Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Just Seeds, Visual Resistance Artist Collective
Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Our website is not just a place to shop, but also a destination to find out about current events in radical art and culture. Our blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society.
History Justseeds was originally started in 1998 by artist Josh MacPhee as a way to distribute his art and the Celebrate People's History poster series. He slowly expanded Justseeds to include the work of like-minded artists. In 2004 it grew too large to hold in MacPhee's apartment and order fulfillment was taken on by Clamor Magazine and their new online sales venture Infoshop Direct. Both Justseeds and Infoshop Direct continued to grow, but in late 2006, serious financial problems at Infoshop Direct caused it to unexpectedly and immediately shut down. Justseeds was left with no functioning website, no order fulfillment service, and over $8,000 in debt; things looked pretty bleak. Amazingly, a grassroots effort of hundreds of people donating relatively small amounts of money helped Justseeds pay off all it's debt, and a couple of successful benefit art shows raised enough money to launch a new and improved website.
During this difficult time, MacPhee reached out to a dozen like-minded artists and previous collaborators as well as the political street art blog Visual Resistance in order to re-create Justseeds as a cooperative effort. Justseeds was transformed into Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative, an artist/worker owned and run cooperative, that launched in the summer of 2007.
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