Netvvrk featured in the New York Times!

It’s a big day for us here at VVrkshop!

Netvvrk, our flagship membership program has been featured in an article by Travis Diehl in the New York Times (paywall). The piece explores the world of online artist mentoring and how Netvvrk fits into it. A small clip from a much larger piece:

“What we are trying to do is to make things easier for artists and also to set expectations appropriately,” Johnson said. Sure, members start out wanting to know how to get more shows and find galleries, she continued, but “those questions get answered naturally” as you focus on meeting people and making art.

Johnson has several part-time employees, including William Powhida, a New York artist known for critiquing art’s power structures in his drawings and writing. In his view, the group can help people “understand what the field looks like and how rare it is to achieve the kind of art world success that they might be seeing or reading about.”

Read the piece and let me know what you think. As always, I want to hear from you!

Game on For Artists: My Interview on Art Spiel

What can be done to place more power in artist's hands?

Broadly speaking: name the problems facing artists and build systems to overcome them.

In a wide-reaching conversation with Etty Yaniv at Art Spiel, we discuss Imposter syndrome, MFAs, MBAs, turning 50, and how Netvvrk helps artists get the visibility they deserve.

To help you dig your teeth into this discussion, I want to start you with this excerpt on what's to come in my 2025. May you find power in experience.

For men, 50 represents a major milestone – a symbol of the knowledge and power accumulated over those years. For women, the number can evoke a sense of loss. We are past the childbearing stage and thus past our prime.

Well, that’s just bullshit and I refuse to play into a cultural narrative that doesn’t acknowledge my wisdom and my power.

What if we viewed 50 for what it really is – a new beginning, an awakening, a milestone that tells us the best is yet to come?

I don’t want this question to be hypothetical. I’m treating my 50th as a time for celebration. I have a lot more to do in this life and it took me this long to get the skills I need to achieve it. I’m excited about this new phase and I hope that other women will feel as energized as me when they hit it too.

Read the whole discussion here.

And please share it on Instagram or your social network of choice if you find the conversation valuable!

Art Problems in Hyperallergic: Those Artworks Aren't Gonna Sell Themselves

Artist are sometimes their worst enemies (edit Sigourney Schultz and Shari Flores/Hyperallergic)

This week in Hyperallergic, I ask dealers, curators, and organizers to give me tips on how artists can collaborate better. I collected a lot of advice you might be surprised by, but I also break down some of the contradictions that make this world so difficult to navigate.

Take a look:

Both dealers Daniel Kinkade and Phillip Niemeyer, the founder of Austin-based gallery Northern Southern, cited the importance of pricing consistency. “Understand that a 50% split is normal for all retail, not just art,” Niemeyer told me. He listed out other bits of advice: “Don’t be desperate, don’t fire-sale your work on Instagram unless you are done making art, and don’t sell out of your studio if you have a gallerist.” (“Fire-selling” refers to selling work at an extremely discounted price).

Of course, there are exceptions to all of these cases, which is what makes the business so challenging. 

Being desperate usually translates into spamming and harassing your dealer, but artists may also be forced to send multiple emails if the dealer is uncommunicative. You shouldn’t fire-sale your work, but you can fire-sale a bunch of old drawings with little resale value to make room in a flat file. You shouldn’t sell out of your studio if you have a gallerist, but many artists have galleries halfway across the country that never sell to local collectors. 

To read the full article, click here.