Certificates of Origin

A valuable reminder from CARFAC:

Don’t get stuck at the border because you waited until the last minute to get your paperwork. Planning ahead will make the process much smoother and save you a lot of stress.

Give yourself at least a month to be sure you have everything you need. If you will be paid for any service you provide while outside Canada, you need to apply several months in advance to get the proper visa.

• Certificates of Canadian Origin are for the process of returning artwork to Canada so you don’t need to pay GST on your work when they come back. These take two weeks plus shipping to be processed.
• Additional forms are often required to allow artwork to enter a foreign country, especially if the total value of the artwork that’s travelling is more than $2500. These also take a couple weeks or more.
• An information sheet about taking artwork over the border is available for CARFAC members.
• If you are travelling with your work, you may want to get an International Association of Art card that grants entry to many museums in Western Europe and elsewhere. IAA cards are available to CARFAC members only. More about the IAA card.

For more information visit the CARFAC website.

Facebook Fading?

From The Conversation:

This year marked the start of what looks likely to be a sustained decline of what had been the most pervasive of all social networking sites. Young people are turning away in droves and adopting other social networks instead, while the worst people of all, their parents, continue to use the service.  

As part of a European Union-funded study on social media, we are running nine simultaneous 15-month ethnographic studies in eight countries. What we’ve learned from working with 16-18 year olds in the UK is that Facebook is not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried. Mostly they feel embarrassed even to be associated with it. Where once parents worried about their children joining Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there to post about their lives. Parents have worked out how to use the site and see it as a way for the family to remain connected. In response, the young are moving on to cooler things.  

Instead, four new contenders for the crown have emerged: Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

Wiki Resource: DIY Budget Gallery

What is DYI Budget Gallery?

This wiki is a Do It Yourself manual on how to organize your own Budget Gallery where you can get an introduction to what a Budget Gallery is. If you're thinking about organizing a show, you'll be interested in seeing our show planning timeline that guides you through all the steps.  

Not everything presented is applicable in Canada or other constituencies. There is an American bias to the text but it remains a worthwhile resource for artists planning on mounting an exhibition.

Link.

Fair? Jealousy? Typical

One of the more irritating aspects of working in the visual arts in one particular divide I straddle.  My host institution (a fine art university) bases its curriculum on the professional exhibiting artist (and not the artist who sells work). I often feel that the language and practices of my colleagues in my academic/conceptual world betray a consideration of artists who sell as "second class."

There is that concept of "selling out," and there seems to be a distain for the market as opposed to the curator and/or critic. Perhaps I have a chip, or something larger, on my shoulder because I had to sell to pay my bills. In fact, I could not afford to work on anything that was unlikely to sell and doing so kept me from having to do any kind of work extraneous to my creative practice.

And then there is that capacity for our kind to turn viciously on success — to tear down those who earn considerable financial reward. All these things had me shaking my head over this article (on The Daily Beast) about a backlash against Bansky.

“Plenty of artists are very envious of his success as a commercial artist because at the end of the day that’s what he’s become: he’s a brand, he’s a corporation, he’s a commodity,” says music and television producer Sacha Jenkins. Jenkins is currently curating a history of graffiti called Write of Passage in New York City and says the “writing” community is unhappy with Banksy being portrayed as one of them, calling his popular depiction as a graffiti artist a misrepresentation of the art form and culture, which is strictly letters. Graffiti writers also “resent that he has the ability to do whatever he wants -- his finances afford him the ability to skip around the world and generate his art and if he gets caught he’s just going to get a slap on the wrist.”

Some are frustrated that an Englishman has waltzed into New York, considered by many the birthplace of graffiti, to wild fanfare, while true graffiti artists struggle to get by. But their main gripe is the stencil-welding spray painter is not actually part of the graffiti world. Some in the community have taken to tagging over his work, sometimes out of anger and jealousy.

Cover Letters

I have always taught my students about the importance of the cover letter. I also emphasize that it should not be about you, rather it should focus on the recipient and prove that you know the nature and scope of the job. Then, at the end, you add how perfect you are as evidenced in the attached resumé and other support material.

Is it time to revise my thinking?  In The Atlantic, Stephen Lurie cites a recent poll showing that “90% of hiring contacts surveyed simply ignored every cover letter sent to them”:

[T]he cover letter is mostly a performance, and some companies are picking up on the act, particularly tech firms that can test specific employee skills. Google, it’s said, often prefers to see the coding already being done by individuals before reaching out to them—skipping the cover letter entirely. Some social media companies now require tweets as proof of competency, not long-form writing. [Companies] that do still require cover letters (in whatever sector), many have simply stopped looking at them. Jobs that don’t deal in formal letter writing—let’s say 95% of them—can find better surrogates elsewhere in samples of a candidate’s work. 

Whether it is a writing sample relevant to the industry, a Github repository or other specific tasks, employers and candidates would be better suited to another test. That’s a good sign for us all. Our government, corporations and non-profits will invariably be stronger when they get the best-matched talent available—not just those who’ve mastered an irrelevant art.

FYI, Artists With Disabilities

Still Life, Tabletop by Christina Woo from the DAC Gallery on Amazon.com/Art

The DACGallery, an LA‐based art gallery representing 140 professional artists with developmental disabilities, is one of a small number of galleries participating in the new Amazon.com, Inc. fine art store. Amazon Art launched on Tuesday, August 6th at http://amazon.com/art (Search DAC Gallery).

The DAC Gallery is the exhibition space and storefront for ECF Art Centers, an adult professional art program of the nonprofit Exceptional Children's Foundation (ECF). Founded in 1946, ECF provides programs and services to adults, students, and children with special needs at 15 locations throughout Los Angeles County. ECF's Art Centers program was created in 1968 and has four professional art studios in addition to the DAC Gallery.

Under the mentorship of MFA level art teachers, the adult artists at each of these studios are supported with a place to work each day, art supplies, instruction and representation through the DAC Gallery. Artists from each of the studios will be participating in the Amazon Art program.

"We have worked hard to create a professional level art program for our artists with special needs. Being selected to participate in the launch of the Amazon art program is a testament to us reaching that goal," said Allen Terrell, ECF's Art Centers Director. "We are the only art gallery that exclusively represents artists with special needs participating in the launch of Amazon's fine art store ‐ Amazon Art."

In addition to exhibiting their work throughout the region, the DAC Gallery artists have extensive resumes, some having shown at the Smithsonian Institution and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Armory in New York City, the Los Angeles Art Show, and numerous galleries throughout Southern California.

"ECF has worked hard to make professional art training accessible to people of all abilities," said Dr. Scott Bowling, President & CEO of ECF. "We are excited to partner with Amazon on this project because we believe Amazon is going to make high quality, original artwork accessible.

Link to story.
Meanwhile closer to home (in Edmonton)...

The Nina, as it is nicknamed, provides the space and materials for artists with developmental disabilities to paint, draw, dance, work in clay and make prints.

An Edmonton arts facility is in danger of shutting down unless it receives a much‐needed cash boost. The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts must raise $250,000 by Nov. 30 to make the loan payment on its 118th Street location. The Nina, as it is nicknamed, provides the space and materials for artists with developmental disabilities to paint, draw, dance, work in clay and make prints.

Each week, more than 160 artists use the facility – and many go on to show their work in galleries and exhibitions across Canada and overseas. But artistic director Paul Freeman says the centre is about much more than just an art space.

He says the space offers disabled people a way to change how they see themselves. "Often when we meet someone here, they'll tell us about their disability and their group home … and when they've spent some time with us, had some exhibitions with us … the story that they tell us about who they are really starts to shift into ‘I'm a painter...’”

The centre first opened its doors four years ago with funding aid from the province and city. Now, Freeman says, it is time for the centre to make good on that promise. “They were very generous in supporting us and getting us here in the first place, and so we feel not only an obligation to keep our promises, but also to demonstrate to those government funders that ideas like this are worth taking risks on.”

The Stollery Charitable Foundation has pledged to match every dollar fundraised by the centre to a maximum of $125,000, which would cover the rest of the Nina’s annual mortgage payment.

However, with the September fundraising deadline looming near, Freeman said staff are now in “crunch mode.” “It’s not just about keeping these doors open,” he said. “It’s also about keeping these artists flush with paint and everything else.”

Link to story.