I spend a lot of time online looking at images or art and design. I tell myself it’s for the purpose of inspiration, and it helps to keep me working. But does it though? Sometimes I immerse myself in finding images. Hours go by and I have produced nothing. I’ve merely been hunting, collecting and sorting art, not making it. The next part of the process is that my inner critic starts berating me: “You’re a phony! You call yourself an artist but all you are doing is endlessly scrolling, clicking, posting. You produce nothing!” That guy is such an asshole.
One day I decided to answer, “So what?” Maybe the hunting and curating and organizing is kind of the point for me…When I look at an entire page of things I’ve saved on pinterest or artsy, I see common themes emerging, and it’s exciting to see it all spilled out on the page like that. I can make sense of it. I have a vibe, an aesthetic. And that, by itself, somehow brings me joy. I imagine that if my life took another path I might have become a professional curator, or and art director. But for many reasons, that was not the way for me.
One day I started a new instagram just for curating. It’s called “ArtQday.” The “Q” is the medical latin abbreviation for “every”, so it effectively means “Art Every Day.” In the beginning I intended to post at least once a day. lol that did not happen, and sadly this little curation account has suffered vast periods of neglect since its inception. I’ve thought about different things I could do with it. For now, my intention is to start using it more frequently, and to coordinate it with this blog. Social media tools should make it easy to cross post, for example from pinterest or artsy, to the instagram, or to the blog. In the olden days it all would have existed on a “tumblr.” But I think tumblr may have gone the way of geocities or myspace.
Using the Artsy App to find Art Every Day
I find Artsy to be the single most effective tool for consistently finding good art. The app is mainly built for collectors, gallerists, and professional artists. People can’t just post their random shit on there like they do on instagram (ha ha, guilty as charged!) So it’s already highly curated. They also post weekly editorials on emerging artists and trends. At some point I would like to either be (a) an artist that sells work on artsy, or (b) a person with enough disposable income to buy some art work on artsy. Some day!
Anyway, if you’ve arrived here randomly from google, and you like my aesthetic, I would suggest following @artqday on instagram, or following me on pinterest. If you are an artist who arrived here randomly, maybe try using the #artqday hashtag. We could start a community of curation!