What should an Art Stack include?

I need your help, please.

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I was going to write a newsletter with a really well-thought out and organised list of arty and illustration Substacks, and I’ve been making notes and thinking about it since this note:

But I realised it’s going to take a bit (or even a lot!) more organising and research, to be honest. When I wrote that note I just went to my list of people I followed and pulled ones I knew were illustration related. It was a spur-of-the-moment action in response to

Rachael Dean

’s note. I missed people. And it’s a list of people, rather than publications, because you can only tag people in notes not publications (at least I only ever seem to be able to - I’m not an expert).

Also

Lidija P Nagulov

dropped a comment that it would be an ‘Art Stack’ and that made me feel suddenly beholden and responsible for curating a whole community and how and why would I be able to do that? And would I need to create a whole separate publication or could I just put a list here? And if I put it here, should it be a separate page or a pinned post?

And then there were more questions and ideas. First of all, should it be a general Art Stack that encompasses a multitude of visual arts, including illustration, animation, surface pattern design, fine art, graphic design and, if so, how far do I go there and who would I exclude? Would textile artists be included? Does that include knitters and embroiders? What about sculpturers? And so on and so on… OR… do I concentrate on illustration only, but then would that exclude surface designers because, if so, I am one of them as well as an illustrator… Oh maybe there should an Art Stack with multiple sections, then? An illustration section, a surface design section, a fine art section… But that could get unwieldy and would there be room for all those sections along the top menu bar?

And if it was a whole publication, would we need guest posts - would we have specific days for the specific sections or would we just go with whatever people were willing to write? And would they require editing? And, really, how much work was this going to be? Or could we just do round-ups once of week on a particular theme - so there could be a picture book illustration round-up one week and a surface pattern round-up another week, and an art for mindfulness and therapy round-up another week, and an art director round-up another week. Round-ups of publications and then maybe round-ups of interesting posts.

Should or could there be a paid element? If so, how would that work?

Firstly, I’d love any thoughts on any of the many questions. I do realise that different people will have different opinions, but the more opinions I have the more I might be able to coalesce it into something meaningful and that works for as many people as possible.

Secondly, does anyone want to help? If it does end up being a whole publication, which I think could be really valuable (I appreciate the other stack publications and the way they amplify the voices smaller stacks but also provide a certain amount of curation), I don’t think there’s any way I could maintain it entirely on my own. If it did end up including a paid element, I would happily share that out accordingly (though also keep in mind that there might well not be and you might have to do it for the love of the community).

Thirdly, or more simply, if you like, perhaps you could answer a couple of poll questions (sorry, you have to be a subscriber to vote in these polls)…

If it does end up being just a list that sits here, I can probably manage that myself, but would really appreciate recommendations of publications, because I’m sure I don’t follow/subscribe to every art-related publication.

But if it does end up evolving into a whole new publication, that would require regular help of some kind. If I got a handful of people who were interested, I could set up a call to talk it over.

Please leave a comment or send me a DM or email with your thoughts about how this could work and especially if you have the time and energy to help.

Oh, and a couple of final requests… please also share this post, so that it reaches other art-related substackers that might not see it, and please leave recommendations of publications that should be included.

For anyone interested in getting involved, I have some suggestions for times for a call and have set up a chat thread as a place to discuss it in general: