Marketing Mondays: Do It yourself

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Laura Moriarty in her Hudson Valley studio.

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"I'm giving myself a two-week residency in my own studio beginning today.”

That was the sculptor Laura Moriarty announcing her intention via Facebook several weeks ago. Moriarty’s residency is now over, but I love the idea that in her busy life as an artist, gallery director and teacher, she decided to carve out a block of time with no other distractions. It helps that Moriarty has been the recipient of many residencies, so she knows how they work—and thus how to take advantage of the intense focus. I love the idea that she defined her studio time as a residency.

Reading about Moriarty’s self-gifted residency brought to the fore—yet again—the idea that one of the great things about being an artist right now is that we are able to direct our careers  ourselves, rather than waiting for the big break, the big grant or the unlikely miracle. There are many ways to take the DIY approach.  

Want a solo show but there’s no gallery offering you one?
Do it yourself. Gwyneth Leech had a great idea for a show, secured a display window in the Garment District, and installed it. I wrote about it here. For some artists an exhibition such a Leech's would be, in and of itself, a great DIY project but that’s not the end of this story. She invited the Cheryl McGinnis Gallery in Chelsea to co-sponsor the project.  It was so successful that she’s

now represented by the gallery, and together McGinnis and Leech secured yet another space for Leech’s particularly fabulous brand of exhibition with the artist in attendance for some part of just about every day.

Above: Leech's Hypergraphia in the Garment District in  2011.
Right: Hypergraphia in the prow of the iconic Flatiron Building. Read more in Leech's blog, Gwyneth's Full Brew

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Want to curate a show?

There are art centers that would love to have you present a proposal. A busy curator who’s smart enough to respond to a well-thought-out proposal will buy herself some time for the rest of the year’s programming because you have already done a good deal of the work. That’s what Gregory Wright did with his exhibition, Pollination, at the Brush Gallery in Lowell, Mass., recently. He got funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, too, which allowed him to do a catalog of the show. And the show is about to travel, in slightly altered form, to Provincetown, Massachusetts in June. If you can build some perks for yourself, such as  curatorial or travel fees, or if the gallery can do that for you, so much the better.

Above: Installation view of Pollination at the Brush Gallery, Lowell, Mass., with  work by Toby Sisson, foreground; below: the grant-funded catalog

Both photos: Nancy Natale

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Don’t have a bricks-and-mortar venue? Curate online
I'm surprised more artists haven't done this. Structural Madness, a “New York virtual gallery” founded and run by Gloria Klein—who has curated many physical exhibitions for Gallery 128 on the Lower East Side—is one such venue (and guess whose work is featured this month?)
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I’ve also curated “exhibitions” here on my own blog. To be honest, I don’t see them as exhibitions so much as curated blog posts, but the point is that they’re an opportunity to bring together work by various artists in a way that creates a visual narrative.  See Spring Greens and Rhomboid Rumba. I loved doing those! The World Wide Web, which I pulled together from what I saw at the recent Miami art fairs, is another such curated post, along with Black is the New Black. Again. The bonus here: While I get to exercise my curatorial muscles, I’m spared the administrative and physical process of planning and installing the show. 
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Julie Karabenick has a splendid curatorial project on line, Geoform, which takes an international look at abstract geometric art. I’ve mentioned it before but it’s worth mentioning again, as Karabenick is adding new artists and interviews regularly.

Or curate in print

That's what Sharon Butler did. The painter and editor of the blog Two Coats of Paint has been publishing limited-edition books on various topics. A recent one, Against the Tide, looks at the work of artists who have reference water in their work (disclaimer: I'm one of them). It's a catalog of a show that exists only in the catalog. In our media-sophisticated existence, an exhibition in print makes perfect sense.
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.Start a Gallery

Zach Feuer started with an apartment in Boston while still an art student at the Museum School and now has a serious gallery in Chelsea.  Minus Space, started by artists Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martinez, began as a curated website and now has a physical gallery in Brooklyn. Chris Ashley has an appointment-only gallery, Some Walls, in his Oakland home. (I have previously written about Ashley's project here.) Ashley’s essays about artists on his blog, Look See, seem to have been the germinating point for the gallery shows, which are always accompanied by an Ashley essay.

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Wish someone would write a monograph on your work?

Until Rizzoli comes calling, you have the power to create your own monograph using one of the various online publishers, such as Blurb or Lulu. 

Sharon Butler did just this with her Tower Paintings: Keeping Our Distance, left. Online publishing means that you create the book or catalog and then print only as many copies as needed. Yes, the per-copy cost may be higher than conventional book publishing, but considering that you don’t need to pay a designer (you can use one of many available templates), or a printer (it’s print on demand), and you don’t have to pay for a big print run, for shipping the copies to you, or for storing them, it turns out to be not such a bad deal. For most artists the point is not to go into business selling books, but to create a limited-edition monograph of your work. (You’d be wise to commission an essay. And if you can involve an institution or gallery where you’ll have an exhibition, or do so in conjunction with an exhibition, the project should be treated with the same respect as a conventional catalog.)
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Give yourself an art fair

Long before the Armory Fair reincarned in 1994 on several floors of the Gramercy Hotel in New York City, likely igniting the current art fair

Binnie Birstein works on paper at the in-house Hotel Fair at the International Encaustic Conference, June 2011. Unframed works are easy to travel and set up
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frenzy, small fashion businesses were renting hotel rooms to show their collections twice yearly to the fashion press. The flexibility of this format became clear to me when Debra Ramsay and Cora Jane Glasser, two artists participating in the encaustic painting conference I run, rented a suite and turned the living room into an after-hours art fair. It was a big hit, providing not only an opportunity to see their work but a place to hang out and talk about art. Sales were made, and Ramsay and Glasser’s salon became the model for the in-house Hotel Fair that takes place each year now.  It seems to me that any kind of conference could provide you with the opportunity to create a “hotel fair” to show your work. Show small work, or unframed work on paper, and you can take the show in your suitcase. (I'd love to see what artists at the CAA Conference do with this idea.)

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Give yourself a residency

We end this post where we started: with the idea of a self-gifted residency. How did Moriarty's residency go? "It went great!" she says. "I experienced a breakthrough and completed a new 30 piece collection, worked out some new panoramic shelf pieces, and my work has taken a slight new turn during this period, which has energized my curiosity."

One result of Moriarty's residency: Flattop, 2012, encaustic (app 12 inches high)
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Moriarty offers this advice for anyone considering a DIY residency: "Act as if you are going to be leaving town; get all of your appointments out of the way, pay the bills, clear your calendar, and pre-clean your studio." Two weeks, she adds, "worked perfectly for me."

Over to you: What have you done for yourself lately?
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Related posts

. The Open Studio

. Where Can I Show, Part 1
. Where Can I show, Part 2
. Should You do an Artists' Fair?

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