The List: Art Workers in Galway

First of all; Brilliant reaction to the last entry. Thanks for all the reads, the favouriting, and subscribes! Before I've even began SEO-ing my blog properly and making it not look like crap. Just wow.

Before I went off to Poland for an awesome free holiday in Krakow, where I gawked at a lot of architecture and pro-human-interaction town-planning and went to a student art exhibtion (lol), I added two new tabs to my page. I am launching a list of Art Workers on one tab and a list of Art Peoples - everyone else related to the visual art market on the second. As part of my overarching project to study artists in Galway and find ways to maximise their development and earning potential (including my own), I want to create a finally definitive art-yellow pages for Galway City. That US study on the art market in various cities - Investing in Creativity - that I raved about on my last post really blew my mind.

When I began with this list it was all on one tab. I quickly saw how huge this list was going to be and so now  all the art workers I can find get their own blog tab and categories (for now, until I can afford a super awesome website). This is also a much less lonely and neglected place for my collection of artist pages than my sprawling bookmarks folder.

This is the ultimate labour of love and rampant obliging the categorisation-obsessive Monica Geller in me. I still want to write about other things like run-of-the-mill art reviews, comics and illustration, urban art and make my own art (all my materials are still in Donegal, sob) and upskill, as well as work two friggin part time jobs for a few months to emerge from the murky stomach-clenching, nightmare-ish world of post-student debt. However, whilst the austerity economy threatens to topple and crush the Irish Artist who lives off grants, dole and no currernt and reliable understanding of the market that they're trying to sell their work in, that is without a doubt the most important thing to write about. Before I start to generally gush about local artists. Especially after Arts Council funding has just been cut by 4% as of yesterday and artists are being shouted at to become entrepreneurs and leaders of their own income streams.

Time for the artist's wage methinks.

When I have either more people to write for this blog or better time management, I will do proper heavy interviewing of Galway artists to turn this pleasing exericse in categorisation into a valid art-market framework for artists that is specific to Irish norms of art business, based on the Urban Institute study's framework, which began with interviews. All these intended interviews with my fellow artists would aim to correlate all their bickering, opining and long weaving rhetorics about the Galweigan art bubble into something substantial, productive and progressive. In the absense of a proper market analysis for Irish artists (although I looking for pre-existing art market reports for this country here, here and here) I will collect more kinds of data to create a proper market analysis (if the art market here can actually be tied down into a market category, see my hesitation about that in my last post). If my business education is to turn up anything useful for my art goals, I want to apply it to create real business models in the arts sector that can help artists.

Art Workers

I have my own criteria for adding artsy people to this list -

• they must have a website/facebook page/tumblr that they regularly update with their progress and their completed work. An artist who is serious about expanding their money-making potential and who doesn't have an online presence or never updates is not worth the time it takes for me to type their name (if you are established and have your own carefully constructed ear-to-mouth network of buyers who only ever contact you by landline then grand, good for you. Go read my other awesome blog posts.);
• I promise to not be a horrible corruption monster and only add my friends/people I think are seriously cool and am trying to suck up to (of which, I assure you, there are many). Most of the artists will be Irish connected and mostly Galwegian for now. I must profess; there will be a lot of Societies people. That is where my artistic base and beginnings in Galway began, and there are a legion of Societies people who are jaw-droppingly talented and hard-working and who I'd love nothing more than to see succeed;
  
  

  Generic photo of super happy societies students being creative and hardworking together. I do believe this was the very first Muscailt Arts Festival I was involved in - back in 2008. Ah those formative years.

•  I will endeavour to keep my very particular tastes for art out of selecting and deselecting artists. Whilst I naturally lean towards comic book illustration, very expressionist and figurative art, surreal art, stuff with buildings and cityscapes in 'em, and graphic vector work, I will always be proud of you if you genuinely work to make a success of your art, even if I think you bore the brains out of me (and not in a good way);
• I'm giving priority to visual artists and designers. Other fields in the arts should really find their own obsessives to build them big bloggy databases. Writers and performers that are supplementary to visual artists I want to include, e.g. comicbook writers, actors who collaberate with designers, models, lighting designers, etc. I feel that the specific field of musicians and the live music in Galway scene is a bit too far outside of my tendrils and personal interests in write about properly, but sure, we'll see how easy it is to guide them under my massive blanket definition. I am generally a sucker for any kind of start up business from young Irish people, so I will probably find a way to include a lot of businesses and individuals who are just really super cool.

Art Peoples

This collection of everyone else who make up the art market will include:

1. Artistic Groups and Collectives
2. Artistic Industries
3. Artist “Producers”
4. Art Commentators, Magazines and Advocates/Activists  




1. Artistic Groups and Collectives
Basically collaberative groups that, whilst they're not employing anyone, are directly assisting artists to improve their ability to self-employ and self-manage, without selling their work. Balancing the fantastical bohemian lifestyle with a good splash of business reality.



Love this. Source: Image from Diary of an Arts Pastor, very informative and interesting article about the "Artist-Prophet" phenomenon. Worth a peruse.



2. Artistic Industries
These would in theory “employ” the visual artist - give the artist a commerical outlet. Whether my inquisitive wee study ends up revealing that these loosely defined "industries" in Galway only ever seek “employees” within their own super incestous network of ass-lickers OR that Galway artistic industries are unbearable bureacratically fair and regulated in terms of recruitment, I shall list them all. Include graphic design studios, art galleries and auction houses, animation studios, art auction houses, theatres, etc. Also I will give preference to galleries that show off local artists first and foremost.


3. Artist “Producers”
These are the producers of artists, not the producers of artistic products. I still believe that the best kind of artist is the self-taught artist, but I will list the art colleges and institutions that run art training courses for Galwegians and have at the very least an undeniable networking role in the art world. Is a lack of training really a barrier to entry? Or is it a barrier to entry within itself? Ho hum.





<3 <3 Art School Confidential fuck yeeeh <3 <3



4.   Art Commentators, Magazines and Advocates/Activists 
Artzines (which have absolutely expoded in the past two years or so, absolutely love the entrepreneurialism and hopefulness of them all), particuarly notable art tumblrs,websites, art critics, etc etc, that focus on Ireland and more.


 Obviously there will be overlap and general blurring in some of these groups, e.g. an artist collective with their own cop-op art gallery, an artist who runs their own gallery and sometimes feels generous enough to sell other people's stuff on some commission, etc., etc.


Again, these categories are very broad and aren't designed to adhere to anyone else's definition and understanding of the overall playing field but my own. For big official economic stats there are just-barely definitions of artists as cultural economic agents within a broader economy by the almighty Fás: see Fás National Skills Bulletin and their many related publications on job sector supply and demand (which is really informative and eye-opening anyway). If I ever got together the resources to draw up a proper theoretical framework I would love to completely Porter's Five Forces the hell out of this city. This is of course Galway-focused, but I would love to later apply this fantasy theoretical framework to other artsy cities like Cork and Dublin and then the greater island of Ireland.

Comments on all this are totally welcome, also let me know if you want to be included in the list, should include someone/something and/or have terrifying Galway art market secrets for me.

What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

It has happened much sooner than expected. I'm getting a cheap-ass room in my beloved, most beautiful, inspiring and craic-filled Galway city and I AM MOVING BACK.

YES.

Beautiful, beautiful Galway. Graveyard of ambition and spiritual birthplace of the craic.

Well, I'm unofficially a Galwegian again. That is to say, I will still be working for Dr Gomez MRCPsych. That means that I'll be doing a Magellanic commute every week. Why am I moving somewhere where I not only do I not have a job, but that's four hours away from actual and current job, you ask? Am I completely insane? Galway is awesome. It has awesome people and awesome places and awesome activities. And, well, despite all my intentions to solidly be there and help out the familia in their time of need, unfortunately my continual presence in the house has added somewhat to the mania. Mammy Gomez has counteracted the “mammy guilt”. It's a common stress disorder that is caused by children going home after college and living there for over 6 months, whilst appearing to be doing nothing with their lives. Reading the Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole will give a good insight into the typical mammy figure versus the typical child instigator of said disorder. Although I do like to think that I'm slightly more helpful than Ignatius Reilly. And yes of course it was reported upon in The Psychiatrist only last month.

Being a psychiatrict journal, it has imaginative covers only rivaled by those of the NewScientist magazine.

The only known cure for this disorder is to move out and report back to mother with tales of promotions and financial stability. This cure doesn't seem to include the successes of blogging, working on my novel/screenplay and building myself up to make digital art that she cannot see. Alas. So I will quasi-move out but keep coming back up to Donegal to work every week, because Dr Gomez's appointment book and filing system would miss me terribly. And I have built up the most charming rapport with the solictors.

Solicitors to psychiatrists has the same effect of wooden crosses to vampires

With this dramatic change in geography and reemerging with civilization, I finally can get into the meat of this blog's purpose: alongside tracking my own personal journey in Returning to Art, I get to begin the research and the reporting of Art Careers in Ireland.

So, yeh, this is the stuff I love. I live it, I breathe it, I can't get enough of it. I love seeing artists get work. "Artists" ranges from plain old art-artists who do twee Irish landscapes to hip young graphic designers to actors and comedians to singer-songwriters to conceptual designers to lighting designers...ooh I love them all. I just fucking love all of them. I love to see artists just be able to do what they love whenever they want, whether they can make a job out of their vocation (not always possible, not always suitable for some personality types) or by getting some kind of part-time job arrangement to make their private art-studio escapes after work possible (and this can be detrimental to others). And when all this happens to an artist in a recession...in a PIIGS country like Ireland...well, I could just die and go to heaven.

And the latter category is what I want to eventually achieve in Galway. Or anywhere, really. But it would be so incredible to have it happen in this city.

This is what I wanna do for The Rest Of My Life:

1. be a jack-of-all-trades artist, specialising in comicbooks, illustrations, cartoons, and graphic design.

I want to be that person who sees my friend's novel or comicbook dialogue sheets or hears about their general artsy idea and goes “YES YES that is fucking incredible, let me do the illustrations/web design. OR let me hook you up with someone who can do your idea total justice. This idea MUST SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.” Which leads me to my next inter-linking passion...

2. be an Art Consultant/Art Agent

I want to link artists with the people who want them and need them. I find this to be super fascinating because art agency and art consultation as industries in Ireland seem terribly hidden, clandestine, “who you know” and practically invisible to an outsider. This observation is of course based on a lot of google-searching. And VAI newsletter combing. Ireland as an economy isn't nearly as populous or teritary-in-nature enough to allow for such a profession to exist autonomously, like it can in the likes of London, Paris, New York or Berlin. We're just too small and...poor. And there aren't enough players in the art market to connect. Well, actually no, there aren't enough artists and art-demanders who are connect-able, if you catch my drift. They're there...somewhere. I truly believe that there are definitely enough good artists and enough demand for their skills to just about achieve an equilibrium for the art/design market in Ireland. I know it and I can feel it. They just need more ways of finding each other. And then they can make beautiful business together (yes this is a collosally big subject and I will expand on it later).

I couldn't find a cheesy picture of lots of artists shaking hands with businessmen, but I found this book and it looks really cool.

I'm looking forward to figuring out how to eventually do both of these jobs in my favourite city in the world. I'm looking forward to the research I'll have to do to get a firm grasp on the art market in Galway and in Ireland (in whatever strange form it exists in). Time to whip out those economics class notes, those management notes might be actually useful too...accounting notes will definitely useful.

My plate continues to pile up here, but I'm also looking forward to starting a super-comprehensive minimum-wage, part-time job search in Galway to keep me just above the bread-line (Dr Gomez's salary isn't near enough to cover our expenses). That in itself will be super important when it comes to getting a good on-the-floor feel for the Galwegian micro-economy and the permeabiltiy of it's levels of industry (from foundation(?) service industry to elitist culture industry, oh ho).

Oi. It's going to be a busy few months.