeah.
(laughs)
I think about all the people
I've ever met that have
helped me, and it's hard
to remember all of them.
I mean, I think one thing
I was talking to people
about today is that, like,
maybe you'll never find
that one person that you
think is gonna pull you
through everything.
It's actually yourself.
And then people pinball you along
and then you figure it
out because you don't
need them that long because you can do it.
But one opportunity that
really changed my art practice
after SVA was,
well, I began to learn how
to apply the things and
I had a lot of problems
with writing in college,
and I was like now I'm writing again
years and years later.
but it's just sort of
like an art practice,
I just refine, refine, refine.
And eventually I was trying
for all the residencies
that all of us try for,
thousands of us apply for,
and I got the Bemis Center in Omaha,
and that change my practice
because I left SVA.
And I think you really
need time to process
what you did there, and
space, and a quiet place
to unplug from that and say, okay,
this worked for me, this didn't.
I still hear this voice, and it opened up
my installation process
because I had limitless space
in Omaha, it's a residency
in Omaha that loves artists.
There's funding, there's lots of space.
I'm from the Midwest, I'm from
Cleveland as we've stated,
so it felt familiar to
be in a space like that.
And it put me back in this
imaginary familiar space,
just like projected my
work to another place.
So it's like I was almost
not afraid to go back home
into myself.
And when I came back to
New York, everyone's like
I don't understand this work
you're doing, the color,
it's crazy, and I was really disappointed.
But this was the work that
propelled what I do now.
And now, it's catching up,
it's kind of popular sometimes.
And it's also the work that
Paul saw and eventually
invited me to come to SiTE:LAB, so...
- Yes, sort of ripping off
Julie's response a little bit,
that, that project that she
did at the Bemis Center,
I went to grad school
with her gallery dealer,
Asya Geisberg, and I had
worked with one of her artists
on a previous project and she
introduced me to Julie's work.
And she showed me images on our site
and I just wasn't that intrigued
by what Asya was showing me.
And then I reached out to
Julie and she showed me
all these images from
her Bemis show project
and I thought, oh, now I get
what Asya was talking about,
and that's what sort of
sparked the conversation
with Julie and I.
We've been working together ever since.
But to that question of opportunities
and sort of specific opportunities,
like Julie's response as
well, there are so many things
that sort of come your way
over the course, for me now,
15, 16 years since I've
been out of grad school.
And I always sort of
tell people that I really
look at anything that
comes my way as a potential
of changing the trajectory
of my career, of my life,
of my practice.
And I really pay attention to things,
even back when I was a grad student.
I think back to when we had
artists come to give talks
and studio visits, I
remember David Zwirner came
to give a talk, and nobody's signed up
for a studio visit with him.
And I'm thinking like, what
the hell are you guys doing?
So I signed up for like two or three slots
and he sat in my studio for
like an hour and a half.
And it was incredible.
I mean, do you guys know
who this guy is, right?
Please nod your heads like this.
I sat in my studio with David Zwirner
for an hour-and-a-half having
an incredible conversation.
He was super engaged with my work.
I mean, these are opportunities
you can't take for granted.
So the moral of that story
is jump on all those things
and take them seriously
because they can really change
the trajectory of a career.
And I saw it happen all the time
to colleagues and classmates.
It happens all the time.
But one particular,
I'll just point one out,
I was introduced to the
Director of the Grand Rapids
Public Art Museum in
2009 when I was teaching
at Kendall College of Art and Design.
And it was a very casual sort
of meeting or introduction,
and I sort of followed up
with an email and ended up
having a meeting with him.
And over the course of
that half-an-hour meeting,
I had the key to an abandoned
natural history museum
that had been closed to
the public for 20 years.
And I had access to that
building for over two years,
did four projects in that
building and worked with probably
150 artists over the
course of those two years.
So it was a really exciting
project and it came
from a very casual introductions
that I followed up on
and I just sort of
blurted out this question
of whether or not I could
have access to this building.
And somehow, it happened.
And sort of noticing when
there's an opportunity
in front of you, not to
be afraid to go for it.
- Yeah, I think that's
great advice, to be open
to all kinds of new opportunities
even though you might not
have an idea of where they might go.
That's really exciting, yeah.
So the next thing I wanna
talk about is networking,
which is, I would say that
it's the single most important
part of an artist's
professional development.
I prefer to use the
term community building
rather than networking,
because I really think it's not
about just finding someone
who will help you climb
some kind of invisible
ladder but rather extending
and building your own community,
whether it's creative or professional.
So you have to do this to
get out into the world,
meet people, you have
to be your own agent,
your own publicist, your own advocate.
Can you share some strategies
that each of you has utilized
to engage in community
building in your career?
- There's so many fun stories behind that.
Like, I mean, we try all
different ways to meet people.
You think, if I don't meet this person,
it's not gonna work out for me.
I don't know, I mean, I
can be pretty awkward.
But I will--
(mumbles)
(laughter)
- I'll go for it anyways.
Like overtime, I'm just
doing this and I walk up
next to somebody, I'm
like just standing there.
(laughs)
But over time,
it's gotten better.
And I can give you a recent
example of what happened.
I was a finalist for this
foundation grant in Detroit
called the Knight Foundation,
and what I did was I
was invited to a meeting
and I went to the meeting
with all the finalists
and I saw the vice president
and I just went up to her
and I was like too
intimidated to talk to her.
And the line was too long
but I just stood there
and looked at her.
And then you know what happened?
I find this happens a lot,
is you get a second chance,
and it's really weird.
So we're back in Grand Rapids,
this was happening in Detroit
and during ArtPrize, there was a panel
of all the deans of art
colleges in Grand Rapids.
They were coming to see
ArtPrize and I was asked
to speak as an artist who had
participated in this event.
And so I was speaking to these people
and the things over, and I'm
looking down I'm like oh,
that person that I stood next
to awkwardly is speaking next,
and so I'm like okay, I
have a grant that is up
for proposals, for evaluation.
I'm like, this is a great moment.
So I found out where she
was, I went to where she was.
She was totally alone
preparing for her speech,
and she looks up and she's
like, you look so familiar!
And I'm like, why yes, I
was that awkward person
that you didn't meet.
So then she began talking to me.
She's like I'm so bored, I
don't wanna give this speech.
So tell me about your project again.
And so we started talking
and I said I really don't
wanna take your time, I
just wanted to say hello.
And she's like, what are
you doing in Grand Rapids?
I said, well, I am a
participant in ArtPrize
and I work with the group SiTE:LAB,
and she's like, well, I
wanna come see SiTE:LAB
and I wanna see your project.
And so it just went on from there.
And I said, okay, meet
me there at this time,
and then it turns into this
private hour of giving her
a tour and then follow up emails.
That's just one of the
unusual things that has
happened to me because I
thought, oh, this is going
terrible, terrible.
One time I went to an opening in the Bronx
and I thought this curator
would like my work.
And the same thing, I went up
to her, I introduced myself
awkwardly, no idea who I am,
and she actually called me the next day
but not because I met her
but because I was on her list
of people to call about my work,
and that was a really strange coincidence.
So she didn't remember me the day before,
but that was better.
- Yeah this whole networking thing.
I mean, it's totally crucial, right?
I mean, even when you
don't wanna go up and talk
to somebody, you absolutely have to.
I have absolutely no fear
of going up to people
and talking to them,
even if it's a totally
awkward scenario at all.
I mean, I used to be
terrified, but now I just don't
give a shit at all, zero.
So a couple, there's one
story I wanted to tell
that sort of ties my
undergraduate activity in
with somebody I bumped
into recently from those
good old days.
So one of my first jobs
when I was here in New York
was working at Art in
General in Chinatown,
and I was the preparator.
And the first curator that I
worked with was Gregory Volk,
and he was sort of an
up-and-coming curator,
he was doing this really interesting show,
and I was there helping
him install this thing.
And had drinks with him,
dinner, that sort of thing
over the course of that
project, and then we sort of
lost touch and, through social
media, sort of reconnected.
But he was brought in
through this organization,
ArtPrize, which is this event
that SiTE:LAB participates in
as a venue; and he was there
doing this critical discourse,
panel discussion, to talk
about some of the winners
or people who were nominated.
And he now writes for Art in America,
and I went right up to
him, I said Gregory,
you might not remember me,
told him the whole story,
how I worked with him.
He totally remembered who I was.
We had this great conversation,
and he went on and on
about Julie's project
and talked a lot about
what he thought about SiTE:LAB
and wants to reconnect.
And so there was like
this 16-year gap in our
sort of communication, but
he remembered immediately
who I was based on that sort of trigger.
And then beyond that, any
opportunity that I have
to go and talk to somebody that can
potentially create an
opportunity in the future,
I have zero fear of going up to.
The other thing I sort
of wanted to mention was
everybody here in this room,
you're all part of a network
and you will probably play crucial roles
in one another's careers moving forward.
There's a couple of people
sitting in here that
I knew from the good
old days that I'm still
in communications with,
collaborate with, work with,
create opportunities for,
and it goes both ways.
It's really crucial to
establish those relationships
and remember how important they
are in terms of your career.
They're priceless.
- So part of why I asked
the two of you to come
is because you do have very
different personalities,
and networking can feel
like a very difficult thing
for someone who's more introverted.
I would love to hear, you
sort of talked about this
a little bit, but I'd love
to hear a little bit more
about how your different
personality types have maybe
challenged your career,
but also supported it
or benefited you.
- Let's see.
Well, I don't drink very much and
(chuckles)
that could be seen
as a problem in the art world.
But I've made it work for me,
so I just get wound up and talk--
- She drinks cider sometimes.
- Sometimes.
So a lot of times, what I do
is if I'm going to an event
and there's someone I
really wanna talk to,
I watch everyone else talk
to them and I watch people
get drunk and talk to them.
And then I wait until
things kind of calm down,
and then I go and talk to that person
and have a meaningful intelligent
conversation with them.
And they remember.
So that works out.
I'm trying to think of other things,
and sometimes I just take my
time building a relationship.
And that's also important.
I'm not sure I'll talk
about my personality.
I think you're just saying Julie's nice
and I'm not or something.
I think that's what you were getting at.
- No, no, but I think that
you're not at all afraid
to go up and talk to anybody,
and I think that's an amazing quality
that a lot of artists don't
possess but wish that they did.
- Well, it certainly
wasn't always the case.
I mean, I just--
- Can you talk about how you
had to work at that then?
- Yeah, I had to get over it,
like get fucking over it, people.
Like go up and talk to people.
Like Julie's created a strategy,
it's taken her a while,
but she's figured it out.
Like, you gotta do it.
I mean, it didn't come
easy in the beginning.
I was sort of the wallflower
in the good old days,
but you just gotta get over
it and you gotta go out there
and do your thing and sell yourself.
You have to be your biggest advocate.
I mean, 100%.
And then hopefully, you have
other people supporting that.
But it's really up to you guys.
So get out there, pound the
pavement, talk to people.
It's not that hard once you get over it.
- To get over the hump, right?
(chuckles)
And I think (indistinct muttering)
I'll save it for later.
- So both of you are clearly excellent
at obtaining grants and
other sources of funding,
and that's something that
all artists have to be
working at all the time, right?
That part of your job doesn't stop.
It can be very difficult from finding time
to do the applications, researching,
improving your writing skills.
So can you tell us how
you've made this part
of your schedule, how
you manage doing that
and your practice and all the other things
that we have to do in your daily life?
- Hmmm, I think we were talking about this
not that long ago, and we
were both talking about
clamping down on the procrastination.
That's not cool anymore.
(laughs)
Like, it's just not.
It's your effing life.
And if you want it, you gotta go get it.
You gotta plan your day around it,
and that's like, I'm
like being very about it.
But it's true, it's like
there's no reason why you can't
fit in like some massive grant
application to your life.
Like, I don't know the
times I've done stuff.
I've just, like, okay, you
can only clean for this long
and then you're gonna sit down.
And I go through the Internet and I find
what is important to me or
it's taken eight or nine years
to figure out what it
is I want to work on.
And then I find I've
been applying for things
that I don't actually want for years,
that I think, oh I want to send my resume
and then I hear more and more about people
who have done it and I'm
like I don't think that fits
into my life right now,
and that's a really big
lesson to learn, is like, I
want this prestigious award.
Why did I want it?
And it doesn't apply to you at all.
Like, something else is
much more fitting to you,
maybe you've never even heard of.
And so I've started to
take that attitude about
how can I maintain my
practice in this way,
like maybe there's a small
foundation that wants
to support my work, that
will propel it forward.
And years from now, maybe
that's an appropriate
award for me.
- Yeah, I mean for me,
it's about building it
into your daily practice.
I mean, with the non-profit
that I'm a part of,
there's a handful of
people that are involved
in certain things, and there
is a person that's sort of
more dedicated towards
doing that activity.
But it is something you
constantly have to be
searching out for the right fit,
whether it's a grant application
or a residency or whatever.
I do less of that stuff now,
it's more grant-focused.
But also, I do a lot
of private fundraising
and finding the right person
to go and ask for money
and sort of going in
there and sitting across
from a boardroom table,
across from a billionaire
asking for money.
Like, that's stuff that you
have to sort of work up to.
It's not something that you
become good at immediately
and you've learned over time.
Also, something that's
helped me personally
is I've been asked to
be in a lot of panels
reviewing these things,
and you learn what works
and what doesn't work just by
seeing a lot of them, right?
So that process has really
helped me sort of fine tune
my skills, whether that's
writing the proposal
or choosing the right visual
components to sell the project.
I think it's really important.
And you just get better over
time, but you have to do it,
and you have to do lots of it.
And you get lots of no's.
So you get used to hearing no a lot.
And then every now and again,
you get lucky and get a yes.
- I think one thing I was
making a note about too
is as you develop your
practice, everyone is like,
oh, rewrite your artist statement.
Well, I don't know, I go
through and write a paragraph
every couple of months.
I reevaluate like what's going on.
Like, does this apply,
does this not apply?
And then all of those build up of language
is something you can insert
in anything you need.
So...
- Yeah, I cut and paste a lot.
- So the flip side is how do you deal
with all the rejection?
I have a friend who calls
his art applications
pending rejections,
just to psychologically
psych himself down from getting things.
How do you deal with that?
- I guess I always just
assume it's gonna be a no.
So when it comes in as
a yes, it's a surprise.
I mean, I don't get too
wigged out about it.
There's a couple of grants
that we were finalists for,
and then your mind starts
to like, oh were a finalist
for a million-dollar Bloomberg grant,
and it's like my mind started
to wander what I could do
with that money, which is
kind of cool to think about.
We didn't get it, so I
was a little tweaked.
But I let myself sort of
get wound up about it.
So I usually don't
think too much about it.
- I have to say so too,
especially with residencies.
And then it gets time for them to tell you
and then you're like, oh I
can't fit that in my life
even if I got it.
But I think the ones that come through
are totally applicable to you.
And then you're ready for it.
Like some of you apply for you, like,
I totally yeah, no.
- So next I was gonna ask
each of you to just talk about
kind of your own timeframe and
how you sort of manage the year,
the short-term and the long-term
and applying for things.
Paul, applying for grants or
doing this private fundraising.
You're planning for the next
iteration of SiTE:LAB now,
I'm sure, or already
were for the past year
or for next year.
So if you could talk
about that a little bit,
that'd be great.
Just a little time management maybe.
- Time management, oh.
Mmm.
I'm doing stuff 24/7.
I mean, it's every day, seven days a week.
I'm never not doing it.
So I'm constantly thinking
about it, working on a project,
developing the next
project, writing the grant,
fundraising, travelling,
looking for the artist
I wanna work with,
collaborating, doing my own work.
I mean, when I talk about
these things, it's really all
an extension of my creative practice.
I really don't define these
things as different things.
It's all part of that
nebulous creative practice.
I'm probably not a great
time manager in that sort of
specific way, like, I don't
do something on Monday
and do something different on Tuesday.
I'm doing the stuff all
the time constantly.
And then I work with a
group of really great people
that do things that
they're really great at.
So over time, in the
beginning I used to do
everything myself.
And now I've sort of built
up this community or team,
core team that sort of
is in charge of things
that they're all really
good at, which allows me
to do the things that I'm really good at
and I don't have to worry about,
I guess grant writing
isn't my greatest skill
and we have a person that's
a little bit better at it
than I am, or the graphic
design or whatever.
But it allows me to focus on
the things that I excel at.
- And Julie, so you have
several solo shows coming up.
You have grants that are in the works,
you have other ones
your applying for soon.
You have three shows next year.
So what's kind of your short and long-term
kind of planning process for all that?
- Well, in the last few
years I've gotten busy,
and I had one year that
was very busy and I sort of
gauged what I could handle or not handle.
And it was a year where I got up every day
and I'm like, if you don't keep moving,
this is not gonna work.
So that was very intense, and
that was everything from
building to moving to writing
and figuring everything out for the shows
I was doing that year.
And so I sort of can understand how long
a time period I need in between each show
and I can make that still
a good piece for a show.
And I think I've figured it out,
that I can only handle three
large installations a year,
or they don't have to be that large,
they can be interesting and not gigantic.
I work with Asya Geisberg Gallery and
you still have to do your work.
Your career is really up to you.
You say yes and you say
no, you figure it out.
Usually you're telling your
gallery I can handle this,
I can't handle this.
And I think that
you end up understanding that
you're your biggest supporter.
Like Paul was saying, you
have to be your own advocate,
and then you figure out
that you need backup plans
even when there are systems in place.
You still need a backup plan
behind that in terms of money
or resources, people
that are gonna help you.
So I'm still figuring it out,
but it's going more smoothly.
- So my last question is
just what advice would you
give to emerging artists
or mid-career artists
on career sustainability
or any aspect of this.
(indistinct chattering)
- What have you got, Julie?
- Let's see.
- She's got stuff written down.
She's got stuff written
down, it looks serious.
- Oh yeah, yeah.
It says, well, one of the
things is find your people.
Like, that's what people
always say, but whatever.
It's true.
(chuckles)
Ah, that means like finding your community
that you can feel understood in.
And that helps you kind of relax and do
who you need to be as an artist.
And I've been fortunate to work with Paul
and his organization for a while,
and that's a place
where I've been able to become
an artist I wanna be.
And through working with him and
the members that he's talking about
in his organization,
I mean, I also have a nice
network here in New York too.
But to do my practice, I found
I needed like a second layer
of people or a place.
It was also a place.
Well, I do have good advice.
Where is it?
(chuckles)
Oh, I think one thing is like working
on your personal security.
If you can find that, then
like you're gonna propel
your practice forward because
you're gonna believe in it.
How you're gonna do that is up to you.
It's not necessarily about
money, but that's important.
Yeah, feeling confident
about your work and yourself.
If you're
a huge...
I mean, a lot of us
don't necessarily maybe
believe in yourself,
but you believe in your work,
which is actually who you are.
So you get behind that and
it'll become really clear
what you can do.
The other thing is like don't worry
about what everyone else is doing.
I mean, we're all totally different
and you see that in graduate school.
I'm talking about that
weird competition thing,
that it's good and healthy.
But what's good for you
is absolutely not good
for someone else.
And like, giving an opportunity
over to another friend
who you know it's more
beneficial to them, that's cool.
What else is there?
Even the art world is
conventional, so get outside of it.
- That's a good one.
Something that I always tried to do,
and I sort of, when I look back I realized
I've been doing it for a long
time, is I've always tried
to put myself around
people that are serious
about their practice.
I always tried to be near
people who were smarter than me,
harder working than me,
more motivated than me,
because I wanted to model my
practice after serious people.
So I stopped hanging out with
people who are not doing work,
who weren't serious
about this or whatever.
So I just took it very seriously.
I took myself very
seriously, I took my practice
very seriously, and I only
put myself around people
who were focused, determined, driven.
And I used to tell that to all,
particularly like freshman
undergraduates, like,
you got to surround yourself with people
who can drive you, right?
If you're not self-motivated,
you have to find people
who can help motivate you.
And so any advice I can offer is
find those people who take you seriously
and who you take their practice seriously.
And stay near them.
Find new people.
Like Julie, hang out with them.
And they'll help propel
your own practice as well.
- That's great.
So before we turn it over to the audience,
either of you have anything
else you wanna add or mention?
I think that was a lot of
really helpful information.
Thank you.
So we'd love to take
audience questions now.
Aya is gonna pass the mic around.
You definitely have to talk into it.
- Don't be shy.
- [Cindy] Hi.
Is this recording?
Is that why I'm talking into it?
(indistinct chattering)
Okay cool.
Julie, can you talk a little
bit more specifically,
I was in the same class with
Julie, we're good friends,
but I think it would be helpful,
I know something about Julie
you don't which is that
she has a very gentle networking style.
So she's not going to parties
and just meeting people
to meet people.
She has a very directed approach.
And I wanna talk about your
gentle networking style
I have two ways of thinking about.
The first one is Julie was
the first person in our class
to be represented by a
gallery, which brought about
a lot of negative competition
with your classmates,
which was a problem.
And your response to networking was not,
you didn't wanna just have a gallery,
you are dedicated to your work.
And the other thing I'm thinking of is
we used to crash moma parties together,
and you wouldn't, we
wouldn't, we would go but
it wasn't just to smoosh.
Okay, (mumbles) smoosh.
But like, you wouldn't just
go up and talk to anybody.
You would see someone and
say, okay, this person
has collected my work, or
I met them at this event,
and it was very directed.
It's not just general
being out to be seen.
- I sort of forgot about what happened
when I got my gallery.
What happened was I built
my first solo show here,
like you were talking about Paul.
My third semester.
And it fit in with the
work that I was doing here,
but I forgot about that.
I did receive a lot of negative
emotions towards my direction.
And so what I did was I just ignored it.
I mean, I felt bad about it for sure,
but I was like, this is
not what I'm focusing on,
this is my future, this is my life.
This is special for me right now.
It will be special for them
later in some other environment,
and so I just went for it.
I'm like, this is not gonna
distract me from anything,
I'm doing this.
This is what I want,
this is why I came here.
But it's true.
Like, I do you have a very
gentle style and approach.
I mean, clearly, there's a
contrast in my personality
to the guttleness, the
viciousness, the beauty in my work.
So the contrast is my
approach with people.
I just found it meaningful to,
when I went to a party or going somewhere,
to find somebody that was
interesting that I could talk to.
I'd be like, you might
find me interesting,
you might like my work.
Or I might learn something from someone.
And that was always something
what I was looking for,
I'm like not necessarily
do I want something
from this person?
They might be able to
help me, but they could
tell me something fascinating.
- Thank you, Cindy.
- I have a question for
you guys real quick.
So when I was a grad student here,
there was this real palpable
sense that at any moment,
a dealer or a curator
could walk into the studios
and snatch you up.
This was in the late 90s, early 2000s.
Gallery dealers were grabbing
young MFA grads or students
right out of grad school, and
there was almost this sort of
feeding frenzy thing that was going on.
So we all thought like at any second,
somebody could walk in
and change the trajectory
of your art career, even
while you were a student.
And then it was happening all around us
and I was lucky enough to
get picked up by a gallery
in that moment.
I'm just curious, is the art
market like that here now?
You guys have that sense?
Do you guys think about those things?
Do you care about the market?
Do you care about curators and dealers
coming through your studios at all?
What's it like now?
Anybody can answer that.
(indistinct muttering)
- [Man] I don't think I feel like that.
- I'm sorry?
(indistinct chattering)
- Okay.
(indistinct chattering)
Sure, sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Just more out of curiosity.
I just remember like, I always
thought of my studio as like
I treated it like a gallery,
like it was my studio.
I made stuff in there, but
it always looked like stuff
was presented, because even,
like our studio, open studio events,
oh, sorry.
The mic.
Our open studio events were
packed, and people freaked out
over how their studio looked like.
Like we put a lot of
effort and energy into that
because, I mean you would
just see, like, holy crap,
so-and-so just got picked up
from team gallery tonight.
Like, it was happening,
like it was really amazing
and sort of scary.
And a lot of things
that Julie talked about,
people were pissed.
What? How did they get a gallery?
Those sorts of conversations
and competitiveness.
- [Man] To answer that, I think
that there is some pressure
to make your space kind
of look like a gallery,
but I think we are also
encouraged not to make it
feel like a gallery and to do
what we want with our space
because it is a working space.
But I think that there's
also that pressure
to make it look like an
installation that's professional.
Sometimes it's just not doable
with the spaces that we have.
Yeah, I don't think
there's that same sense
that we're gonna get picked
up by somebody at any moment.
It feels like it's more of
a longer haul type feel,
like you'll meet a curator
and they'll put you in touch
with somebody.
At least for me, that's
more of how I look at it.
I don't know, it might be
different for other people.
- [Woman] How about to put it this way?
I think, in many ways, we
can tell about our field
before economic crisis
and after economic crisis.
In many ways, art is like luxury brands
of fancy things.
It's not essential for life.
It's essential for life to us, but
I think in some ways,
for many people, it's
just a kind of opportunity
to earn money or like a lottery.
So I know it sounds so sarcastic
or yeah, cynical, but yeah.
I think more like that.
- You guys don't feel...
God damn mic.
So you guys don't have
that sort of competitive
sort of impulse to sort of
continually outdo one another?
(indistinct muttering)
It is important.
But I actually have another question.
So you guys stress, you've
mentioned resume a lot
and how you strive, like
especially early on,
you strived to build that.
How do you handle situations
that might come your way
but then you realize, even
like as an emerging artist,
after maybe having done some
research on this situation
in terms of who is offering
you an opportunity,
but then you get to,
because we have the Internet
so we can research who is
giving us the opportunity
and then you find that it's
not really to your liking,
how do you manage early on what could be
missed opportunities, but you
perceive them to be bad ones
that could affect, is it
crazy to have too much
unnecessary foresight if it's not--
- Oh, I think there's a big learning curve
to all this stuff, and
I would say Julie and I,
well, I'll speak for
myself, I certainly haven't
figured it all out yet.
I used to say yes to a lot of things,
now I'm in an opportunity where
I get to say no to things.
And not because they're
maybe not good opportunities
but because I have
enough good opportunities
or opportunities that I feel
are much more interesting to me personally
or to the trajectory of
my career or something.
But then you get yourself
in situations like mmm,
maybe I should have said no to this one.
But again, it's a learning curve.
I think you have to look
at the opportunities
and researching them
and talking to people.
I've worked with people who
probably won't work with again,
and lots of people who I
will gladly work with again.
It just takes time.
- What I'd say to that is there's things
I have said yes to,
and then they've come up months later
or even a year later,
and then I get into it and
I'm like oh, this was...
This is not it, but this
was what I would have liked
a year ago.
And it's sort of, there was
a teaching opportunity I had
that somebody made specifically for me.
And once I got in it, I was like oh yeah,
this would have fit me a while ago.
But it was good in the
end because it reminded me
to move faster and farther forward.
Like, okay, I'm definitely
about this thing over here.
This retaught me that.
So in those environments,
I felt like, okay,
this really solidifies what I want.
And then other times, if it
doesn't match your ethics
in a really bad way, I wouldn't do it.
But if you could figure
out how to make it work,
even if it's like, I'd say
even if it's 60% possible,
do it in the beginning.
- [Man] Okay.
So I wanna respond first
to your question, Paul,
about the competition, being removed now
for a couple of months
from graduating in 2016.
My class was very close,
but there was a great deal
of competition, whether or
not people outwardly said it.
And I don't think that competition is bad.
I think you need that competition
because that competition
pushes you to do better.
So the idea that now that competition
could be frowned upon
is actually really bad.
It should be fostered.
You want to know that the person
who's in the studio next to
you is looking at your work
and wants to do work better than you
and you want the same.
Because I may not...
Just because I want to be
better than this person,
doesn't mean I don't want
that person to succeed.
Because if they succeed, then I succeed.
So I would encourage you
guys to push each other
and have competition.
It's needed.
My second thing is for Julie.
You talked about, even
talking about your schedule
for next year and how you have
these three shows coming up,
and so my question is do
you think about these shows
simultaneously, or do you
sort of take them each
as they go sort of on
a chronological order?
So I'll work on this show first.
Once that's completed, I'll
start on the second one
and vice versa; or you're
kind of always in the act of
working on all three?
And how much time do you
budget for each show?
- I think he was asking you.
(laughs)
- I thought there was a two-part question.
- One response.
- One response?
Okay, yeah.
Oh yeah, okay.
Well...
How do I budget that time?
Well, I already know what
I wanna do in one place.
Like, that happens to me
sometimes immediately.
And then I draw it out, and that's...
I show for Asya in 2018
and the very end of 2017.
And that comes on the end of another show.
You know how you're working
on a piece and you're like,
okay, I'm gonna do this
and then you're like wait,
this is, wait, you're in the middle of it
and you're like wait,
that's for the next piece.
So sometimes my pieces are like
that, they're very chaotic,
but then I can draw them and
say this is what I'm gonna do.
The one show is site-specific.
So I have to fly to
Europe and I won't bring
anything with me.
And I have a general idea
of what I don't know exactly
what materials are available,
but the proposal I sent,
the language hopefully defines it.
So sometimes I'll define
what I'm doing by language,
and then that opens up the
opportunity, even in my own mind.
And then the other show is very small.
So that is almost like
a drawing for this.
The first show is almost a
drawing for the final one.
That's like a year later.
And I do that sometimes.
I'm like, the iteration
that I'm most interested in
is the furthest away
and how do I get there.
So I'll sometimes
practice through the shows
to the one that I really like.
But I've become skilled at scheduling
because of my theater background
so I know materials well.
And if I don't know them
well, I'll inquire for someone
to teach me about them.
And I really like organizing it.
In that way, I like calendars.
And when I'm in the
process, it looks messy,
but it's actually, like
I know the materials,
I know what force they can
take, how long it'll take
and possibly how many people
I might need to help me.
There's a lot of learning
involved that it's not perfect.
- So as a career counselor
here at a premier art school
in New York City, I get a question,
lately I've been getting
this question quite a bit.
Do I have to live in New
York City to be successful
as an artist?
And I love that
neither of you live here full-time,
so I wonder if you can
talk about what you think
the answer to that question is.
- Well, Julie moved to
Grand Rapids from Brooklyn,
so that answers your question.
Obviously not.
I mean, let's face it.
This is the center of the
art world currently anyways,
and it has been for a little while,
or at least as Jerry
Sols say likes to say,
it's the trading room
floor for the art world.
I was terrified to leave.
I thought I would never leave.
I mean, on many occasions,
I told people around me that I
love and that I hang out with
that I'm never moving from this place.
And certainly, I would never
move back to the Midwest.
And I've now been there for 10 years
and these opportunities
kept sort of arising.
I just finished up working
on a two-year project,
collaboration with Habitat for Humanity,
where they my organization
use four acres, 11 buildings,
and we got to do whatever we wanted.
We paid zero in rent.
The only thing we paid were
utilities on these properties.
I raised over, oh probably
$300,000 in that two years
to do these massive projects.
There is no way I could do these projects
like I just did at Rumsey
Street in Manhattan
in New York City anywhere.
It would be millions of
dollars, millions and millions
of dollars, and I would
have to know people
in the Mayor's office and be
super connected politically.
In Grand Rapids, in the
middle of the Midwest,
I can pull off these
big crazy projects that
you really can't do anywhere else.
So certainly you can survive
outside of this region.
I had to sort of reinvent
myself when I moved there,
and I sort of had to create
the opportunities for myself
in the beginning.
I was certainly terrified to
move away from this region.
I will probably end up back
here at some point in my life,
I hope, but I think there are
strategies to survive here,
as well as elsewhere.
- It's true, I've seen
incredible stuff happen
with Paul's organization.
Like, the fact of how much
you've been able to raise
in a short period of
time, it's unbelievable.
What we fantasize about as
artists, being able to have
freedom to do these
things and not be like,
I have to go through
this and this and this
and I have to be 50 years
old to be able to do
a project like this.
But what I wanted to
talk about was I was just
thinking about us as a
collective, like at SVA
or artists in New York is
one thing I like to
think about is all of us,
some of us might be native to the area but
we're still immigrants in this art school,
in this region, and that
takes a lot of skill
to bring yourself here, even
if you're an English-speaking
native of a country.
Like we all have a drive to
do something interesting,
and I think that, that is really important
and that is what propels us forward.
Like, going out back into the Midwest
where I'm originally
from and realizing that
it's the adventure that we're after,
whether it's here or somewhere else
or sending your work out
to somewhere in the world.
It's that sense of
adventure and presentation
that we're excited about.
So you can do what you want.
You can do this, you can go
somewhere else for a while,
and many of you probably have...
So I just think about that
as something as artists
that is native to our abilities.
In terms of our practice,
yeah, I lived in New York,
I was here eight years,
and I had a job in
production and then slowly,
as Anna was saying, my life
turned over to full-time artist
and it happened very gradual.
And I actually kind of made a choice.
Like, this is important enough,
this is how I do it, this
is the financial losses.
And then I'm like, and then
it's hopefully gonna even out.
But there were times where I take a trip
with a friend, like from here to Chicago,
stop in Detroit and I was
like, oh no way, never, never,
no way, and I was there
yesterday, giving studio prints
at the College for Creative Studies.
And I'm like how did this happen?
And it's adventure and it's amazing,
and it's just part of my life.
It's not permanent either.
That's what's amazing.
As long as you start
thinking it's permanent,
then you're stuck.
But seeing our network as
artists, as global as across
this country, I think
that's what really opens up
your possibilities.
- [Man] Going back to
what you were discussing
about you creating this
SiTE:LAB and everything,
do you believe that by creating something,
it helps to propel your career?
Like, rather than just
going home creating work,
waiting on a gallery to call you,
do you believe that by
you creating this event,
creating this idea, that it
then drew other people to you?
Or do you think
there's a different way?
- That's exactly what happened.
By creating this thing,
it created momentum for other
opportunities to come my way.
And I think it was 2000,
I think it was two years
ago, a year-and-a-half ago,
I had my first show on the
East Coast since moving away.
But it was because of all the
activity that I created there
and these sort of large-scale projects
that I'm able to produce in a
region that maybe doesn't get
a lot of critical attention,
with the exception of the
sort of crazy ArtPrize thing
that happens once a year in that area.
So one time out of the year,
the eyes of the art world
sort of turn on Grand Rapids
for this ArtPrize thing,
and I sort of saw it as
an opportunity to exploit
and I started producing much
larger projects for that event.
And certainly, that created opportunities
that drew attention,
attention of other people to my practice
and has created opportunities outside
of the region for me certainly.
- [Woman] Hello.
I had a quick question
as far as how you guys separately
are applying for things.
Because what I'm hearing
on Paul's end is more like
an organizer of a bigger institution
or a bigger organization,
and then on Julie's end,
she's still ahead of a bigger project,
but it still requires
multiple people within it.
So my question would be
are you guys, people, applying to things
that are for groups or for individuals,
for LLCs, non-profit or businesses?
Like how and what are you
applying your energy to,
to fund your projects?
- So SiTE:LAB is an
all-volunteer, non-profit
arts organization.
So often, those grants
and fundraising efforts
are for those projects.
I'm also doing them for
my individual sort of
when I do independent projects, which.
is less and less often.
I mean really, I think
of my practice as sort of
all-encompassing, even in sort of running
or producing these large-scale projects.
But yeah, most of my effort
on the fundraising side
is through the non-profit
side of this deal.
Or maybe a better way to
answer it is that's where
more funds are available.
- So I have two responses to that.
There's two ways I've been writing grants.
One is specifically under
myself as an individual,
the other is
ideas I have to work
with a group of people.
But it's not a non-profit,
it's not an LLC.
I haven't thought that way.
But the success that
I've had as an artist,
and I think I shared today sometimes,
is that when you have a very compelling,
driven statement about
how passionate you are
about making your work, why
you're making your work,
who you're making your
work for and how it's going
to impact, who it's going to impact,
people wanna hear about that.
Now sometimes, people who
are reading your advocation
are not artists.
A percentage of them won't
be, and they wanna know
that their money isn't just
gonna go to your studio rent.
So that's what I found,
is when people say yes,
I go back and I read my application.
I was like, oh, I sound compelling.
(chuckles)
And then often times, I've
promised portions of the money
to someone that's helping me,
or somebody that I've stated
as valuable in my practice.
And then they also see
that as a good move.
- To her point, it's...
When I go and fundraise
through the organization,
people like to fund
the artistic project.
So for instance, about 95 to
98% of all the funds we raise
go directly to the projects,
to the artistic project.
We don't pay rent, so
the money I'm raising
isn't going to pay for a
brick-and-mortar space.
It's not paying for
toilet paper or anything else.
It's going directly towards the project,
and people love to give money
to the artistic projects
versus salaries or rent, as
Julie said, things like that.
So it's easier to raise money that way.
- Just thought of
something else too, sorry.
Other grants I've gotten
have been over arching
from other organizations,
like the Harpo Foundation.
There is a clause for you
to apply as an individual
to that grant, which probably
would be perfect for you.
It's for women, a lot of women get it.
Not just women but they generally,
you can understand my point.
But it was also under
the Mattress Factory,
that museum in Pittsburgh, which
I had written the statement
but they presented it forward.
So sometimes, that works out really well
if you have an organization.
And I'm not quite sure how
you would line that up, but...
(audience applause)
- Yeah, I wanna thank you both so much
for coming all the way
out here, for being here
and sharing your stories.
I've gotten to know both of
you over the last year or two,
and I've been inspired by your stories.
I think we got a lot of
really good advice tonight.
Just go for it when
you're feeling awkward,
be open to new opportunities,
take adventures,
get other people to help
you, find your people.
I think all of this is useful
to every kind of artist,
no matter what your trajectory is.
So thank you both so much for being here.
(audience applause)
