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by biztos 1690 days ago
Offline until the paperwork all goes through.

But sure some details. It’s in the Canary Islands so pretty far from “Europe” but not exactly hard to get to. In a village about 20 minutes drive from the city. Under a volcano but not that volcano. By the time it’s all fixed it will have cost me about a year’s gross income from my fancy tech job (which paid less than in California but quite well for the EU).

It’s a house with a studio and eventually it will also have a ceramics oven and a printing press and whatever else seems necessary. There is a bit of land with food growing. Interestingly, I will probably never be allowed to make the house any bigger, which is a useful constraint actually.

Solar and wind for energy so even stuff like long-lived powered projects can be considered. If I’m ever VIP enough I’ll bring Trevor Paglen out to watch the ships at sea. :-)

The master plan is to use it myself as a sort of recurring self-residency and then have other artists doing the same. How many depends on my capacity to manage it, at the beginning it’ll just be artists I already know and trust. If any artist has a particularly strong resonance with the place I would try to get them recurring as well, but that remains to be seen.

There will be exhibitions and studio visits and art parties, at some point. I will try to help the artists sell (including myself) but that’s secondary.

I could run it informally forever but I would really like to give it some official status eventually, partly just because but mostly in order to be able to sponsor artists. In the long run assuming I have enough money I’d like to bring out artists who would need help paying for it and getting the visa.

Part of my motivation in this is to find a way of being in the Art World that does not fill me with dread like exhibiting my own work does. But that’s another story.

1 comments

Very cool. I have been planning to do something similar on 5 acres in FL. Your location sounds much more exotic! My main issue is I am still accumulating funds so most likely I will need to set up a 501C and have future artists continue my vision.