The Artist’s Office is starting small but with a big vision. The ultimate goal is to help artists become self-determining of their own trajectory rather than waiting for some outside force to select them for success. That model has privileged a few, and I want to help spread opportunity and success around to a wider group of people.
I’ve started by developing a few pragmatic ways I can help with this.
As much as I love my time in the studio, administrative work is actually appealing to me, and I’m good at it. I try to encourage my friends to update their websites, write their artist statements, and apply for grants. Most of the time, these suggestions are met with a look of dread, and then lots of excuses.
VB: Why might an artist want a book of their work? To get opportunities, or increase their credibility? What are some of the reasons you hear from artists, or give them, to think about why they might want a monograph?
NZ: Typically, there are a couple different scenarios. One of the situations (which is kind of amazing from my point of view) is …
Since I began The Artist’s Office six years ago I've been circling around an idea, bumping up to it like someone in a crowded bar. I then apologize and back away as if I'm not where I should be. But the fact is, this is a space I should have been pushing my way into. I was exactly where I should have been.
The idea that I've been circling around is how important a network is for an art career. I have always known that it is important and always (with a sigh) admitted it was necessary.
On Monday, I moved my studio. I love a fresh start. This transition has been a source of relief and excitement that I have been looking forward to since I found a new space in October. New year, new studio!
For this move, I tried to purge things that I was hoarding—materials that I think I'll use someday but won't, weird equipment that was unloaded onto me that I've been holding on to just in case...
I thought I did a fairly good job passing things along to other artists or to the garbage can, until I had a dawning realization about another stash of items that seemed to balloon as I pulled it all off my shelves.
I've been lugging this stash with me from studio to studio and it grows each passing year. As my awareness grew of this accumulation, so did my panic. How could I have let this get so out of control?
My mom used to tell people that I have an “unhealthy fear of nothing." While I think this makes me sound more exciting than my suburban childhood actually was, she was not giving me a compliment.
My resident side chair psychoanalyst (my partner, Matt) thinks my mom was envious of my adventurous spirit and my unwillingness to compromise when it came to anything I wanted to do. Road trip it alone across the country without a cell phone? Yes, please. Move to a new city alone just because? Of course.
I was recently introduced to the idea that when given a choice, most people will prioritize avoiding loss over taking a risk that might have a greater reward.
I'm writing to you from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming where I am attending a three-week Artist Residency. In the past two years alone, I've applied to 15 residencies, and this is the first one I've been accepted to (ever) through an open call process. I’ve been joking for years that some day I will crack the code on artist residencies and the day is finally here!
In truth, I don’t have all the answers but I have gained some insights from conversations with other residents and Ucross staff.
If you are lucky enough to be on my very short list of "people I call”, you will occasionally receive exasperated phone calls from me after I've talked with Joe. He is one of the artists I have been working with since the early days of The Artist's Office. Joe is a challenge to work with...in a good way, because he rejects many of the things I understand as givens in the art world.
Summer is here, and this is my absolute, mostest favorite time of year. I love the sun. The heat. The long days. It's the one season each year when reggae doesn't cause me acid reflux and going barefoot feels imperative. Dolphin Girl Summer with Y2K beach vibes is here, and this should be my year.
But I'm struggling with some difficult things (aren't we all), and this summer is not feeling the greatest. There are so many problems it's like a choose-your-own-adventure of economic crises, geo-political angst, and trying to get through the day without crying. It could just be me, but I think I'm reading the room accurately.
I try to keep it under wraps, but those close to me know that I easily stumble down rabbit holes. I have very niche curiosities and sometimes hours (let's be honest, weeks) of my life get sucked into the vacuum cleaner of obscure interests like wallpaper provenance or Cloisonism. I've been drifting around in a few of these black holes recently and was looking for a podcast on the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Knowing that I was feeding my addiction (ahem) researching my rabbit hole, you can imagine my delight at finding a podcast that is simpatico with my research habits
When my partner, Matt, was in his twenties he wanted to become a published writer. He had a friend—Mo—with the same goals and they supported each other and made introductions to editors and publishers for one another.
Mo started writing short filler articles for the Chicago Reader—the free weekly paper in Chicago where they both lived. After paying his dues, Mo was offered a feature article. This was a big deal.
As a grant writer who talks in depth with artists about their work and ambitions, I know that there is an abundance of skilled, thoughtful, innovative artists making work that is nuanced and significant for our time as well as those that are ahead of their time. The reason most artists don't receive grants is because there is not enough funding, not enough grants.Some of our frustration with the process comes when granting decisions don't seem to make sense to us. We each have our own notions about what qualifies an artist to get a grant.
Most jurying processes (from what I hear) genuinely attempt to award deserving artists. They are not cavalier about who they give money to and are thoughtful and do their best with an impossible choice. The reality is that there are not enough grants to go around to all the deserving artists.
Some of our frustration with the process comes when granting decisions don't seem to make sense to us. We each have our own notions about what qualifies an artist to get a grant.
Around the world, countries have demonstrated with dollars that they value their artists. Canada has minimum wage guidelines for artist fees for things like exhibitions, Australia has the most artist prizes per capita in the world, in Ireland an artist is exempt from paying income tax if their income is €50,000 or less a year, artists in Norway receive stipends, and more than 80 countries offer Resale Royalties for artists.
Since the beginning days of our nation, many people in government have recognized that the arts have value (for enhancing our country's cultural capital, for quality of life, or to make money). They have sought to benefit as a nation from artists and the culture they enhance. This has raised questions of how to fund the arts and who gets the money.
Where has the summer gone? I'm suddenly rushing around trying to do all the things I wanted to do to enjoy the summer, like go to the beach, go paddleboarding, sunbathe by the pool, and drink beer on the patio. All these things are very hard to do on a time crunch.
I lie awake at night thinking "Tomorrow I need to relax by the pool! And I need to reply to that email, and read that proposal, and, and, and..." There are the things I need to do that will earn me income; there are projects I want to do that will fulfill me; and there are things like sunbathing that are not a priority for earning a living but are a priority for my quality of life. All the things that aren't income-generating work unfortunately get shuffled to the bottom of my list and then I get super cranky that I'm not paddleboarding or moving forward on some side project.
This push and pull between "have to's" and "want to's" seems to define the life of an artist.
It can be so difficult to remember that the process of making art is a pretty magical thing. I forget because I'm inundated with documentation of completed works or success stories once the artwork is out in the world from press announcements and social media. Rarely (if ever) do I see tracings of the process of making an artwork from inception to completion, which is where some of the juiciest stuff happens.
An artist friend recently recommended a podcast episode of the Ezra Klein show where he speaks with Adam Moss, a former editor of New York Magazine and the New York Times Magazine. The episode "This Conversation Made Me a Sharper Editor" is definitely worth a listen and prompted me to immediately order a copy of Moss's new book The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing. It describes how artists (and composers, poets, chefs, comedians, etc.) develop their ideas and it's like chicken soup for my artist soul.
In late 2008 I moved to Chicago. If you can remember that far back, it was when the mortgage crisis became an economic avalanche and a lot of people were caught in the fallout, including me. I was incredibly poor, working two part-time jobs and one volunteer job that I hoped would help my career, all while trying to paint and be a real artist.
One of my part-time jobs involved a 50-minute commute (layers on, walking, freezing, train, sweating, walking, Chicago winters, yuck) to sit for four hours and then commute back home. I filled those hours learning how to support my studio practice from a desk and computer - getting organized, making spreadsheets and calendars with all my unused admin skills. I used the internet to trace the careers of every artist I came across through their website and CV to figure out how to mimic their trajectories.
One artist I had met recently made work that I didn't think was that strong; it was a bit amateur. I was perusing her website and CV and came across information smacked me across the cheek like a wet fish in a cartoon: she had received a grant.
In late 2008 I moved to Chicago. If you can remember that far back, it was when the mortgage crisis became an economic avalanche and a lot of people were caught in the fallout, including me. I was incredibly poor, working two part-time jobs and one volunteer job that I hoped would help my career, all while trying to paint and be a real artist.
One of my part-time jobs involved a 50-minute commute (layers on, walking, freezing, train, sweating, walking, Chicago winters, yuck) to sit for four hours and then commute back home. I filled those hours learning how to support my studio practice from a desk and computer - getting organized, making spreadsheets and calendars with all my unused admin skills. I used the internet to trace the careers of every artist I came across through their website and CV to figure out how to mimic their trajectories.
One artist I had met recently made work that I didn't think was that strong; it was a bit amateur. I was perusing her website and CV and came across information smacked me across the cheek like a wet fish in a cartoon: she had received a grant.
The art world is not fair. It is flawed in so many ways. When I started The Artist's Office, I understood that the systems I was inviting artists to participate in were flawed. Open calls, grants, networking, pursuing "opportunities"—these are all a part of a faulty system that suggests career benchmarks that do not have equitable pathways for reaching them.
