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.

Great Initiative to Get to a Residency

Local charmer, Angela, has taken an initiative and I admire her methodology and determination. She is making market-ready commercially smart art, true to  her passion, and undertaking a campaign on the crowd funding site, Indegogo. Here is how she describes her current purpose to raise funds to attend a residency in France (I love residencies):

My name is Angela Gooliaff and I’m an emerging visual artist living in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I have a passion for telling stories, especially stories about tiny but fascinating creatures among us – bugs!

My favourite subject to draw is ants. And I hope these ants will take me all the way to France. Why ants? Because they are admirable and multi-dimensional little beings. No one works harder than an ant. In my greeting cards, I have also expanded to other interesting and beautiful bugs such as British Columbia’s Rugose stag beetle, a Blue Morpho butterfly, ladybugs, dragonflies and others. 

My goal is to raise $5,000.00 to attend DRAWinternational, an artist residency program in Caylus, France.  DRAWinternational provides illustrators a one-month opportunity to focus entirely on their artwork, expanding their ideas and creativity, and collaborate with other like-minded artists. I am honoured to have received acceptance to this program.

Link to her Indegogo site.

MyArtSpace

I got a curt email from Natalie Toppin:

"Whatever happened to MyArtSpace.com?"

I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, so I went to the site. It isn't there and there is no explanation as to why. I hate that like I hate failed business owners who post "we're renovating" notices when, in fact, they have failed and closed. The owners of MyArtSpace could have kept their homepage up and explained their decision, but they didn't, so I had to do some research...

The owners of Myartspace (MAS) recently decided to pull the plug on the project -- which means they pulled the plug on any artist who put in hours of work building a presence on MAS. We all know that a website can close. Unfortunately, Myartspace did not warn their membership -- they technically were not obligated to offer a warning due to their terms of service (TOS) agreement. Fair enough. That said, the decision to close abruptly has angered more than a few artists and fans of the Myartspace ….

… Imagine the surprise of waking up to discover that you lost all of your art contacts on a social networking site that you had invested time in. In addition to that, imagine losing images of your art -- that you assumed would continue to be safely hosted -- that can't be replaced. Again, I understand the frustration -- the anger -- but I also realize that there is a lesson to be learned from the closing of Myartspace.

The lesson is a cruelly simple one -- if you are going to market your art online, make sure to keep physical records of your art contacts and images.

Link to the article from which the above was taken.
Link to another article on the Myartspace closing.

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.