Letter from the Editors #3

Earlier this month, Artsy gave artists some advice on cultivating a career outside of art world centers. The article, "How to Succeed as an Artist While Living Outside of Art-World Capitals," offers some guidance that we certainly can get behind: prioritize your practice, create your own opportunities, and network to connect with art hubs. But it also highlights part of the reason that artists beyond the center are sidelined in critical conversations. Success as an artist doesn't just mean that you show at a major or mid-level gallery in a major city.

So what does success mean? Across the Internet, another article, this time from the Wall Street Journal, looked at five US cities supporting thriving "microclimates" for art. These small cities (Santa Fe, Aspen, Kansas City, Palms Springs, and Charleston, SC) offer something "specific" according to researcher Zannie Giraud Voss. And maybe that's just it, success as an artist is specific to person and place.

This issue (our first in a new format of monthly posts) of The Rib doesn't offer particular or singular ideas of what success means, but we hope it considers how meaning varies across regions and countries. In it, Jessica Baran contemplates The Lure, an exhibition of Margaux Crump's work held earlier this summer at Women & Their Work. We spoke with Juan Obando on his work. In the new series Real Talk, Jessica Borusky wonders what it means to "wear many hats," that oft-used phrase to describe working as an artist, a curator, and an organizer outside of major cities. Jeanine Jablonski talks about how Fourteen 30 has persisted over the last ten years, and what's ahead for the Portland gallery.

Success can mean many things. After a summer of working on various projects, fulfilling responsibilities at our day jobs, and finding ways to make The Rib sustainable, putting this issue together feels good. Publishing it and contributing to a larger conversation on new meanings of success is our true triumph, however. We'd love for you to contribute to this dialogue.

Drop us a line at rib@the-rib.net
The Rib is decentralized, not disconnected.

  ♥
Leah Triplett Harrington, Lindsey Stapleton, Corey Oberlander