2022 Annual Member Meeting - Presentation & Audio Recording

Audio-to-Text Transcription:

Madeline Gent 0:06

Okay great share my screen Hello,

Madeline Gent 0:30

My name is Madeline Gent. I am the Executive Director at Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. First, I want to thank those artists who were able to join us on March 20, 2022 at Museum Lab for our Annual Member Meeting. And what I'm going to do now is just briefly recap that presentation from the Annual Member meeting for those artists who couldn't make it. I know getting to Pittsburgh can sometimes be a bit tough, and Sundays can be a bit rough. So hopefully you find this presentation helpful and you're welcome to follow up with us with any other questions you may have.

Madeline Gent 1:04

We started off the meeting with Welcome and Introductions. The meeting was led by myself, again Madeline Gent, Executive Director at AAP, and Chris King, our Board President. We did a brief discussion of Children's Museum and Museum Lab and the artists opportunities there. We reviewed the year that was 2021, we previewed the year that is and would be 2022, or will be 2022, provided a financial update on the organization, information about board elections, and rounded out with a Q&A. The Membership Meeting was held at the Museum Lab, which is part of the Children's Museum campus. There are multiple opportunities for artists available in both spaces, most notably exhibition opportunities; their website they constantly update open calls for art, as well as, I think more notably, their residency program of which Tough Art is kind of the keystone of that. They also have a permanent collection and simple walkthrough museum lab and see some of the great work they have acquired throughout the years. They are one of the largest public collections of art by artists in Pittsburgh to see. And then finally, and probably most obviously, teaching opportunities. As new exhibitions come up and new spaces happen, they do post jobs for artists in that area.

Madeline Gent 2:05

In the review that was 2021, we started with three exhibitions in our space. They were three new member exhibitions. Our 2019 new member exhibition was supposed to open April 2020. It was cancelled obviously due to COVID. And so we wanted to start the year off with that, and we invited artists from both screenings to participate in these three exhibitions. We then reviewed the other exhibitions hosted in the AAP space. On the bottom left, you'll see the Featured Artists Exhibition; in the top right of the screen you'll see 111 by 111. These are the two AAP-driven exhibitions in the space. The Featured Artists exhibition is based off our online series you may be familiar with from the email blasts, the website posts and social media that monthly we feature one artist that is nominated on and voted on by our exhibition committee. And then once a year it is curated by Dawn Henry, our Exhibition Coordinator, goes on view in our space. It really is a wonderful show. And an artist talk will be happening this weekend for the 2021-2022 Featured Artists exhibition on March 27th, featuring Shori Sims and Centa Schumacher in conversation so hopefully you all can join us Sunday March 27th at 11 AM. But the other show that happens in our spaces are 111 by 111 to celebrate 111 years of Associated Artists. We ask artist members to submit artwork at a cost of $111 each and 70% of each sale goes back to the artists. Through this exhibition, we sold 90 works, and we're still definitely working towards that goal of selling 100. We plan to do this annually, so be on the lookout for 112 by 112. The other exhibitions in the space were a mix of solo and group/juried shows. Elusive Spaces, work by Dan Droz, and A Permanent Home in the Mouth of the Sun, works by Hannah Altman were two solo shows featuring the work of AAP member artists. And then Push and Pull and Extending a Hand were two juried shows; Push and Pull, juried and curated by Grace Chin of the Sculpture Center Cleveland, and Extending a Hand juried by Imin Yeh and done in partnership with the Guild of American Papercutters featuring work on paper. We continue to do external shows or works that we say "we do in partnership with" throughout the year. In 2021, we wrapped up the Art on the Walls at the Mayor's Office done in partnership with the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and the Peduto administration. And then we also hosted, or co-organized, two exhibitions in the Touchstone Center for Crafts Iron Gate Gallery: Variation of Line and Form, and Subcutaneous. These two latter shows were at Touchstone. We we plan on continuing annually with the team there. We have a very special relationship with them: great staff and there's also a scholarship available for AAP artists: summer programming in memory of AAP member Agnes Dodds Kinard. So any artists interested in checking out this awesome space and looking for support to spend some time there, know that there is financial assistance available.

Madeline Gent 3:27

For 108th Annual, which was originally slated for another time and another location, again canceled and moved and reworked due to COVID. We hosted in two locations: the Pittsburgh International Airport and the Detective Building in East Liberty. On view in the two spaces was a total of 51 artworks, juried by two awesome jurors out of Minneapolis and Portland. Of the two exhibition spaces, we had 21 works in the airport in the ticketing case, transit cases, concourse C case, two vinyl reproductions, two freestanding sculptures, and we also had a rotating screen that featured all 51 artworks. And then at the Detective Building space, we had 30 artworks on view there. And we also planned to host three artists talks but due to the omicron wave we only hosted one in person and two online. In the bottom left in your screen, you can see the one in-person talk, but you can also go view the two other artists talks done online shared on our YouTube channel.

Madeline Gent 6:40

We began to push more and more online curated member stores and sales along those ideas of pushing sales. (You know: getting those commission checks back to the artists!) The online stores, the Living with Art stores, are curated by Pittsburgh-based arts connected individuals. The two we did in 2021 were with Lauren Piasecki of Black Cherry Design and the second Living with Art III with Shelby Ciarallo and Andrew Hefner of Union Hall, which is a great space for artists above the Bar Marco restaurant, constantly rotating some really interesting artwork in and out. So you can kind of see that by working with an interior designer or working with individuals who run an art space, these opportunities while online also have an in person component that may be interesting for a lot of our members. And then of course the 111 by 111 store that we already mentioned. In 2021 we sold 125 works. That is up 26% from the 99 works we sold in 2022 and we had sales that are over $20,000 in sales, which is up almost 40% from our sales last year. So we're really investing a lot of time, effort and energy and getting your artwork out there getting it sold, getting it in front of the right individuals and thinking about that professional practice of being an artist.

Madeline Gent 8:05

We, of course have our education (long running education!) program, the Visual Arts Career Orientation Program, of which the top three pictures with the white background come from the 2021 VACOP program. 2020 ended with going into all digital. 2020-2021 school year was all digital. Now, here in 2022, we are operating in a hybrid model. It is run by Clara Heitzenrater, she's our Education Coordinator, and all participating artists are paid for their time. And it's funded by the Henry C. Frick Educational Fund of the Buhl Foundation, and any artists who are interested in participating, Clara's also always looking for artists who want to work with the students. Just reach out to AAP and we will connect you with her, and the AAP email is aap@aapgh.org. You can also email myself, Madeline, or Dawn and we'll get it in the right place. And 2021, we also launched a new initiative with the Creative Citizens Studios at the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media where we partnered eight of our AAP artists with eight of the CCS artists. CCS is an organization that works with artists with developmental or intellectual disabilities. Artists met weekly throughout the fall of 2021, and it culminated in an exhibition in January 2022 with both an in-person exhibition; and our online store featured all the artwork as well. It was funded through a grant through the Arts, Equity, and Education Fund. It really was a wonderful program, and we look forward to partnering with CCS in the future.

Madeline Gent 9:49

So community partnerships! AAP, during the pandemic, reached out to other orgs and started to check in about what's going on. And through that grew some really awesome opportunities for us. One of which was the CCS exhibition program, but also coalitions and collectives. So the Visual Arts Coalition for Equity was funded through an Arts Equity Reimagined grant, and it is a group of seven organizations who were trying to support one another in this work. But most notably our online presence: if you have a chance, please head over to www.vacearts.org and click on that orange button, or along the top of that yellow bar in the upper right hand corner there's a button for resources. Click on it, it will become orange, and you will see just a really wonderful, robust (list of) jobs, residencies and fellowships, calls for art, grants and funding, local facilities, and services page that is, in my mind, you know, very easy to use, very clear, and probably one of the best resources for artists in Pittsburgh. We are also we're a part of the Collective which was run through the Children's Museum, which led us to be in this space on the 20th for the member meeting, and also led us to the partnership with Creative Citizens Studios.

Madeline Gent 11:17

We continue to grow our online and social media presence. On our website you can find out about our exhibitions, past, current, and upcoming, our member happenings, our member directory, our education programs, upcoming events, and artist opportunities. And that latter of which is highlighted here under our website of artist opportunities. Aapgh.org/artists-opportunities is our most visited page (aside from our homepage) on the website, and since November 2018 our web coordinator or our Communication Coordinator, Jamie Earnest, has posted over 1333 opportunities, unique opportunities, for artists both locally and nationally. It's one of the largest repositories I've seen in my professional career, and I just really commend the work Jamie has done. In 2021 we had over 100,000 pageviews which was up 19% from the year before and 27,000 Unique Visitors up 26% from the year before. You can see in that discretion, it means that people are coming back, that they see our website as a true resource, you come back to it again and again. We have our more well known socials, our Instagram and our Facebook, but we're also growing both our YouTube and our Tik Tok. On our YouTube you will find, not just this for members only, you know access to some of this sort of information, but also artists talks, interviews, artists features, and more. We have over 60 videos and we're looking to add more. And then on our Tik Tok, which started in fall 2021, you'll mainly find our Isaac Returns to Art video series. You have the videos from Instagram as well as some more additional fun videos that Isaac makes. And it's definitely worth checking out, and of that Isaac returns to Art series on Instagram we've had over 20,000 views and on Tik Tok we've had almost 9000 views. So we're really looking to get your work engaged in and out there to a wider audience. Should you have an exhibition coming up that you want featured, you want to work with Isaac, (these are weekly so we are limited in how many that we do produce), but we would love to feature the work of our members more and more. So definitely reach out, let us know, schedule time with Isaac. We'll get him down there and get him in and see what you're doing.

Madeline Gent 13:40

So 2022, the next year, the year that currently is, and as we're growing, we've opened three exhibitions and closed two exhibitions already. The three shows are Dynamic Duos, Interaction Now, and Featured Artists Exhibition. Dynamic Duos was done in partnership with CCS in our own space and funded through an AE&E grant. The Featured Artists Exhibition, which is currently on view in our space, closes April 2. Again, this Sunday, March 27 at 11 AM we have an artist talk with Centa Schumacher and Shori Sims that we hope you all can make it. And then Interaction Now done in partnership with the Media Arts Gallery at Robert Morris University–a really beautiful space. The work looked incredible in there, and we hope to do more of these in the future. And then at the beginning of the year, you all should have received the postcard of our upcoming exhibitions in 2022. We are currently having our Performance Series open call and we will have a session online. Probably by the time you have seen this, Tuesday will have happened. But on Tuesday, March 22 At 6 PM we are hosting an online info session on that Performance Series open call and then you can see the rest of the available shows below. In the summer we'll be opening Drawn from Experience: A Retrospective of Mary Culbertson-Stark's work and then two juried shows at Touchstone. A new member show both in our space and the Martha Gault Gallery, and Plain Silk, Uncarved Wood curated by Brent Nakamoto and featuring the work of some really amazing artists.

Madeline Gent 15:29

And then our board update was given by our board president or our financial update was given by our board president Chris King. For our new members, we provide just kind of an overview of the budget, and what we spend kind of where it's around, you know, between $200,000 - 250,000 annually. 50% of that directly supports exhibition work. About 13% of that supports our education and professional development programming such as the Visual Arts Career Orientation Program, various artists workshops, we do. 13% of that goes towards fundraising. And the remaining of that goes toward General and Administrative. Aside from earned revenue through, you know, membership fees, artwork sales, ticket sales and other things, the majority of our support does come from the foundation community directly to AAP. (This includes) from such spaces as the Hillman Family Foundations, and, tn 2021, we received around roughly $45,000. We received $30,000 from Heinz. The aforementioned support from the Arts, Equity and Education Fund, the Allegheny Regional Asset District, and the Henry C. Frick Educational Fund at the Buhl Foundation. We also received funding through the various coalition and collectives that we participated in. For the Arts Equity Reimagined through the Visual Arts Coalition for Equity, we received funding for that to create the website, to hire a consultant, as well as some compensation for our time and our efforts and energy on that. And then through the collective funding from Children's. Then we participated in our Fiscal Sponsorship project with Derek Reese to support his work in part for the Chilean Biennial, and that was supported from the Heinz Endowments. Our Paycheck Protection Program loans were forgiven, we received both, and those had to be utilized to pay payroll and different venue fees and utilities, which we did. Then our endowment is currently at roughly $615,000 in assets worth that we are available to draw down 5% with Board approval annually. But otherwise it's invested and wonderfully grows for the organization.

Madeline Gent 17:53

Board elections will go out shortly, we'll email a survey ballot, but you can also vote in person at the AAP office or by mail, just we ask that you request them. Votings will close at the end of April on the 22nd (re: 29th). Our candidates are Matt D'Ascenzo, who's a lawyer at Metz Lewis, a firm that we have a really great relationship with, and we're really excited to get another legal perspective on our board. Veronica Jancuk, whose background is in project management and design. She moved back to Pittsburgh and has been volunteering a lot with AAP and is looking to get involved. And then Stephanie Tsong, who you all might better know as DJ Formosa, but she has her background also in the visual arts. She's been helping out with AAP and coming to a lot of events, and we're looking forward to really growing that connection with our music community. Then, one other initiative will be on the ballot to extend the Board term of our Treasurer Tom Bakaitus by one year during this kind of period of transition as we figure out what's next and also to see us through the remainder of this audit, and then Tom will help us find an individual to not "replace" Tom, but help do the work that Tom was doing. Tom has really been a great asset to myself as the executive director and as well as on the board. And then finally, we elected our new Vice President. When our president is not an artist member, our bylaws stipulate that our vice president needs to be an artist member and we just happen to have really just a wonderful choice on our board already: artist member Sheila Cueller-Shaffer. Sheila has been on the board for two plus years and has been a really active member of our exhibition committee, and, aside from attending some more financial meetings, will be, you know, very on par with what she does for the organization now. We're looking forward for that to grow.

Madeline Gent 19:48

We ended the meeting with a Q&A with our members. One question came up that was asked if our financial statements are available. We file a 990 with the state every single year so you can find all of our most recent financial documents available online, and all are filed with Harrisburg with the state and we'll look to linking those making them more available on our website, but we are audited annually through H2R, so that is attached to the back of the 990 and you can get really get a kind of a clear assessment of our financials from that. We discussed, you know, how this video is going to be made available. We'll have both a PDF of the presentation as well as this YouTube video you are watching. We talked about different exhibition proposals. The exhibition committee is currently working on a rubric under the guidance of Dawn Henry our Exhibition Coordinator to provide for our next open call, so artists really have an understanding of how things are being assessed. Artists asked about how can they more readily update their work for Featured Artists, so we talked about doing an open call online of current work of available work. So as we share kind of our online repository with our exhibition committee or with other individuals that your most recent work is available to be seen. And finally, we got a wonderful round of applause prompted by member Tim Fabian on our work. And so we really appreciated that, and we wrapped up the conversation with a discussion of various other professional development workshops for artists specifically, the possibility and AAP hosting one on NFTs. And we looked possibly into partnering maybe with the Children's Museum on that or a few others to really explore that area a bit more and help you all feel more prepared to navigate that. So again, thank you for those of you who made it on the 20th. I know it's tough to get in. So those of you who didn't make it on the 20th I hope you found this presentation helpful. My name is Madeline Gent. I'm the Executive Director at Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and I co-hosted this meeting with our Board President Chris King. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to aap@aapgh.org or myself, madeline@aapgh.org, and though my inbox has not been pretty these days, I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible and answer any of your questions. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai