Amazing discussion tonight at our On & Off the Walls Panel about the importance of community in artmaking and getting your work in front of audiences. Also the importance of boldness and persistence, especially if you are working outside the gallery system. Also, what struck me very much was that all of the artists had found success without waiting for any sort of magical permission stick to bop them on their head and make them acceptable or legitimate.
I came to visual art kinda late, so my exploits are a little different and definitely not at all gallery-driven -though things do occasionally wind up in group shows. I made my first collages after I took a workshop down at the Book & Paper Center, one of which still hangs in my dining room. At first, my visual exploits were driven by neccessity for cover designs with dgp, later by retail purposes for the collages and paper goods I was making for the etsy shop, where I was a big hit with shadowboxes and simple collages. All along, I was mostly exhibiting in the library's shows which always needed more work (much as I still do now). I began doing more art for arts sake--many touched off by design work I did for the press. Some were totally random, some were just ridiculous goof-offs, but by the time the late 2000's rolled around, I was creating work, much of it in cooperation with written work by then, so soon there were things like the shipwreck series and radio ocularia, sometimes created in tandem with the written elements, as well as other image-only series like strange seed that would manifest as books or book-like in some way.
I had come out of the 90's with a rudimentary knowledge of zines and zine making, but had never indulged myself. My sister worked on a zine with her high school friends and it seemed like fun, and while I was swimming in the culture that made zines big, I didn't have have the vision or resources to make something of that culture. By the time I landed with the sort of creative drive to do something, everyone was making online zines, thus wicked alice was born, but I somehow missed the golden age of the saddle staple, well, at least until I started making their kissing cousin, chapbooks.
I was also beginning to become familiar with the slightly fancier cousin of both, artists books, and was interested in the possibilities of going that direction with some dgp projects (thus things like at the hotel andromeda and billet-doux). For a Woman Made Gallery show, I created the book of red, which was a one-off collage retelling of little red riding hood. I was really inspired by Aussie artists Gracia and Louise and their beautiful books and zines, which sort of showed me what was possible and so began issuing the bulk of my work in zine or artist book form, both the written and the visual, sometimes separately, usually together. I liked very much how it felt like I was creating much more wholly working in both, and I still do this for most projects.
I guess sometimes they are chapbooks (havoc, the inventions of the monsters), sometimes they are zines (/slash/, honey machine), and sometimes I get a little fancier and would consider them artist books (lunarium, radio ocularia), but all of them feel like a way to present my work in the most unified way possible. Many of the shorter series go on to be published in books without the visual elements of course, and stand alone nicely, but offer another layer in their original form.
It also feels good to be able to distribute work in a more direct way and interact with other artists. You can sell copies of a traditional book and never know where it lands , but I've met so many poets and book artists by more direct audience cultivation. I remember those early chaps I made and how much I liked swapping them and giving them away which isn't always economical with full-length books. A few years back, I started offering the yearly zine series as a way to get everything at a discount, plus other printed goodies.
Things do occasionally wind up on walls around the city or in the library, or books wind up in shows, but these happen sort of haphazardly (The Krampus Show, Words|Matter) since I don't have the bandwidth to pursue them all the time (also logistically hard given transportation and schedules for pick-ups or drop-offs ) But I do like exhibiting in the library in the themed shows we do (mostly since my co-curator, Jen, and I share many of the same obsessions that dictate our subject matter.) This way, the art show sort of comes to me instead of me to it. I also used to do sort of general library exhibits and the occasional alumni show. And then things like Zine Fest and Indie Press and such are also good (as will be the mythical open studios I plan but never seem to have.) I'd also like to work more at getting visual work in other venues like lit and art mags in the future, since I feel like they are a very high impact way of generating interest in your work at large.
