Here’s a riddle for you:
What’s red, white, and blue and smells terrible when you cook it?
Just Add Ink: A Comic Cookbook!
Just Add Ink opened in 2010, one of our first and few grant-supported exhibitions. It was another collaborative project with the folks from the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, and with it there was a lot going on behind the pages.
Normally at Altered Esthetics our exhibitions were pretty split genderwise—almost always 50/50. This was pretty consistent from theme to theme, with one large and looming exception: the comic shows. Comics are known for being a pretty male-dominated industry, and the comic-art exhibitions were split less evenly along gender lines, with about 90% cis male artists and 10% cis female. We decided that for our 2010 partnership with the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, we wanted to try to tip the scale a little. So we took a stab by doing something borderline sexist: we combined a stereotypically male genre (comic arts) with a stereotypically female item (a cookbook). It worked! Participation among female artists more than doubled to 35% of artists featured in the book and show, many exhibiting for the first time ever.
But participation wasn’t the only part—we sought to reduce barriers in a number of ways. One of the most important ways we did this was by procuring grant funding so that we were able to make the show free for artists to participate. Artists would be able to exhibit for free, receive a stipend for the inclusion of their work to cover some time and printing costs, and also receive a free copy of the publication. It was a recipe for success.
The preshow work was super fun. During the open call for submissions we also did some prep work: we held workshops all throughout Minnesota, traveling beyond the Twin Cities to Ely, Rochester, and Grand Rapids to show artists how to make minicomics and workshop their recipe pages.
The result of all our efforts was a hilarious and wonderful illustrated cookbook full of real and fake recipes. We even used the opening reception as an excuse to whip up some recipes from the cookbook itself. But one of my favorite parts of this exhibit was the shift in dynamic: instead of receiving exhibition
fees, we wrote out checks to the participating artists. The little minigrants took down a small but real barrier to participation and accessibility. Check by check, each signature reminded me that the ability to compensate artists for their time and work was huge. A community space that was collaboratively run, we weren’t committing the “compensation by exposure” felony—but it was a pretty fine line to toe. Compensation by exposure is when an organization or high-profile person will attempt to get free work from an artist, saying that instead of payment an artist will receive great exposure for their work. I never forgot that feeling of being able offer stipends that helped make the shows more accessible, and I spent the next few years of my time at Altered Esthetics trying even harder to do more to bring opportunities to artists and, little by little, remove barriers to participation.
Kevin Cannon, Kristin Thompson, Dan Olson, Steven Stwalley, Britt Hammerberg, Lupi McGinty, Jamie Schumacher
In a perfect world, it would have been great to always have mini- grants for all of our exhibits—stipends to help artists pay for framing, or for the creation of new works. That level of support was hard to come by for an emerging artist gallery. It has been exciting to watch programs like the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Fund support artists in this way and see many emerging artists in Minnesota get a boost in their creative efforts.
This post is adapted from It’s Never Going To Work: A Tale of Art and Nonprofits in the Minneapolis Community. The book includes illustrations by Athena Currier. ©2019 Jamie Schumacher.
It’s Never Going To Work is a light-hearted, illustrated book that offers real-life insights on founding a community space and nonprofit. It provides tools, tips, resources, and camaraderie to community organizers and anybody attempting something new.