THE ART OF MAKING IT

After receiving an MFA from Stanford University in documentary filmmaking, I moved to New York to forge a career focused on telling stories about art and artists and experienced firsthand the challenges MFA graduates often face: the difficulty of earning enough income to pay off student loan debt; the scarcity of teaching positions; and the amount of sacrifice required to balance being an artist with making a living. Dividing my time between filmmaking and a career as an independent curator, I’ve committed myself to creating opportunities for emerging artists who may have otherwise gone unrecognized. This story is the culmination of my life’s passionate connection to this work.

I spent my first few years in New York producing a feature documentary about the history of Wonder Woman that explored how representations of female power have and have not changed over time. In the film, Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and I examined the need for women to have a more equal role in controlling the means of production in order to ensure that portrayals of female strength reflect the ideals of women. The film aired on PBS, won several awards and had a robust educational distribution. I then turned my attention back to the world of emerging artists as an outgrowth of my interest in the power of storytelling and the importance of who is shaping the narrative. In the years since I graduated, MFA programs had become ubiquitous and tuitions had skyrocketed. With the growth of the online marketplace and the rise of the art fair, the contemporary art market was experiencing seismic shifts, while smaller galleries—the longstanding “first step” in the career of emerging artists—were shriveling on the vine. With no clear path to finding “representation,” I began to wonder how today’s artists were navigating this upended art world. Was an expensive higher education a prerequisite for entering the art world? How were artists "making it", and what did "making it" even mean? Through a curator friend, I was introduced to producer and art patron Debi Wisch who had recently produced The Price of Everything, a documentary feature about the art market directed by Nathaniel Kahn that premiered at Sundance and was broadcast on HBO. While the film focused on the careers of successful "art stars", Debi felt they had missed an opportunity to explore the world of undiscovered artists - those with great talent, yet lacking connections and credentials. We realized we shared a vision of a documentary that explored the cultural value of art through the world of today's emerging artists. We wondered what their challenges could reveal about our society at large. Little did we know, our film would literally capture the final months of the art world as we know it. Our film finds hope in its inspiring cast whose unique stories remind us of the power of creative acts to transcend circumstance and who, through the boldness of their imagination, show us a better way into the future.