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Risky business: Self-supporting visual artists share survival skills

11/27/2021

For the second year in a row, I've been leading artists' talks as part of the Eastside Culture Crawl.

One of the three Talking Art panels this year took on the wooly business of trying to live as a self-supporting artist, which in the city of Vancouver can border on masochism: today's costly studios in marginal, leaky, vermin-infested buildings are tomorrow's "luxury" residential investment units. Even before the global pandemic, exhibition spaces were scarce.

Vancouver might shimmer like a global city but it doesn't have the cultural pulse of Toronto or Montreal or Chicago or even nearby Seattle. It has more of its fair share of billionaire investment but for artists looking for exposure and opportunity, it's pretty small-town.

Yet every November over the last 25 years, the Eastside Culture Crawl gives a glimpse into this pretty/pricey city's vast — even overwhelming — community of self-identified artists and makers. And it's a little dumbfounding: How do all these folks survive, let alone thrive?

That was my question to three local artists.

(As posted by Vancouver creative strategist Mark Busse)

Eastside Culture Crawl members Gill Benzion (above), Jeff Wilson and Arleigh Wood generously shared their explorations into ways to exist as self-supporting artists, with much trial and error, mixed results and plenty of humour. I brought these three together to share on this topic because I knew their honesty and practical information would be of interest to viewers, many of whom are artists and makers themselves. For extra inspiration I even referenced Canadian visionary designer Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.

Through my research into these three artists' practices and the lively online discussion I learned a thing or two myself:

• My art practice is an unviable business model (ie. there is no model).
• I have no interest in selling my creative energy for corporate profit (anymore).
• When I'm finally satisfied with an artwork I lose all interest in repeating the process.
• When people tell me what I should be doing I retreat into the artwork at hand.
• I do not plan any series of works but take things one stitch, one knot at a time.
• I do not have a signature style or lines of sellable artwork.
• Throwing open my studio doors to the public is like taking off my clothes in a crowd.

Some of this could form my own incomplete manifesto; some of it is just fear and loathing of the business end of things. It all reminds me to take Mau's No. 14 point to heart (below).
I'm looking forward to continuing these kinds of conversations during First Saturday Open Studios, the brainchild of Valerie Arntzen, also a founding director of the Eastside Culture Crawl back in 1996.

My studio joins others opening their doors Dec. 4, 12-5pm. Don't be cool; come by, say hi.

(As posted by Vancouver creative strategist Mark Busse)

cultural community under threat in sparkling city

5/2/2014

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My daily work corner is one-third of a shared 800-square-foot studio of a mouldering building in the shadow of numerous condo-tower cranes in Mount Pleasant, with a combined rent of more than $1,000 per month. In the four years that I've managed to hold onto this little space I've watched Development Permit Application signs go up on one decrepit building after another. The signs go up, then all the resident independent visual artists, industrial designers, musicians, film industry workers, writers and performers get packing.

But where to go is a serious problem. A healthy city has a rich culture but the places to actually do that hard work are rare or too costly to consider in this town. Everyone knows someone who has given up trying and moved to Toronto. It's getting to the point where some artist friends have decided to remain in Vancouver — at least for the moment — because they just can't abandon the struggling cultural community.

It's an odd feeling, working in adverse conditions to ensure a vibrant cultural life in the milieu of the city's glassy wealth. Surely some of those speculative development dollars could actually help stem the tide that threatens to replace every last independent bookstore, gallery cafe and theatre into one long avenue of Shoppers Drug Marts, bank branches and Starbucks.

This is why, despite a general wariness about any artisan-party-backed events, I and a couple of friends hit the Fox theatre last Thursday for a Vision Vancouver-backed community forum on protecting the city's cultural spaces. When you want to be part of the conversation on this critical topic you go where there are ears.

Everyone from young street performers to retired folks bent on protecting threatened venues packed the revamped former porno theatre last Thursday evening — the perfect venue for showcasing what is possible with a council that is increasingly promoting the value of city culture of all kinds.

The entrepreneur behind the Fox, Ernesto Gomez (Waldorf, Nuba, etc.) was there on stage as part of a panel led by city councillor Heather Deal that included fellow councillor Geoff Meggs; Kate Armstrong, director of Emily Carr University's Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre; and Esther Rausenberg, head of the Eastside Culture Crawl. The vibe was one of simmering frustration but there was also warmth generated by the obvious show that we are all in this together.

From left: Coun. Geoff Meggs, Kate Armstrong, Ernesto Gomez, Esther Rausenberg, Coun. Heather Deal. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Deal dealt her summation the next day, based on notes she was taking during the roving-mike portion of the evening:
"Development needs to deliver more for local culture. Arts and culture needs to be treated as a public good. That we need zoning to enable independent businesses and cultural groups to succeed, not push them out. And that it's not just about creating studio space, it's the need for rehearsal and production space too."

But things are getting better, as many noted at the forum. The relatively new food truck program and more reasonable liquor licensing laws are both driving audiences and sales at local festivals and venues; car-free events like the city's biggest free music and art fest, Khatsalano and Car Free Day on the Drive have turned radical notions into much-loved draws.

Miniature portraits by artists of the Phantoms in the Front Yard Collective

And the squeeze on work and show space has resulted in some fresh, unconventional art shows in opportunistic spaces, like shipping containers or urban alleys. Last Friday it was a pop-up show, Everyone I've Never Known, in three units of the retro Burrard hotel. Only in one of the most expensive cities in the world will you find serious collectors crowding into tiny hotel rooms to snap up the miniature graphite and pencil portraits — proof that artists will continue to create, even if at a scale that doesn't demand studio space.

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You can't keep a good maker down

2/1/2013

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My mother might remember this: as a kid, I once declared that I could handle a stint in jail, because I would spend the time dressing up the place by making decorations out of any old bits and pieces.
Not a huge leap, as making something out of nothing was already my preferred activity within my own four walls, for hours at a time.

I scored stuff around the house and started fabricating, often without too much of a game plan. I recall a lot of painted papier-mache figurines made of plastic dishwashing liquid bottles, sock puppets from what may or may not have been orphan socks. This is around the first time I heard 'crepe' refer to fabric, and not just to 'paper', as in, "That was my good black crepe!"

Arntzen's models are a work of art themselves. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

I was — and still am — an opportunistic maker. I am inspired by whatever materials I come across, fabricating a lot of experiments, literally playing with ideas. In my world, that's not unusual. The other day a friend reflexively picked plastic bits from the alley while we walked. Another friend I met for coffee smiled in triumph as she held up a small battered bit of found metal, an inevitable component of a future encaustic painting.

Makers might dream of spacious studios or top-quality materials and tools to develop their concepts through doing, but a lack of all that won't keep the making from happening. In fact, restricted space and resources can lead to innovation, necessity being the mother of invention and all that.

I was reminded of this during the Eastside Culture Crawl back in November, while visiting Arnt Arntzen's steampunky workshop in Strathcona, a must-see stop for any passionate maker. Just a few weeks earlier, Arnt and artist-spouse Valerie Arntzen had just returned from six months in a small pied-a-terre in Amsterdam's city centre, so surely he wouldn't have a lot of new examples of his signature reclaimed-wood and metal furniture to show.

Yet there it was: a collection of what this famously humble industrial designer calls models for future furniture, created out of whatever he found around the city and a Leatherman pocket-sized multi-tool. They may have been modest macquettes to him, but to me they are exquisite, concrete proof that you can't keep a good maker down. Six months away from his workshop may have been hard for this hard-worker but the restriction also pushed him in another new direction, and the writing was on the walls: paintings that combine his passion for industrial design with pattern and abstraction.

Random sample of innovation with scant art materials and no tools but a lot of heart:

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This week's blog is brought to you by the word Juxtaposition

11/23/2012

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A friend of mine was a little obsessed with cleaning her carpeting in the condo she brought brand new several years ago. She seemed to be at constant war with her wall-to-wall. I always assumed it was her strong design aesthetic that drove her to splurge on a top-of-the-line vacuum-cleaner but I couldn't figure out the vacuuming fetish. This month she finally broke the bank and had it all ripped out and replaced with wood floors. The installer sucked up 12 shopvac cannisters of dust from her two-bedroom unit. Clearly the carpet was installed before the unit was cleared of debris. Not really surprising if you live in a building that flew up in a condo boom, which is sort of how it happens in Vancouver.

A family member in the construction business says that when you're part of a crew that is told you have to finish up and be out of one condo project by a Friday and show up at another on Monday or lose your pay, you do more than just sweep it all under the rug; you chuck all the bits of building stuff into the walls and drywall over the problem. If it were not for the whistle-blower involved in the Athletes Village mega development the uninsulated pipes hidden behind drywall would be leaking through several buildings by now.

Which brings me to "juxtaposition," a key term in post-modernism that speaks to issues of globalism and consumerism in relation to art.

Bloom tables: Salvaged Western Red Cedar tree stumps filled with creamy organic resin

Against this backdrop of some seriously shoddy workmanship — even within those hastily-completed interiors — is a considerable number of talented, skillful designers who spend their days creating furniture pieces of supreme workmanship and beauty, as evident in last weekend's Eastside Culture Crawl. The Bloom tables (right) by Mth Woodworks and Peter Pierobon's Plumb Pendant cedar lamps (below) lie in juxtaposition to the slap-dash boom-town antics.

Against the clutter of cranes marking the current boom, these visual poems are more than lovely use items; they provoke us to consider the role and value of art in society.
They are fully realized form and function against a speculative-market-driven built environment.

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Risky business: Self-supporting visual artists share survival skills

cultural community under threat in sparkling city

You can't keep a good maker down

This week's blog is brought to you by the word Juxtaposition

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