Artist cooperatives, like the online art shop Justseeds, offer an alternative model of business for artists burned out from going it alone. However, the benefits of organizing with other disparate creatives may not always be immediate or apparent, according to Justseeds cofounder Josh MacPhee.
“We live in this sort of gig/app-driven economy in which we are perpetually sold the benefits of acting as atomized individuals, while the costs of [such a system] are always invisibilized,” says MacPhee. “When young artists who are trying to pay rent and put food in their mouths see a super slick, well-organized and user-friendly interface like Etsy, and it appears on the surface that [these artists] get [to keep] 70 to 80 percent of the sales, they don’t see the benefit of joining a cooperative that is clunkier and takes more investment.”
An artist cooperative is a business, gallery space or studio that is owned and democratically controlled by its members. Justseeds is just that, and boasts 41 members both foreign and domestic, who sell their radical art prints on the company’s e-commerce website in a similar fashion to Etsy. However, in Justseeds’ cooperative model, every artist has a say in how the business operates.
“When we started [Justseeds], it was great because I only had to be 1/16th of an entrepreneur. Now I’m just 1/41st of an entrepreneur. That means I’ll have more time to make art and do the things I want to do with my life,” says MacPhee. “That’s the real appeal, because as an artist, you don’t really want to be an entrepreneur; you don’t want to be an individual biopolitical, economic machine.”
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