Along with co-host (and gallerist) Deb Klowden Mann, Los Angeles-based Matthew Gardocki, former gallery manager at Patrick Painter and Mark Moore galleries, talks about:
His decade-plus time working for two long-running L.A. galleries, the different management style of each, how he transitioned from one gallery to the other (they were across the parking lot from each other at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica), and how he became a good fireman (by getting really good at putting out fires); his experiences going to art fairs, both to sell and to sneak in a little travel; we talk about the viability of mid-sized and/or family galleries as business models, vis-à-vis the recent closing of Matthew's last employer Mark Moore; various art world comparisons, particularly mid-sized galleries vs. the big galleries, the big galleries vs. museums, secondary market sales as a way for a gallery to survive (and how the 2ndary market has dried up according to Matthew), and the challenge of mid-tier galleries; how he's looking for gallery work, and what's come up in his interviews, including his availability as a father of a 2-year-old; the reliability (or lack thereof) of collectors making studio or gallery visits; gender bias in the workplace, and finally, Matthew shares a very unusual birth story (of his daughter) that you likely haven't heard before.
Brooklyn-based artist Jean Shin talks about:
Gradually turning her Hudson Valley barn originally bought for art storage into a summer/weekend retreat; her extensive experiences with Brooklyn real estate including living and working in spaces all over Brooklyn, and leveraging various mortgages – starting with a "tiny" apartment in Carroll Gardens, before eventually buying a 1000 sq. foot storefront studio in Red Hook and a slightly larger apartment in Cobble Hill with her husband, leaving her settled (as long as there isn't another hurricane); her massive public art project for the 63rd Street stop of the new 2nd Avenue Subway line in New York, including the $1 million dollar budget (which was comprehensive for fabrication, design, materials, etc.- she didn't even earn 1% of that herself after all was said and done), and what it was like interacting with the public as the murals etc. were being installed…it was a project she worked on from 2010 thru the end of 2016; her working in labor intensive projects (with discarded ephemera), and the process of collaborating with museum curators as well as various assistants, including learning to trust the process of working with collaborators, and even trusting them enough to give them keys to the studio; and what it's like serving on the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, addressing inequity where possible along the way.
Brooklyn-based artist and activist Grayson Earle talks about:
His unplanned landing in Brooklyn, where he couch-surfed into a commune-style house, and where he's remained since moving to NY from California in 2010; his fluid relationship with the identity of "artist," ultimately one he embraces because it affords him more opportunities that if he took on the identity of "activist;" his experiences with artist collection The Illuminator, including getting arrested while projecting provocative phrases challenging donor Charles Koch onto The Metropolitan Museum; his admiration for open source programmers, and the process of sharing software and information, and the choice, in his words, of being an artist who either influences culture or makes saleable art objects; his experience being onsite at the start of Occupy Wall Street, and his role procuring food for that first generation occupiers (including vegan pizza); interacting with the problem of where our tax payments go through his project Tax Deductible Expenses, which features Earle eating and/or drinking in a series of YouTube videos, with the receipt for his goods posted alongside; and his Illuminator projection of a holographic bust of Edward Snowden, in place where an anonymously placed actual bust was placed in Fort Greene Park, in turn making it an odd completion of the original piece (they wound up meeting the pair behind the bust of Snowden, which is now available as a file for 3D printing).