EP 83: The Conference for Artists

Andrew Russeth knows art. As Editor-in-Chief at Artnet News and a critic for nearly two decades, he sees more art than almost anyone in the art world. In this episode, he and Paddy Johnson dig into what keeps a career going over the long haul and why even artists with name recognition still have career gaps to fill. His most repeated advice may also be the most commonly dismissed: you have to have fun. Andrew Russeth won the Rabkin Prize for visual arts journalism in 2019 and was previously executive editor of ARTnews. Links and resources mentioned in the podcast Free Info SessionHow to Grow Your Career Beyond Your Region. Saturday, October 17 at 1 PM Eastern Sign up here Additional Reading

What makes an art fair successful? Sales. Crowds. Fairs that give people a reason to come back. This fall, artist William Powhida, Netvvrk Director of Operations Penny Retica, and I walked New York's fair week to see which ones do that job. We went to the Spring Break in the old CBS News offices, Independent 20th Century, The Armory, and Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. One of them left us with some serious FOMO. Guest creditsArtist William PowhidaNetvvrk Director of Operations, Penny ReticaArtists/Projects Mentioned:Spring Breakhttps://www.springbreakartshow.com/Kara Sheffler & Joanna Herr, Tiki BarDavid Molesky, Prone to BruiseChristopher Chan & Lindaluz Carillo, Soft BruiseKutay Tufekci, Roselynn Sadaghiani, & Richard Medina in Fool Me Can’t Get Fooled AgainAlice Herbert, HOUSE ARRESTMatthew Cronin, Catalina Tuca, & Joseph Wilcox, Afterimage, curated by Elisa Gutiérrez EriksenIndependent 20th Centuryhttps://www.independenthq.com/General IdeaDavid HammonsJenny HolzerArmoryhttps://www.thearmoryshow.com/Dorian LangbergMichelle GrabnerDarvish FakhrEmbajada GalleryKatarina RiseingAlba TrianaNY Art Book Fairhttps://nyabf2026.printedmatterartbookfairs.org/African Art Book Fair, The Pan African Library Will Not Be ColonizedBook Arts Solidarity Network, MAKEREADYA, Lukas, Stop Hiding Behind MasksPrecious Okoyomon, The Pleasure PrincipleBlack Sheep, Riso Lantern Additional ReadingValentina Di Liscia, "Independent 20th Century, the Mise en Abyme of Art Fairs," Hyperallergic, 2026Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Verso, 2024Activating the Transformative Potential of Commons in the Arts Free classIf you want shows beyond your home city, join my free class, How to Get Shows Beyond Your Region, on October 14 at 7 PM EDT. Register here.

Mike Ryczek flew to New Orleans to see his work hanging in the kind of gallery he'd always aspired to. Dinner with the other artists went fine. Then came the gallery crawl the next day, and he froze: four galleries deep without talking to anyone, thirty minutes standing beside his own paintings waiting for someone to approach, and finally the Irish goodbye and some consolation fried chicken. In this episode, the two of us talk about the moments an art career makes you feel like an imposter, and I share my own recent version of his story, because these feelings don't retire with experience. What changes is how you recover. Mike is a painter in Dedham, Massachusetts who has held gallery representation for over a decade, won a $15,000 Mass Cultural Council grant, and still interrogates every achievement for the trick behind it. Our conversation stays close to what an art career feels like: from the whiplash of rejection and reward arriving back to back to the self-belief it takes to keep assigning yourself work few people see. There’s no strategy in this episode, just the facts of the profession. Relevant Links: Mike Ryczek Creative Capital Mass Cultural Council

Have you ever struggled to figure out exactly where your art fits? Or maybe you’ve tried to write an artist statement only to find it one of the hardest tasks you’ve ever had to do. Today’s guest, Jennifer Sharpe, a multimedia artist and experimental filmmaker, has a way of making those problems vivid and infinitely relatable. In this episode, we talk about how a continuously shifting cultural landscape affects artistic practice. Over the last twenty years, we’ve seen multiple online communities collapse and rebuild. Jennifer came away convinced that while platforms vanish and institutions wobble, the relationships you build are the only durable asset an artist has. This conversation wanders in the best way. Racehorses, vagabonds, cave paintings, jobs, and a whole bunch of other ideas you wouldn’t think have anything to do with artists, but really do. RELATED LINKS Free Info Session, How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, Tuesday, July 21, 7:00 PM ESTJennifer Sharpe

The art world tells artists that if you just keep going, eventually something will break for you. But persistence can also keep you stuck. If you don’t know something’s broken so you keep doing the same thing, you won’t grow. That's what happened to Gin Stone. Gin is a Cape Cod artist who did what she was supposed to do. She kept going. And she stayed stuck because she didn't have the right help. In this episode, she talks about the gallery show that made her realize she had nothing to say about her own work, the overhaul that followed, and the grant she landed just last week for a sonification project built on 2,000 years of geological data.