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Years ago I would walk by windows of banks and offices and wonder why they have these huge street level retail windows that are unused, vacant, or in various states of disrepair, sparking the initial vague thoughts behind this site. Now, post-covid, many times more storefronts are vacant, and have been vacant since shortly into the pandemic.

These empty windows are a massive waste and direct detriment to the surrounding community (many times specifically because they are owned by non-local and unconcerned billionaires that have would rather the loss tax write-off instead of lowering the rent to an amount where it can be viable). These spaces should be put to good use to support arts and local communities while they are otherwise languishing in intentional disuse.

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Art calls have become a really dumb waste of resources for both artists and curators.

Here’s some of why that is:

• • Advertising costs for art calls.
    • Shitty art call site: $225 sign up fee (+ $120 annual renewal), $250-$475 per call listing, $2.49 per call application, +3.25% payment processing fees. So if you want to list your art call it’s going to cost a minimum of $747.53 to get 100 applicants (not good art, just random people wanting to apply). That is completely bat-shit insane for anyone to even consider.
    • Ads: “The average cost for Instagram ads in California is between $0.75 and $2.00 per click (CPC) and $6.00 to $10.00 per thousand impressions (CPM), but it varies significantly based on factors like audience targeting, campaign objectives, and competition.” So a good amount more if you want to narrow focus to artists or a smaller local area.
  • Many art calls want a submission fee (seems like they all want $35+). All of these just seem like scams, maybe some aren’t, but nearly all are not worth the probability of it being a scam.
    
    • Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition might be one of the few exceptions where it’s reasonable for them to ask for a submission fee. For their Summer Exhibition “1,000 works are selected each year from as many as 32,000 entries” where artist’s may submit up to two works at a fee of £40 per piece. Royal Academy gets 30% of the purchase price for sold works, which is much better than most galleries demanding the scam of 50%+. Given the excellent draw of ~300,000 show attendees, these amounts seem like the high end of reasonable. To all curators out there, if you’re trying to charge a fee for submission and aren’t getting hundreds of thousands of show visitors, you should reconsider your life choices in trying to scam artists that are just trying to survive.
  • Some art calls that claim submission is “Free!” go on to have fine print of a fee for accepted works or show fees that are hundreds or even thousands of dollars. These are all scams that are trying to sell you a booth or wall space. None of these are going to be worth your time or effort.
  • Finding art calls that are relevant is pretty painful. Location, costs, potentially shipping art, is my art a fit for the show, etc etc. It basically becomes a full time job that you have to stay on top of and starting your search over regularly for new opportunities. While working your day job and trying to create art. And then when you do find the perfect art call, it probably ended 2 days ago.