Integrating Visual Art & Music: Printmaking Processes & Lathe Cutting Vinyl Records

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Description
For my creative project, I began an art press that produces small-run vinyl records and artist's books. Initially, the venture began as a means to circumvent record pressing facilities as a vinyl record-cutting service. By the end of this project,…

For my creative project, I began an art press that produces small-run vinyl records and artist's books. Initially, the venture began as a means to circumvent record pressing facilities as a vinyl record-cutting service. By the end of this project, the focus shifted to encompass more visual art products than just vinyl records. The project began with vinyl records because I saw a need in the market; in the past decade, the industry has grown dramatically, but the dozen record pressing plants in the country cannot keep up with the demand. Because record pressing companies prioritize large orders, it is difficult for many small bands and independent record labels to produce work on this medium. This is due to the long lead times, high prices, and large minimum order sizes. I located a man in Germany, who invented a machine that makes high-quality, lathe-cut records. I named the project Blushing Soup, as homage to my father, who passed during my first semester of college. It is through his passing that I was able to secure funds to pursue this venture. I brought on a partner, who was more familiar with art and audio recording than myself. In the summer of 2015, we met with this inventor to learn how to use his machine. By October of 2015, a machine of our own had arrived. In early November, Blushing Soup won a grant from the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. During this time, we released two vinyl records for local bands. For a culminating project, I coordinated a Record Store Day compilation album consisting of six bands featuring. After securing all of the music, the machine started having problems, which forced me to cancel this release. Recognizing the delicacy of the machine, prompted a shift in the aim of Blushing Soup. During this process, I started learning printmaking processes, and I realized that Blushing Soup could function as more than a record cutting service; we could be an art press. In the last few month of this project, I started making artist's books. By the end of April 2016, Blushing Soup will have released vinyl records for two bands, as well as produced four handmade books. This creative project centered around the process of creating art through lathe cutting and printmaking; the objective was not to maximize profits but rather refocus the consumption of art (in a sustainable practice).
Date Created
2016-05
Agent

Applying the Business Model Canvas: An Aspiring Entrepreneur's Journey to Learn from Failure

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Description
When a friend approached me and asked me to join his team and apply to the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative, a student business plan competition at Arizona State University, I accepted. Not only did I find his idea interesting, but…

When a friend approached me and asked me to join his team and apply to the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative, a student business plan competition at Arizona State University, I accepted. Not only did I find his idea interesting, but I also believed that applying to the Edson program would give me a first glimpse into being an entrepreneur. The business, called Social Artworking, proposed to create an online platform to connect businesses, who need art, with artists through a unique bidding process. Through Social Artworking, businesses indicate the maximum amount they are able to pay while artists bid what they are willing to do the job for. Then a business or individual is able to pick the best artist that can meet his quality and price needs. In addition to the exchange platform, Social Artworking would jointly launch a social networking site and an online portfolio service for artists. Social Artworking was trying to address the problem of small businesses having a hard time finding affordable and high quality artist and designers while at the same time helping students gain paid experience to increase their portfolio before graduation. In the months leading up to the Edson application, I had a hard time catching up to my partner's knowledge of the business idea and the art, web and crowdsourcing industries. On many occasions, I felt like I was depending on him as an expert to write the application. After two months of working on the application, we submitted the proposal to Edson. The idea did not advance to the final round.
Date Created
2012-12
Agent

Value creation and evaluation in arts incubators

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Description
This research explores and deepens our understanding of an element of arts infrastructure in the United States: the arts incubator, an organizational form or programmatic initiative that exists at the intersection of artistic production, entrepreneurship, and public policy. The study…

This research explores and deepens our understanding of an element of arts infrastructure in the United States: the arts incubator, an organizational form or programmatic initiative that exists at the intersection of artistic production, entrepreneurship, and public policy. The study is a qualitative cross-case analysis of four arts incubators of different types: Arlington Arts Incubator, Intersection for the Arts, Center for Cultural Innovation, and Mighty Tieton, situated within the context of the literature of arts incubators, business incubator evaluation, and a theoretical framework for understanding entrepreneurship in the US arts and culture sector.

The research opens the black box of incubator operations to find that arts incubators create value for client artists and arts organizations both through direct service provision and indirect echo effects but that the provision of value to communities or systems is attenuated and largely undocumented. Arts incubators, like many small arts organizations, tend to look retrospectively at outputs rather than at the processes that convert inputs to tangible impacts, or means into ends. This is an issue not relegated only to the arts and culture sector; business incubators share some of these tendencies. Despite these issues, arts incubators remain a potentially impactful tool of cultural policy if their processes and activities align with their strategic goals and those processes and activities are assessed formatively and summatively.
Date Created
2015
Agent

Perspectives on Arts Entrepreneurship, Part 1

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Description

As the first peer reviewed research journal in the field of arts entrepreneurship, Artivate: A Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship takes its role as a framer of the discourse in and around arts entrepreneurship seriously. To advance that discourse, in addition…

As the first peer reviewed research journal in the field of arts entrepreneurship, Artivate: A Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship takes its role as a framer of the discourse in and around arts entrepreneurship seriously. To advance that discourse, in addition to the articles and book reviews that have been regular features of Artivate, we have invited members of our editorial board and staff to contribute short think pieces. For these pieces we asked contributors to consider open-ended questions to which they could respond in whole or in part: what is their position in relation to arts entrepreneurship; how is arts entrepreneurship situated in relation to other disciplines or fields; what are the problems we are grappling with as scholars, practitioners, teachers, and artists; and what are the research questions we are attempting to answer individually or as a field? Following, you will find responses from: Andrew Taylor, Associate Professor of arts management at American University; Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of performance as public practice at UT-Austin and author of Performing Policy (reviewed in this issue); and Artivate’s publisher and co-editor, Linda Essig, Evelyn Smith Professor and director of the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State.

Date Created
2015-02-15
Agent

Frameworks for Educating the Artist of the Future: Teaching Habits of Mind for Arts Entrepreneurship

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Description

This essay looks at pedagogies that can be deployed to teach the habits of mind that support arts entrepreneurship through the lenses of frameworks developed by Gardner, Duening, and Costa & Kallick for conceptualizing ways of thinking. It draws a…

This essay looks at pedagogies that can be deployed to teach the habits of mind that support arts entrepreneurship through the lenses of frameworks developed by Gardner, Duening, and Costa & Kallick for conceptualizing ways of thinking. It draws a network of connections between these frameworks for ways of thinking on which are mapped various pedagogies for teaching arts entrepreneurs as employed in educational programs and as described in recent literature. After first briefly summarizing each of these frameworks, I graphically describe the ways these various frameworks may overlap and then offer examples of pedagogies that support the development of entrepreneurial habits of mind for artists and others.

Date Created
2013-02-16
Agent

Arts Entrepreneurship: A Conversation

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Description

The co-editors of Artivate, Gary Beckman and Linda Essig, have shared an interest in advancing arts entrepreneurship as a field of study since Beckman first interviewed Essig as part of his research toward what has become a foundational article (2007)…

The co-editors of Artivate, Gary Beckman and Linda Essig, have shared an interest in advancing arts entrepreneurship as a field of study since Beckman first interviewed Essig as part of his research toward what has become a foundational article (2007) in the field, “”Adventuring” arts entrepreneurship curricula in higher education: An examination of present efforts, obstacles, and best practices.” The current article presents a dialogue between them in which they discuss the nature of the discipline and the challenges and opportunities presented by the launch of Artivate.

Date Created
2012-08
Agent

Arts Incubators: A Typology

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Description

Recent policy initiatives evidence a vigorous interest in arts-based community development. Arts incubators are one means for such development, as well as a means for supporting artists and arts organizations. Literature suggests wide variance across arts incubator objectives: some aim…

Recent policy initiatives evidence a vigorous interest in arts-based community development. Arts incubators are one means for such development, as well as a means for supporting artists and arts organizations. Literature suggests wide variance across arts incubator objectives: some aim “to produce successful firms that will leave the program financially viable and freestanding,” while others pursue such diverse goals as supporting individual professional development, providing gallery space, or advocating for social change. There is also a diversity of organizational forms, governance structures, and funding models. This article offers a typology of arts incubators based on organizational objectives through the lens of stakeholder theory.

Date Created
2014-07-01
Agent
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