I made a perimeter.

Red tape, red dots, red rope: the things the system are made of. Who’s system is it. When I lived in Seattle I was a member of a coop gallery called Oculus. There were six of us. We had a consensus system as to decisions and showing. We showed a limited schedule but were always open on the nights of art walks. Commercial galleries always get more traffic and respect than coop’s and other venues. I am not sure why. Who says that one person is more capable or qualified to decide what art should be shown and what shouldn’t? Is it that one person is more educated? more experienced? more…? The truth is that the people running the galleries are probably no more experienced, educated on art than most of the people who are sending work to them. What separates us is money and happenstance. One individual chooses to be an artist one chooses to be an art connoisseur/dealer. It takes a lot of money to run a gallery. And because of that the dealers and art galleries need to keep the power in their court.

We can, like many other artistic fields can break from the gallery strangle hold on how and what art is seen. Like musicians on myspace we can use the internet to our advantage to connect with former admirers of our work and to make new ones. Places like personal blogs, flickr and etsy allow us to show our work to a huge variety of individuals and to sell our work in a place designed for artists. All we have to do is take the initiative to work for ourselves. It isn’t easy, requiring a huge amount of time in writing and documenting work. At the end of the day one of the last things I want to do is write descriptions for photos, or load them to my etsy page or write a post. We are all tired but if we wish to stop working for someone else, in such a direct way, then we have to do it.

Art is a cruel bastard that will suck the life out of you while giving you inspiration to breath again.