Remainders Creative Reuse, a 6000 square foot arts and crafts thrift store in Pasadena, diverts materials from landfills while providing inexpensive supplies and inspiration to artists of all ages and experience levels. They also host classes and other programs, curated by Rhizomatic Arts community member TOBAN NICHOLS, who says, “My art practice feeds into my work at Remainders and vice versa… It’s the mix I’ve always dreamed of, and the freedom I hoped I would someday have.”

The Contemporary Art League was co-founded by Los Angeles artists who believe that, together, we have the power to change the material conditions for artists and arts workers. “We want our community of art workers to be able to live dignified lives with a commitment to creating and caring for visual culture, and we want that for ourselves, too.” Read on to learn about their vision for a “cooperative trade organization” for L.A. County artists, and how to get involved!

When I met Santa Fe-based ERIN ELDER, I immediately recognized a professional soul mate. She takes a personal, therapeutic approach to supporting artists in their careers over weeks, months, or even years.

Created by artists SUSAN SCHWARTZ and VIRGINIA BROERSMA, the FARE Contract is a free, artist-centered sales agreement that advocates for elevating the rights of artists when their work is sold. “We believe that by empowering artists… we can embed a sense that asking for and negotiating your rights is something any artist can and should do.”

SHAINA LYNN SIMMONS is an actress, performance artist, and creative producer, healer, and author. She says, “At the interstice of activism and artistic praxis, my work seeks to heal the past, tend to the present, and reimagine the future of the diaspora […] as an organic archaeology to elevate Black stories.”

TATIANA VAHAN’s art projects, which include the Los Angeles Artist Census and the bar-fund, function as community-based activism through projects “organized on the principles of direct action, cooperation, and self-determined power by artists.”

KATRINA FRYE is keeping a close eye on the economic conditions that artists must work in, and common pitfalls that make it harder for all of us to do well. She says: “If we aren't careful we will suffer if more people offer below market rates for sub par work. I am working alongside younger people right now to educate them on their market value.”

VIRGINIA BROERSMA is a fine artist who puts her administrative and organizational skills to work for others. She says, “I want to contribute to shaping the art world/community/market that I want to participate in. This world would offer opportunities to a wider swath of people, would support art and art makers as essential pieces of our society, and would make artists feel valued and less desperate.”

KAI HAZELWOOD doesn’t mince words when it comes to what she thinks we need more of in the arts. “I'm less interested in how the field is changing and more interested in remaking it entirely by disempowering its traditional structure and building an independent, stable, and lucrative collaborative that can operate outside of the traditional axis of institutional funding and support.”

When asked how he sees a culture of sustainable arts practice developing today, YOUNG-TSENG says, “it’s empowering when I see and know artists who are doing more for themselves and other artists, and doing it with the values and practices they embody in their art making.”

Rhizomatic Arts spotlights artists who push us to think differently about how artists live and work. MARCUS CECILIO KUILAND-NAZARIO describes himself as “a Cultural Mercenary” and an “Art Doula.” He says: “I am less interested in ‘the field’ and more and more interested in ‘the field workers’. How can I help my fellow artists? How can I become a better artist?”

The Center for Cultural Innovation recently published an interview where I talk about my work as part of the Creative Industries Incentive Network (CIIN). I talk about my perspective as an artist coming to Los Angeles from San Francisco, and how the community-centered energy I found here in the experimental performance scene led me to build a career around exchange and collaboration.

Rhizomatic Arts spotlights artists whose creative practices push us to think differently about how we live and work. KATELYN DORROH describes their practice as “exercising accountability for the privilege they have, the resources they have access to, and to act expansively to the structures of power in which they exist.”

KARINA VAHITOVA is a poet, movement artist, and co-founder of VOID ACADEMY. She says, "Artists cannot depend on institutions and so we are helping them to find ways to have thriving careers outside, or at the very least alongside, the kinds of support institutions can sometimes provide to them."