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  • Sketching_1The life of an independent artist can be both very rewarding and very trying. On the one hand, if you pursue this path it’s likely you’re doing so to chase a passion, and few things can be quite as enriching. Yes, you’ll see plenty of even successful artists bemoaning the lifestyle and recommending young artists find other employment – but deep down, they’re doing what they love to do. It’s just that it isn’t easy. On the other hand though, particularly when you’re starting out, finding reliable, paid work as an independent artist is far easier said than done.

    There is no formula for earning money as an artist. It takes talent, initiative, and a little bit of luck. However, we have a few ideas for some modern outlets that the independent artist in 2018 can at least explore for potential income opportunities.

    Patreon

    For those who haven’t looked into it yet, Patreon is an innovative modern platform designed to help artistic people get funding. Basically, it’s similar to crowdfunding sites, but built for private artists. You post your work, or access to it, and “patrons” can pay to support it. The main idea is financing, but Patreon is also a fantastic way to gain exposure. If your work is good and you’re strategic about your use of the platform, you can build a legitimate following through this service.

    Online Courses

    If you do have any sort of following – through Patreon, social media exposure, previous sales, or whatever else – you can always explore the avenue of running an online course also. It’s not for everybody, but private instruction can bring in some nice supplemental income, and it doesn’t have to be that much work. Even getting 10 people to sign up for, say, a 10-video course at $100 each can get you a nice little chunk of cash in a matter of weeks. You’ll have to build to the point at which you can charge that kind of money and students will trust and respect your perspective, but it’s certainly worth exploring.

    Game Art

    This may sound oddly specific, but video games are coming out at an incredibly fast rate these days, and many of them are designed on tight budgets – meaning the creators might be looking for some help with cover art. And we aren’t just talking about console titles. New mobile games come out on a daily basis, and a massive portion of all internet gambling features online games. There are tons of online and mobile games, and doing some cover art for even one of them can lead to significant exposure and potentially more opportunities. You’ll have to hustle a bit to talk to and negotiate with game designers, but it’s a nice modern option to keep in mind.

    Creator Art

    Here we’re talking about a concept similar to that of making game cover art, but for other creative types: writers, musicians, and these days even podcasters. These people might not be primarily focused on visual art but at the end of the day they all need covers. And particularly now that so many creative types publish their own content online, independently, they might be interested in accepting help in an unorthodox manner. And again, doing a few covers for any kind of content that becomes popular – and making sure you can take credit – can lead to more exposure and opportunity.

    Networking

    A lot of modern artists would likely deem this the most important step toward making a career out of independent work. Networking tips for artists include simple but necessary ideas like meeting other artists (and offering support to them), seeking connections over sales, following up on new contacts, etc. Often, you gain the most exposure (and eventually more sales of your private work) the more people you know. And if you’re a regular presence in a community of artists and do your best to promote their work, they’ll likely do the same for you – meaning you magnify your audience with each fellow creative you successfully engage with!

  • Long known for billing top grade, sophisticated acts that cover indie, jazz, electronic and everything in-between. West Village staple Le Poisson Rouge hosted a special event on Sunday, ‘I Feel Pride.’ The heated dance party was not only dedicated to NYC Gay Pride, but also the 10th anniversary of the music venue.

    Aptly named LPR X, the yearlong event series presents an eclectic roster of headlining acts – both previous and new to the venue. Considered the founder of disco, Italian producer Giorgio Moroder hosted and headlined the night.

    Moroder is considered key to Donna Summer’s rise to fame, producing “Love to Love You Baby” and “I Feel Love.” He is also responsible for the timeless movie soundtrack tunes “Take My Breath Away” (“Top Gun”), Irene Cara’s “Flashdance … What a Feeling” and Blondie’s “Call Me” (American Gigolo). Moroder wrote compositions for “Superman III,” “Rambo III,” “Beverly Hills Cop II,” and “Scarface.” Over the course of 50 years he has not stopped his output, working with premier acts including Barbra Streisand, Elton John, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Eurythmics and Daft Punk, et al.

    The night was truly standout due to the caliber of artists, who bought a heavy arsenal of quality music. The crowd also contributed, as gays, straights and people of all persuasions convened on the darkened dancefloor for opening act Holy Ghost. The duo played an uplifting, funky set of electro and disco house, seamlessly mixing and building up their set. The room was lively as ever as revelers downed drinks and danced the night away. Patrons hung onto every beat and synth line, anticipating where Holy Ghost would take them next.

    Holy Ghost

    At the end of their set, Holy Ghost left the room begging for more. Afterwards, the crowd greeted Giorgio Moroder with cheers and enthusiasm, as he smiled and graced the stage. His relentless set had the crowd riled up as he played a medley of his Grammy-winning hits, plus remixes of his most famous tunes. “Hot Stuff” really took the house down as the room continued to fill up with fun-loving party people. For a man who is 78 years old, he more than showed his mastery of the art of DJing.

    Holy Ghost and Giorgio Moroder

    All-in-all, Le Poisson Rouge hit all high marks in putting together a remarkable pride event with music that, however different, are aligned in the history of electronic, dance, pop and disco.

  • shutterstock_164210705

    Art for Progress is pleased to announce a summer music & arts program for NYC high school students. The program is designed for students who are interested in a career in the arts and music.

    Workshops in music and visual arts will be offered over four dates between mid-July and mid-August. These 4 hour workshops will include guest speakers, professionals in both the visual arts and music. The guest speakers will share their knowledge, guidance and experience as professionals in the art world.

    The main objective of the program is to provide continued instruction over the summer months for students who are considering a future career in the arts.  Students can also be graduates who are looking for additional instruction before heading off to college or art school.

    The planned student to teacher ratio will be 10-15 students with a total of 40-50 students for each date. Space will be limited, and will be on a first come first serve basis.  Students can choose to attend one or more workshops, but we suggest you attend all four. Please sign up as soon as possible to secure your place.  The specific dates, location (Manhattan) and times will be available soon.

    These are the dates for the workshops:

    Workshop 1– Sunday, July 22nd- 10:30am – 2:30pm (lunch provided)
    Workshop 2– Sunday, July 29th- 10:30am – 2:30pm (lunch provided)
    Workshop 3– Sunday, August 5th- 10:30am – 2:30pm (lunch provided)
    Workshop 4– Sunday, August 12th- 10:30am – 2:30pm (lunch provided)

    The location for the workshops is Teatro Latea @ The Clemente Soto Velez Center, 107 Suffolk Street, 2nd floor, rooms 202 & 203, New York, NY.

    Each session will include a 30 minute career development session with a professional artist/musician.

    To sign up, contact us for a simple, one page application form.

    By e-mail: summerarts@artforprogress.org,  For questions, contact Barry Komitor at (347)661-2469

    This program is funded by a generous grant from the Henry Matisse Foundation.

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  • It was the industrial revolution that first attempted to record sound “as a medium for preservation,” activating the phenomena of noise as an integral source when documenting history. Thomas Edison received notoriety for the phonograph in 1877, but it was really Edouard-Lèon Scott de Martinsville who invented the phonautograph in 1857, the first recording device. The device was specifically created to study frequency found in sounds, an intention much different from the phonograph invented by Edison which was to play and “reproduce the recorded sound… originally recorded onto a tinfoil”.  As per historical reference ( author unknown ), “The phonograph revolutionized the art of music. Performances were recorded and people could listen to them at their leisure.  It also made music and communication more public. The invention signaled the birth of a new form of entertainment and an entirely new field of business that fed the demand for the new invention, the music industry”- hence both inventions put an end to the masses’ naiveté to the sense of hearing, and introduced the start of audio’s sensational future possibilities.

    When we fast forward through the history of music and sound, we could say that the underground rave music scene (which famously erupted somewhere in between Chicago and the UK during the late 80’s), had a lot of thanking to give the founding fathers of sound, more so Edison’s phonograph. It was the phonograph that gathered groups of people before a speaker, and provided the tinfoil turn-table surface that would later provide all DJ’s their toy to scratch and play. Meanwhile visual artists and sound composers like Christian Marclay (Guitar Drag, 2000), push the limits of the process by recording the unplanned ( similar to Martinsville’s sterile approach to document sound), as a way to preserve a moment in history,  as a form of art.

    Although the fundamental of each invention resided in sound, both were distinct in nature and require different modes to the final release of sound. For one, in the rave scene, the DJ uses the turntables to create sounds, which eventually become into hypnotic, riveting, 8 count dance-able sentences, or compositions, while artists like Marclay play with sound from an archival and fortuitous place: lacking the 8 count structure, not-worthy of Martinsville experimental approach to document sound.


    In 2012, Emile Milgrim and Thom Wheeler Castillo, two artists residing in Florida embarked on a project that would lead to the sound collective, Archival Feedback.  Their work falls somewhere in between Martinsville and Edison’s inventions, and/or intentions. During a recent group exhibition at FATVillage Projects, I curated In Close Proximity, and asked AF to present Delimiting Site 1b, (2016-ongoing). The work was an examination of a location and its history ( a strong tie to the theme of the exhibition: a person’s identity and possible evidence embedded in a terrain that could solidify the security of people in political emancipation). The piece entailed of a gouged 10 ft x 10 ft rectangle shape on a plot of land the artists had worked on for about 3-4 hours. Hot pink wooden stakes were placed at each corner to mark its view to the visitors and microphones were placed next to the piece to record the sounds of the clanging shovels. 

    FullSizeRenderPictured off-center; Archival Feedback, Delimiting site 1b, 2017/18, during In Close Proximity, 2018, group exhibition at FATVillage Projects, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

    Questions & Answers:

    When did you first dabble in sound?
    AF:  In the womb, duh.
    BB:
    Oh..yeah, presumably so. I knew that.


    Was your exploration intended as a work of art or as sound play for the public?
    AF:  EXPLORATION


    How is sound relevant in Contemporary art?

    AF:  Sound media has improved as the tech has developed and now is very streamlined, allowing access to various platforms that can easily transmit to global audiences in seconds for playback and feedback. Sound is immediate, physical sensation, directly transmitting rich, physical details of the material world that flow through our bodies, primarily, but not exclusively, through our ears.

    Waves physically moves through the eardrum and perceived by the brain simultaneously, directly employing language, records, noise, movement.  I find it equally if not more intriguing than the visual. That directness as a medium also enhances the ideas driving the work, the gesture of listening, enhanced listening of the landscape by using the brain and the body to listen to the world around. Is this relevant in Contemporary art? I would hope that spaces that actively employ art are places that encourage listening as much as rhetoric.


    What are you saying… or trying to say to the audience in Delimiting Site 1b? What will the audience understand when they listen to your work?


    AF:  
    In Delimiting Site 1b, a sound replays with fidelity a gesture enacted in fieldwork, the sound of a shovel digging. To delimit is to measure and form boundaries, to create my space, your space. But the audience is presented with a record of breaking down a site. The fieldwork explores the site, breaks it down, handles it. It uncovers details of the site. What is the site made of, what has been forgotten? What seems inconsequential reveals something about place and the experience of that place over time, that is, its history.  When we dig through layers of bio-facts, handling of the stratum as information that is measured, mediated through technology, that sifting from bio-facts into artifact, the gathered stratum becomes a record.  History can happen in the same place over and over again but is usually forgotten. In the act of the digging, through the stratum, we can reclaim that history, we can confront what it reveals. The recorded gesture becomes a way to experience that record through its playback, looping, re-framing that act of.

    image1How are you selling your work?

    AF: This work is not for sale.

    BB: So I can’t buy it? Okay then… If you could turn your sound into an image, what would that image look like?


    AF: It’d be interesting to portray through a moving image, an animation made from drawings that describe the sound and gesture.                                                                   

    Are you conversing with each other (AF) when you create, or with the public?
    AF: We see the work as a constant dialogue between ourselves and the environment. We’re glad others choose to listen.


    What are you working on aside from In Close Proximity?
    AF: We’re scoring a soundtrack to a film about the Everglades.


    – Beláxis Buil

     

    For more on Archival Feedback, visit:   Other-electricities.bandcamp.com

    Sources:
    *
    DJtechtools.com, History of the Rave Scene: How Djs Built Modern Dance Music, Sara Simms,    December, 2013
    *
    ihatetodance.com, Hear the beat, feel the…, James Joseph, 2014, Internet

    *glasstire.com, Notes on Christian Marclay’s “ Guitar Drag”, Christina Rees, June, 2015, Internet
    *
    www.reference.com, How did the Phonograph change society?
    *
    therivardreport.com, ‘ Guitar Drag’ Reverberates Dark History at ArtPace, Wendy Weil Atwell, May, 2015
    *
    wikipedia.com, Rave, Page issues
    *
    wikipedia.com, History of Sound recording, Page issues

  • Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist, Lorna Tucker’s documentary on iconoclastic British designer Vivienne Westwood, has a trim runtime of 80 minutes. Maybe that’s why it feels like there’s a lot missing. How do you encompass the life and work of someone who 1) is half responsible for inventing British punk, 2) has evolved from an anti-establishment outsider into a revered fashion designer and beloved British subject, and 3) has had a fascinating personal life as well? This could have been a documentary series.

    With the short shrift given various aspects of Westwood’s life and work, this nonlinear, nonchronological film yields more questions than answers. (Thank goodness for Wikipedia.) So it’s probably best to experience the interviews, archival photos, video clips and stock footage representing Westwood’s 77 years on earth as an impressionistic wash of information and fantastical visuals. In some ways, it’s a fitting framework for a wildly unconventional artist who has never done anything neatly or predictably.

    The film begins with current-day Westwood looking overwhelmed as she asks crankily, “Do we have to cover every bit of it? So boring…” She’s reassuringly punk from the get-go.

    Tucker largely lets her subject narrate her own story, with input from husband, sons, employees and various others who have known her. We learn that she began making clothes at 11 or 12, around the same time that a painting of the crucifixion instilled the desire to save people and “prevent bad things from happening.” This motivation still drives her work: “You’ve got to cut a figure, be prepared for action and engagement.”

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Shown preparing a recent show for London Fashion Week, she’s clearly unhappy with the collection. Dramatically outspoken, she curses and browbeats employees before declaring, “Let’s close the company.” One senses that this is nothing new.

    The film delves into Westwood’s working class background, as she recalls leaving art school for teacher training in order to make a living. She marries Derek Westwood just as the ’60s and rock n’ roll make their impact, but they split up soon after son Ben is born.

    The intriguing-looking Ben, an erotic photographer turned designer, talks about the disruptive arrival of Malcolm McLaren, whose worldly background and big ideas prove irresistible to Westwood. She recounts their infamous collaboration, which began with selling records in the back of a shop on King’s Road. Eventually the couple would take over the space, selling their provocative handmade clothes. McLaren eventually recruited a few customers to become a band.

    At this point in the film Westwood practically rolls her eyes, “Really, if I have to talk about the Sex Pistols…”

    Instead, we see curators at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum carefully handling her classic Destroy t-shirt, worn by Johnny Rotten in the late ’70s. It’s a funny juxtaposition, considering how outrageously subversive it was at the time. (In 2004, the V&A mounted the first complete Westwood retrospective.)

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Eventually Westwood does talk briefly about the Sex Pistols. “We invented punk,” she says, not exaggerating. She notes that punk affected fashion so much that it soon became a marketing ploy; as a rebuke, she began designing colorful costumes with historical references and decided to enter the real fashion world. According to her, McLaren’s jealousy led to an ugly split. (“I outran him…got intellectually bored.”) Later, Westwood CEO Carlo D’Amario tells of an important contract that was scuttled by a vindictive McLaren. Unfortunately, the latter, who died in 2010, is not around to tell his side of the story.

    Almost as fascinating as Westwood herself is her current husband and business partner Andreas Kronthaler, who seems almost mystified by his wife, admitting at one point, “I’m so in love with her.” They met when she took a teaching a job in Austria and he was one of her students. As Kronthaler gradually took over her business, many were suspicious, though it certainly seems to have worked out well for them both.

    As the narration zigzags in time, we’re not always sure what year or collection we’re looking at, especially given the timelessness of Westwood’s styles (and of the woman herself). Of course, the clothes are stunning, from provocative fetish-wear to whimsical tartan suits to achingly beautiful gowns, shown in clips from various runway shows (themselves incendiary events). Westwood has covered a lot of fashion ground, not all of it appreciated. One early clip features an incredulous TV talk show audience laughing uproariously at each outfit presented by the designer.  Says Joe Corré, Westwood’s son with McLaren: “She got that reaction a lot, but in the end you couldn’t ignore her.”

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment

    When she finally wins British Designer of the Year in the early 1990s, it’s a hard-won recognition. She is also recognized at Buckingham Palace with an OBE (an event she attended sans underwear, much to the delight of photographers), later upgraded to a DBE.

    With the brand’s success has come explosive expansion with myriad licensing deals and stores opening in cities around the world. Westwood worries repeatedly about losing control over her company, one of the few independent fashion houses left.

    The film dwells briefly on her increasing involvement with climate change, among other causes. (Interestingly, there isn’t any mention of her own clothes being sustainably manufactured.) As she spends more time at rallies and other events, Andreas is shown taking on the brunt of running the business, another source of tension. Clearly, it’s all a tricky balancing act.

    Reportedly, the designer has distanced herself from Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist, claiming that Tucker didn’t show enough of the “Activist.” True as that may be, the remarkable personality, history and fashion are what most people want to see in a film about Vivienne Westwood.  Though somewhat shambolic and unfocused, Westwood does deliver the goods, as messy and captivating as its subject.

    Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist opens at the IFC Center on Friday, June 8.

    Marina Zogbi