Craft Forward-ing

[The Justified Sinner]

Apologies for the hiatus in blogging my visit to San Francisco; I had to spend some time in Yorkshire discussing a project which I hope to present here in the very near future.

My second day in San Francisco was spent at the American Craft Council/California College of the Arts symposium called "Craft Forward-ing", an event aimed at students and new graduates with a view to giving them an introduction to the world of business and suggesting ways of actually making money out of craft practice. This objective should be borne in mind...

I walked to the venue from Fisherman's Wharf, following the map to the optimistically-named "Creative District", an area of derelict industrial units under elevated roads. The CCA campus where the event was held is in a converted Greyhound bus depot, and an excellent conversion it is, but the only other signs of creativity in the creative district - apart from the creative use of the word "creative" in the name - was the warehouse given over to "Adobe", and I am not sure that doesn't count as "tech"! To get to the campus, I had to walk through swarms - actually dozens - of street-people aimlessly pushing the shopping-trolleys which house their worldly goods. They must be used to "creatives" wandering about; not one of them acknowledged my presence in any way. I am almost ashamed to say that their lack of attention came as a relief.

When I got to the venue, I met Curtis Arima (from CCA), Brigitte and Chris (from the ACC).

 

 

In brief, only Brigitte Martin and Philip Wood addressed the issue proposed by the theme of the symposium, discussing ways in which they had progressed from education into business. Brigitte talked about the need for PASSION and the importance of being focused on the business aspects as much as anything else. Philip - a very fine and well-known furniture-maker - talked a bit about how his online retail website Citizen:Citizen worked but got a bit lost in the nebulous politics of it all. Additionally, he never really detailed what had made him change from maker to manager/curator. Citizen:Citizen, however, offers an interesting look at ways in which an artist may seek to market small-run multiples in addition to their existing practice.

 

 

The other two speakers were an organisation called "Future Farmers" - Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine - and Tanya Aguiniga. Both of these speakers were interesting in their own way, talking about their post-art school practices but neither of them offered anything terribly useful to the theme, both of them detailing practices which were either subsidised or which they admitted lost them money. Future Farmers, in particular, were miles from the point and presented us with a fragment of a 1920s Czech play...

On one hand, it was unfortunate that there were not more students in the audience - which seemed to be made up of large numbers of ACC and CCA people -and that the audience halved over lunchtime. The day was of interest to me as an educator and should have been of interest to students in their final years of study. I am not clear why some of the speakers were chosen: Brigitte, obviously, because she runs Crafthaus, Philip because of Citizen:Citizen, but the others... well, I can think to name Boris Bally off the top of my head as being more suitable and if he were too busy or too expensive, there have got to be more.

Perhaps oddest of all was that the reception afterwards was held in a gallery which works as a real-world version of Citizen:Citizen, working with artists to get them to make multiples and selling them. Why wasn't a representative of that gallery invited to speak?

 

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Apart from getting to hang out with Curtis and Brigitte, perhaps the highlight of the day was finally meeting the author of "Ask Hariette", Hariette Estelle Berman. Charming, funny, cheeky, outspoken. Everything you would expect!

 

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That evening I went out for something to eat on my own, wandering about in Chinatown and the Italian quarter, taking photographs. I think that this tailor's shop could learn something from the people at the symposium:

 

 

This is an actual window-display for what appears to be a tailor who is - somehow - still in business!

It is strange how symposia change the way you think about things for a while. I also noticed this:

 

A Chihully knock-off! We all know the problems that Boris Bally and 2Roses have had with counterfeiting and that would have been a good topic for the day's discussion too. 

 

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Ended up having a coffee and some ice-cream before visiting City Lights bookshop and browsing through the endless editions of "Howl"!

 

 

[Harriete E Berman]

One more comment for now.
Does anyone see it as astounding that the Justied Sinner traveled all the way from Scotland, Luana Coonen came all the way from Hawaii, and  Chris Admundsen came all the way from Minneapolis, MN while the students of ACC couldn't prioritize 6 hours of a Saturday?

If they want to figure out the ingredients to success as an artist and maker after school, they missed these examples and more possibilities in one day. And if they aren't smart enough to figure this out on their own, their teachers should have made the day a requirement.
Harriete

[Harriete E Berman]

I agree with everything said so far.....adding the following observations.....

THE EMPTY AUDIENCE ISSUE
I asked the organizers why the audience was so empty....

The organizers said that the event was largely for students and over booked for the capacity of the room, but still the room was sparsely filled.

It seems a "free " event has this lackluster impact....which I have witnessed before at CCA events. Seems to me this is a huge shame and, unfortunately,  typical student behavior.

So why doesn't the school offer some incentive for attendance such as eligibility for student scholarships and awards tied to attending a specific number of artists lectures and programs. Or why not invite CCA alumni in the area who might be more appreciate of the program information in their daily struggle to survive as an artist.

Even if some of the presenters were off the mark, students and local artists can always glean content, meet the speakers or audience members (a personal highlight for me.)

An 1/2 - 2/3 empty audience has two results.

• Less energy for the speakers and the audience. (Please don't underestimate this impact.)
  
  
• A waste of resources and effort from ACC and CCA, both co-sponsors of the event.
  
  
  

PROGRAM CONTENT
Since this program was about entrepreneurship the speakers should have been more carefully chosen. There are many local makers and designers  generating revenue from their skills and craft that live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The program content should have been directed to address specific issues in the "art business" mash up for what it takes to be an entrepreneur whether it is craft shows, exhibitions, working with galleries, web design,  online marketing, publicity,.... the list goes on.

As much as I appreciated both Philip Wood, & Tanya Aguiniga, the "artist talk" approach, left me without learning a single entrepreneurial business skill. Why didn't they at least tell us how they priced their work? Or developed their business visibility.

I took extensive notes....all day....but  still wonder ......

In the future, I will add commentary when I have more time.

Harriete

[Brigitte Martin]

I will invite some crafthausers who were in the audience to add their perspective of the event to this discussion. Dauvit's description pretty much overlaps with my personal experience, so hopefully we can hear from

- Harriete Estel Berman
- Emiko Oye
- Curtis Arima
- Jenne Giles (I may be forgetting some more people...)
and some of the students that I know were present about what they got out of the exercise.

While Future Farmers had a commendable project that I thought was fun and interesting in it's guerrilla style approach (much like Gabriel Craig does his streetside jewelry projects) neither of them had actually left the academic environment (both said they had teaching positions) and that's how they finance their activities. Tanya was very engaging in her presentation, and I absolutely loved the community aspect of her work, however, it's a complete mystery to me how any one of them  survives financially - which, of course, is the point of actually MAKING it. When asked in the Q&A afterwards, all of them fessed up to either not paying themselves any money at all or only very little - which I found quite troubling. Particularly since all of our presentations were supposed to be geared towards helping students find their way in the marketplace - whichever marketplace that happens to be. I wonder what lesson the students got from this? 

The question really is, as the 2 Roses said in this thread, can entrepreneurship be taught? I think it can, but only to those who are open to it, who have a willingness to understand that you may have to shift your views dramatically and that it is OK to make money as an artist (wow - what a concept). It's really not about just having a bag of tricks at the ready that anyone can apply and eh- voila. There's so much more that needs to fall into place in someone's head. My presentation was about exactly that.

In any event, the symposium was videotaped and as soon as I see it online I will post a link so that you can see this for yourself. In the interim, I hope that some of my crafthausers will share their experience here with us.

Looking forward to everyone's comments and views.

[The Justified Sinner]

I think that is right; one of the things I really like about coming from a practical background is that I do understand the basics of business. The problem here, however, was to do with who was invited. I was also told that the participants had only ten days in which to prepare their talks, which is just not enough. 

The answer to this would have been to get people who would NOT be negatively impacted by giving away their tips, as was done by both Brigitte and Philip. There must be more out there!

[2Roses]

Dauvit, thank you for this honest, albeit somewhat disappointing assessment of the event. It speaks to the very real difficulty of teaching entrepreneurship and business practices for the arts.  We are reminded of a discussion several years ago at a SNAG conference educators seminar. The topic was entrepreneurship, and the ensuing discussion was every bit the blind men describing an elephant. Finally, one very prominent and well known educator threw up her hands and exclaimed, "how in the hell are we supposed to teach something we know nothing about?" That's point number one.

Point number two is, asking people who's livelyhood is based in their own entrepreneurial skills to reveal how they make money, is, well... running up against their own self-interests. Educators often fail to appreciate this point. After all, its all about sharing knowledge and kumbaya etc. Except that a business person who is revealing their process is almost certainly speaking to an audience of their competitors.

This is not to say that business people are not willing to share information. Many are. But it is unrealistic to expect or believe that anyone is going to share information that would negatively impact their own economic advantage in the marketplace.

Its kind of like how Chef's share recipes. Something is always left out.