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15. Get Together Talk: About the community
Summary
Very Private Gallery’s presentation and structure
Very Private Gallery aims to create pragmatic, realistic content for everyone, including articles, guides, and easily printable, smaller content. While initially for the community, guides are now available to all interested in the business.
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Videos by Mo, sometimes collaborative, are free to access for everyone.
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A proprietary forum was established, but it is currently underutilized.
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Community support primarily comes from Patreon contributions.
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The community emphasizes collaboration over ownership. There’s no possessive system or hierarchy; leadership is encouraged for those who want to focus on a particular area. Members can take the initiative, especially when involving others.
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Monthly talks are held with a structured subject, a change suggested by Laura. These talks are recorded and published on a private YouTube channel for documentation, and notes are also taken.
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An example of content discussed is an updated article on Tumblr that discusses creating professional portfolios/websites at the cost of a domain name, offering an alternative to services like Squarespace.
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Exclusive to the community are work-in-progress documents, such as the anthology of textile artists, which members can access, comment on, and contribute to before publication.
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Community members also have access to paid technical tools (SEO, WordPress, AI tools), with the community paying for multi-user access.
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Coaching sessions are available to community members at a discounted “community price”, exemplified by Christine offering her sessions at approximately one-third of her usual rate. It includes services like portfolio reviews for artists seeking general criticism and improvement, particularly for residencies.
Networking for artists
Taaye shares their experience in Hong Kong, emphasizing the importance of researching galleries before engaging and the value of networking with peers at a similar career stage.
The overall sentiment regarding networking stresses persistence, leveraging existing connections, being specific in requests, and building relationships over time based on mutual care and genuine interaction.
Anthology articles
The discussion on the textile artists’ anthology highlights the challenge of defining “authenticity” in artists’ work and narratives, with suggestions to use terms like “background” or “personal narrative” instead.
Successful artists often come from privileged backgrounds, and the anthology aims to demystify success by exploring less communicated reasons behind artists’ achievements, beyond typical narratives.
The textile artist anthology aims to use Esra’s contribution as a prototype for structure, similar to academic research with introductions, methodologies, and conclusions.
For anthologies, a minimum of five artists is suggested for analysis, and artists can include themselves to gain exposure.
The aim is to achieve quantity and quality in articles, ensuring they are comprehensive and well-researched to rank highly in search results.
The community has developed a method to contact experts for published talks, especially PhD-level professionals, which can elevate the credibility of their articles.
Future collaborations can involve qualitative studies on various subjects outside an artist’s niche (e.g., gender studies, artist psychology).
Collaborating with non-art experts is suggested as they are less likely to adhere to established narratives. They can offer more critical perspectives.
The community is open to new subject proposals for articles or videos and encourages more collaboration to increase exposure and learning.
The lack of active cooperation between artists is identified as a common reason for artist failure. It weakened them compared to organized visual production industries.
Online Talks
Expanding the community is discussed, with suggestions for members to invite friends and a potential cap of 10-15 people to maintain intimacy while increasing collaboration opportunities.
There’s a suggestion to hold two types of get-togethers: recorded sessions for public content and unrecorded sessions for more intimate discussions, like networking challenges.
A proposal for a “Heroes 360 spinning card,” or short, informal biographical video/presentation for each active community member to foster better mutual understanding and collaboration.
Quotes
“The main reason of artist failure is you are independent, you are working for your own ass, and you’re alone… Not working together.”
“It’s very much a 20th-century narrative, too, because most of the time throughout history, you were certainly not alone. You were part of a workshop.”
“I think one of the difficulties about the art world is that it’s so opaque and it’s so unclear and there are rules and silent agreements everywhere.”
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