Ending the Extended Hiatus With Some Major Changes

It's not ending, it's evolving

I don’t know how much people have noticed the lack of activity over past months. I’ve had some stuff going on and it’s given me the opportunity to think some things through. I will be making some changes and starting from the beginning. From the very beginning I wanted The Anartist Collective to be a place to share people’s artwork, music and other creative endeavors regardless of ideology, to show people what we all have in common rather than what divides us, and I feel like that got away from me and having a website with artist members boxes me in. I find and meet different artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers and more all the time and I know a lot of people across the spectrum so anartistcollective.com will be becoming The Anartist Collective arts and music magazine through our Substack with event and venue reviews and promo, videos, interviews, spotlights on all different creative artists and more. Instead of member artists, the collective will be the contributors to the magazine. Using the substack will make it easy for people to contribute as long as they have an account and I’ll be keeping the domain and redirecting it to the substack. I’ve begun the process of contacting people regarding the transition but if there’s anyone out there that would be interested in becoming a contributor let me know. And I really don’t care what someone’s political ideology is, within reason, as long as you’re a decent person and you’re up for contributing material and it’s not turned into a political grandstand. If it’s part of the creative arts that’s one thing but I don’t want this to be a political soapbox either. From the very beginning I wanted this to be a mix of creative artists across the spectrum regardless of ideology because there are so many talented people out there and honestly I’m so all over the place myself I can find things in common with a lot of different kinds of people. I want to pass that along through here. I will say there are things and people I’ve been associated with over the past few years that I have gradually split with in common values. All I’ll say is how it started is completely different from how it started and I stayed me while my environment changed. If I seem vague it’s for a reason. Some people feed off their haters and drama and some things just need to quietly go away. I’ve kept a lot of things very private for a long time for really good reasons and that would be one of them. There are things I created that I handed ownership of or just completely deleted, which was my work, because there were so many problems it wasn’t a representation of me at all. I like connecting with people with what we have in common, not focusing on what divides us because that puts us all in echo chambers and I am SO TIRED of echo chambers! There’s a lot of cool and talented people out there if we can just get past our differences. It’s the kind of person that I am and I want the collective to represent my values in full. I know I have some weird ideas about things but I have always been aware of how weird some things I think are because I’ve led a really weird life. I also have a lot of different interests, I’ve known all sorts of different people of all walks of life and I love meeting new people and getting to know them. I don’t box myself into an echo chamber and I don’t want that for the collective either. I grew up in a rural college town, lots of students from NYC but outside of town is quite rural. A mix of liberal and conservative, country folk and artsy people. Hippies (they don’t call it Stoneonta for no reason lol) and straightlaced businessmen, people from all over the world as well as families like mine that have been in the region for centuries as well as Native Americans (Last of the Mohicans anyone?). I managed a new age store for a couple years and met people of all spiritual paths, I’ve known people of all different religions. There’s a lot of really interesting people out there once you get past your biases.

I grew up around a lot of musicians and artists, friends with a lot of musicians and bands some of whom I photographed during shows, I did some online street team work, started going to school for fine arts and fashion design, eventually double majored in anthropology and studio art with minors in cultural anthropology specifically the Caribbean and the Americas and art history and there’s more. I just don’t have a degree because of health stuff but I’m finally starting to get some of that squared up. I was also in drama club, art club, chorus, and the school paper, yearbook and art magazine and I think this is the best direction to go in. I’ll be starting with people who are already in the collective and move on from there because honestly I go to some events and I share them anyway and I want to encourage people to share artists and more they know and find as contributors. Instead of members and members pages there will be featured artists with highlights and links and stuff. Most of everything is off site and what’s not is backed up. I’ll be sharing artists, bands, events, etc that I find myself and do individual write ups and would love for more to do that because I want this to show creative artists from all over the place as well as events, gallery openings and more. There will be a table of contents post pinned for easy navigation too. I want to get back to artist interviews too. I also want to feature small publishers, venues, smaller owned businesses, small bookshops, and a bunch of other stuff all over the country. I always wanted to crowdsource this effort but having a website and having artists join isn’t the way to get a bunch of cool artists and places featured in one place. Anyone can make a Substack account, I add them as a contributor and they share things. Easy. And you don’t need to use your real name to be a contributor, I’m totally cool with pen names.

I’ll be writing an article for the Substack introducing The Anartist Collective Creative Arts Magazine this week and once I get everything organized over there and start adding reviews of artists anartistcollective.com will be redirected to the Substack’s table of contents page. I always intended to start an art magazine through the collective from the very beginning, it just makes more sense to turn it into the magazine.