ARTISTS TALKING

These profiles introduce film and video.

Dan Bass combines illustration with filmmaking and benefits from the networking each brings and Grace Weir who after a residency at PS1 in USA, represented Ireland in the 2001 Venice Biennale.

Dan Bass

Straight out of college I took part of the New Designers show and picked up a large painting commission. I don't think I had any strategy as such, just that thought in your mind that you must keep going, no matter what.

I remember at the end of my degree someone said, if you're really committed, if you want to be a full-time creative earning a living from illustration it's going to take you at least three years to build it up. I remember thinking this was rubbish and that I could do it in a year, but they were dead right.

My practice comprises exhibitions, commissions and studio-based work and commercial work. Web animation, illustration and digital video have paid for non-commercial endeavours, like a show or one-off piece of work.

Support from friends after graduation is important. If you to have a circle of friends that includes artists, whatever their discipline, that is a bonus, because you can share problems and exchange information and help each other out in a supportive way. I miss being in the studio and being with other people who you can just tap on the shoulder and say 'Can you have a look at this?'

Andrew (Palmer) and I were friends for years, messing about with video and Super 8 and we thought it would be fun to collaborate. We entered the Kent International Film Festival's twenty-four hour filmmakers' challenge, with Gavin Bush and Simon Palmer. After winning that Andy and I went on to form Chalkstack.

At that stage, what was a laugh and what we were just doing naturally became more of a serious, stand-alone, business. I also collaborate on projects because I enjoy it. In a sense, you let go of your own ego. It's often not what you would have said or done but you're still very proud of the work because you've had a hand in it.

I'm particularly happy with 'Len the Model Man', a short film that showed in a couple of cinemas. We also made a low-budget pop promo for the Apple Seed Cast band from Kansas. Although shot in Thane, we made it look like Kansas. An animation we made in collaboration with a theatre group became part of their touring production.

When you've got a solid grounding you can move in to other areas you didn't study at college or see as your professional practice. You just keep trying various things and keep moving in different areas.

I was checking out the Association of Illustrators message board and the people from Monsters had posted an open submission looking to take new people on. I got an email back saying they really liked my work and asking me to join. They're a great illustration agency as they're all freelance illustrators. Everyone mucks in to run the company.

I do make a living from my art, though I won't be giving Rockafeller a run for his money any time soon. It's difficult to define success post art school is. Is it showing regularly? Being able to do your work? Earning a living? Getting a place in a studio? It's all of these things, but the reason I'm still going is that I genuinely love what I'm doing. Every day I get up and I think, brilliant, what projects have I got on today.

Dan Bass did BA (Hons) Communication Media: Illustration (1995-1998) at KIAD at Maidstone.
www.chalkstack.com
www.monsters.co.uk

Grace Weir

After college, like many of my peers at the time, I left the country and worked abroad for a year. When I returned to be an artist I knew that that probably meant going on the dole. I was making sculpture and occasionally getting opportunities to make public art, whilst making several initially unsuccessful bids to the Arts Council of Ireland for projects. But I've always felt that it was important to keep yourself visible in this way and to talk to people on their terms, so that you can be a credible advocate of your own position. This stood me in good stead when I was threatened with eviction from my live/work studio in Temple Bar in the 1990s. I sought good legal advice, helped to create coalitions with other artists and, after several years, secured my right to live in fixed low-rent accommodation which is vital to my ability to sustain my practice.

A one-year residency at PS1 in New York and an MSc (and much self-educating) really helped me to interrogate my work and confirmed a shift towards computers and video in my practice. Taking responsibility and actively contacting the people who should be seeing your work is very important. The first time you phone someone it's embarrassing, but at least one such call ultimately led to my work being in Venice, and it helps develop your sense of yourself as an artist working in the world.

Grace Weir represented Ireland at the 2001 Venice Biennale. She did a NCAD Dublin Dip in Design (1980-1984) and an MSc in Multimedia Systems (1996-1997).

The writers

Libby Anson is an independent professional, creative and personal development consultant, who also works as a freelance lecturer and writer.

Abigail Branagan is a freelance consultant and marketing director of the Applied Arts Agency - a retail and gallery space in Clerkenwell, London. Originally trained in fine art, she has been working in the creative sector for eight years and has undertaken projects for a range of organisations, including Mazorca Projects, London.

Mark Gubb is an artist based in Nottingham working in a range of disciplines from painting to installation to video. His installation and film commission for Grizedale Arts references classic British horror and its cross pollination with American culture. A lecturer at the University of Derby, South East Derbyshire College and a regular contributor to a-n's publications, he is also co-director of artist-led initiative Loadstar.

Wendy Mason is a designer-maker in Yorkshire who also works as an arts consultant and trainer.

Graham Parker is an artist, critic, curator and lecturer involved in artist-led initiatives in Manchester. His work has been commissioned by Henry Moore Institute and Tate Gallery, Liverpool (Artranspennine), Manchester City Art Gallery, Compton Verney, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He has shown extensively in the UK and internationally. He is Visual Arts Officer at Salford University and co-course leader of Tate Liverpool's University Network MA course module and artistic director (with Dave Beech) of floating ip project space Manchester.

Emma Safe is an artist and writer on the visual arts based in Birmingham.

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