WHO WE ARE + WHAT YOU CAN DO TO BE A PART

What’s good?

If you’re checking out this page we’re gonna have to assume you want to do shit. You want to get things done and move your career along as an artist, musician, or creative in general. People are all talk about what they want to accomplish in life but you’re not, amirite? Well whatever. It doesn’t matter. If you wanna print and design shirts, paint murals, perform shows, or whatever the hell else we wanna help out and be a part.

Keep reading to find out who we are and what we do.

For more info, submissions, collab/project proposals, and just to send confused and mildly offended messages of  ”what in the hell is this BS?” please use the contact form below.

DISCLAIMER: This is long as hell but I’m not rambling; this is all relavent info if you wanna be a part. If you don’t like reading then just skim the  bold parts, man! __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*******What The Studio/JoinTheStudio is and what you could get from it: *********

(skip to the bottom for the quick version, just kidding there is no quick version. read it please.)

 -We’re an art and music collective.

Among many other things that means those who operate within the collective get the benefits. We’ve got a rapidly growing network starting to encompass promoters, major artists and illustrators, musicians, media companies and key people within them, etc. We have a sweet site that is starting to garner attention from people across the US and in other countries where we try our best to promote our own work and interests as well as act as a resource and collaborative tool for other artists, musicians, and enthusiasts through tutorials, interviews, and the like. What that means for you is that in the future if you’re active in working on projects, pushing the collective, and working your ass off then when a client comes looking for someone to do artwork for their new magazine, album cover, flyer, mural, soundtrack, article, whatever and you’re the best person for the job we can throw it off to you. Also if you’re posting for the site, writing articles, whatever, we’ll obviously promote the hell outta you to everyone we’re connected with.

-We run a 4-color screenprinting press in Dallas and a small 1-color in Chicago with the capability to print CMYK full-color shirts, prints, and whatever the hell else.

Even though our print runs have been pretty spotty in the past, we just sold our remaining stock from the previous year and a half in Austin thanks to the work of our ATX branch leader and video man, Karan Sethi, and we’re primed to drop more with much quicker turnaround. Our apparel line is not only a great way to make some extra cash to finance things like our Vimeo+, Flickr Pro, SoundCloud Premium, etc. accounts but also a way to collab with dope outside artists, showcase our own artists, and make money selling things that are basically cool looking wearable advertisements for the collective at their basest level.

-As part of our initiative documenting and promoting the various awesome underground scenes we’re all interested in, part of, or stumble across we cover underground shows along with the interviews and tutorials we provide.

We’re obviously interested in anything experimental, little-known, creative, and technically impressive. That’s where our coverage of the experimental beat scenes, graff/street art world, etc. comes in. Wherever our members or branches are set up with a camera, the idea is to document the most interesting and innovative creative acts going on and spread the goodness to the masses–in turn promoting JTS and the rest of us in the process and often yielding future clients and networks. That doesn’t mean you have to be interested in those scenes, we want to cover any emergent or underrepresented art/music out there (you know, if it’s good).

-We do a lot of random, awesome shit.

An upcoming zine published by The Studio documenting the Chicago underground beat scene with contributions by some of the most influential producers and DJs in the rapidly growing scene, permissioned or commissioned murals including a 4-story one in the international HQ of Brinker (owner of Chilis, Maggianos, On the Border, etc.) a while back, a prototype tagging marker we’re preparing for patent (can’t talk much about it without you signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement), about to be hosting episodes of my internet radio show and tracks by JTS members and podcasts,  and soon a series of hybrid art/music events and possibly a run of group gallery shows.

“Okay cool man I get it, yall do a bunch of shit. What about me?”

Hey thanks for nicely framing my next talking point with your unsolicited question, Imaginary Questioning Guy! Here’s what we need help with right now:

The site:

-Original Content. Tutorials on novel/useful art or music based things (see the screenprinting, MPC, stuffed animal, etc. tutorials), articles on underground and underdocumented scenes and fields, reviews if they’re particularly salient or interesting, HD video of you doing something artistic or musical that’s particularly cool, a text, sound, or video-based interview with someone interesting and influential (and the more well known, the better obviously). Whatever you want; be a writer, be an artist, just be a creator and submit it to us for the site (preferably talk to us beforehand).

-Blog content. Our main members are busy with a ton of other JTS projects, we can’t be running the site 24/7 but we need fresh posts to retain interest in the site. This is where we fill in the update gaps left by the original JTS content with posts about cool shit that other people are doing. This is so we keep people comin back regularly to keep checking for new stuff so that when you post that video, track, etc. that you worked so hard and long on, tons more people check it out when it’s first posted. This is also a good opportunity to cross-promote with other blogs and show some of their content support (which hopefully they’d then reciprocate)

-Coverage. Insane J-punk underground basement show happening in your area? Hit that shit up and bring a camera!! Don’t just go to shows, cover them and post it on the site for every one to see how awesome it was! If you do this and inform us ahead of time you might be able to get on the list and go to a ton of cool shit for free and get to interview semi-famous/weird people.

-Suggestions. It’s not perfect by any means but these days it needs to be damn close so hit us up with suggestions for streamlining, expanding, upgrayyding, etc.

-Promotion. If nobody looks at the site, why the shit should we all spend so much time creating cool things to post on it?? We need every major post and JTS development blasted out to a shit ton of blogs, twitterz, faceyspaces, and publications so this is all worthwhile! We’ve got a pretty huge blog list so far for our own blog updates so feel free to utilize it.

Shirts:

- Designs. Keep in mind we can only choose a fraction of the possible designs and that choice is based off our abilities and what we think will sell well enough to make it worth everyone’s while. But still, having your art worn by a bunch of other people and making a bitta $ off it if it sells well is still pretty awesome, right? If you think your stuff would sell well, send off some ideas and we’ll go from there.

-Printing help. You gotta be trained to do this properly which is a pain in the ass in its own right but if you really wanna help, we can train you how to print the shirts and boxes that earn us the little money we make at this point.

-Selling help/promotion. Like I mentioned, the shirts are our only moneymaker right now, so the faster we sell through our precious apparel the better so we can fund all the other fun shit we do with materials, fees, bail (maybe), whatever. We’re competing with Karmaloop-style streetwear hype hustlers with a lot of bullshit and killer marketing and hype. We need a bit of that and we can dominate with strictly better designs and higher quality at a lower (read: non-bullshit) price.

Murals:

-Designs/proposals. We need something to show the person who owns the wall right? Well let’s figure out a design and collab on something awesome. Murals are great because they let you showcase your talent and advertise both The Studio and whoever owns the wall, they’re huge, and lots of run down stores with walls visible to the street might be looking for an aesthetic boost.

-Finding spots/pitching. Before we can paint shit we gotta find the place to paint it! This is both finding good spots and then going in and talking with/calling the building owner and arranging for them to let us paint for free or at least pay for our materials.

-Uh, painting. Painting the thing that we found that the owner said was okay.

Shows: (music and/or art)

-Proposals. Do you wanna perform with this group of gypsies you just found? Book an art show based around your troubling sexual fixation on garden gnomes?? You need a theme/concept behind any show like this so come up with one or just send a ton of them off to us and we’ll brainstorm!

-Finding spots/venues. Well if you don’t want to host this thing in your mom’s rumpus room (and why does she still have a rumpus room? It’s 2012) we need to find a spot for it to go down. Whether it’s an awesome loft, abandoned warehouse, gallery, or venue we’ll need to go around and talk to a lot of property owners and booking agents to get the details nailed down.

-Booking people/gathering talent. If you’re not planning on being a selfish bastard you should have someone else in on the fun, right? Keeping an eye out for talent or just reaching out and emailing everyone you idolize or respect can result in some great collabs and projects every once in a while.

-Performing/showing. If you’re with us then you’re almost certainly talented so we’ll need that talent to show people how talented your talent is.

Whatever the eff else:

Sticker designs for the website, your own podcast, graffiti, zines, croched JTS socks, what-in-the-hell-ever you want to do that’s cool or interesting just propose it to us and we’ll help, depending on our time and resources.

KEEP IN MIND

Our market: Artsy and musicy people interested in experimentation and underground things. No mainstream rap bullshit or something you’d see on, I dunno, GenericSite.com. Speaking of:

It’s all about differentation. There’s a million art collectives, a billion blogs, a trillion streetwear brands. The only way any of us will survive as creatives is to do something different and new. Interview somewhere novel or unexpected. Paint and video it in a strange way. Anything, ANYTHING but be like all the other artistmusicianblogcollectives out there

Oh, it’s also about collaboration. We want to bring in new people all the time; guest artists, collabing producers, whatever.

Money. We’re not making much $$ now and it’s gonna stay like that for a little longer.What we all get out of this right now is exposure, experience, and connections. Not bad I’d say, it’s not like we’re asking for a 9-5 daily commitment. As the coming months progress we’ll be working on developing The Studio into a viable business that can support us all.

 

>>>>>This looks like a lot but right now it’s basically just a handful of us doing almost all of that shit. Pick a few and help out if you’re down.<<<<<

For everyone who read through the entirety of this, I promise to buy you a drink. Really. Now let’s start throwing ideas around and get some shit done!

 

Thanks,
Sam

If y’all want to join up with us, collaborate, or just send us a message, feel free to hit us up!-