Karen Atkinson: President and Founder, Coeditor of Artists*At Work GYST's newsletter
 
Karen Atkinson is a media, installation, public artist, independent curator, and collaborator. Atkinson has published and guest edited a number of publications. Exhibiting and curating internationally, Atkinson's work has been shown in South Africa, Australia, Europe, Mexico, Canada, throughout the USA, and in the Fifth Havana Biennial in Cuba.
 
In 1991, she was a co-founding director of Side Street Projects, a non-profit artist-run organization in Los Angeles, which continues to thrive now in Pasadena. Atkinson has held a faculty position at CalArts since 1988 teaching both Foundation Seminar, Context Revolt (installation, public and net art) and a Getting Your Sh*t Together class. She has been teaching workshops for over 20 years including teaching GYST workshops both regionally and nationally including for the California and Boston Lawyers for the Arts, Side Street Projects, artist run spaces and more. GYST Ink, an artist run company, was founded by Atkinson in which she created computer software for visual artists of the same title, which continues to add services for artists. Currently, Atkinson chooses to focuses on making life better for artists and less on exhibiting her own work.
 
Currently, she is the board president of NAAO: the National Association of Artists' Organizations (www.naao.net) and organized a national conference in spring 2007 titled VITAL SIGNs: creative and healthy communities. She is currently a board member for Side Street Projects. Atkinson has served on the board of directors of LACPS and Installation Gallery. In her spare time she serves on many Advisory Boards of local and national arts organizations, advises artists on their careers and tries to get into as much art trouble as possible.
 
http://www.karenatkinsonstudio.org
 
Contact Karen Atkinson >>
 

Bari Ziperstein: Director of Marketing/Sale/PR/Advertising/Coeditor of Artists*At Work GYST's newsletter
 
Bari Ziperstein is a site-specific sculptor, photographer and collage artist. Her artistic practice is engaged with the architectural history of Los Angeles and can be read as an investigation of how urban landscapes are defined by consumerism. Ziperstein holds her MFA from CalArts and double majored at Ohio University to receive a BFA in painting and a Women's Studies Degree. She has been a guest curator at Rosamund Felsen Gallery and has had solo exhibitions at Bank Gallery and The San Francisco Art Commission Gallery. She has been featured in group exhibitions at Anna Helwing Gallery, Cypress College Art Gallery, CalArts Feminist Project, Gallery G18 (Helsinki, Finland), White Flag Projects (St. Louis, MO) and a two-person exhibition at The University of La Verne. Most recently, Ziperstein was featured in Multiple Vantage Points: Southern CA Women Artists, 1980 - 2006 on view at the L.A. Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall. Her work has been reviewed in the LA Times, SF Chronicle, Artweek, Art US, Flash Art, Art LTD, LA Downtown News, Art Papers, St. Louis Today, and Grafik Magazine. Ziperstein has taught both lecture and studio classes at CalArts, UCSD, and UCLA Extension. Currently, Bank in Los Angeles provides Ziperstein with representation.
 
Bari Ziperstein directs GYST's overall marketing, PR, sales and advertising plans. Ziperstein is the co-editor of Artists*At Work, GYST's e-publication. Please direct all sales, marketing, PR, and editorial inquiries to her.
 
http://www.bariziperstein.com/
 
Contact Bari Ziperstein >>
 

Ari Kletzky: Business Advisor
 
Ari Kletzky is the business advisor for GYST and has ten years of experience in business in a variety of industries. Graduating from UC Berkeley, Kletzky received dual degrees with a B.S. in Business Administration and a B.A. in Rhetoric. Upon graduating from Berkeley, Kletzky worked as a management consultant with Monitor Company, an international management-consulting firm serving Fortune 50 companies and foreign equivalents. More recently, Ari has worked in the Hispanic community for the last 4 years. He was VP at Clinica Medica General, the largest integrated healthcare delivery system serving the Hispanic Community in Los Angeles where his responsibilities ranged from planning and business development to finance and operations. Currently, he is part of the senior management team at a start-up company called Confianza, which is the first private, microfinance company focused on the United States.
 
Simultaneously, while working in the field of business for the past ten years, Kletzky has pursued an art practice working in a variety of mediums including video, photography, installation, poetry and performance.
 

Julia Brown: Archiving Specialist
 
Julia Brown is a painter who holds her MFA from CalArts and a BA from Williams College in studio art. Trained in archiving under text-based artist Jenny Holzer, Brown worked for Williamstown Art Conservation Center. With over seven years of office management and executive assistant experience, Brown has effectively created, implemented, and maintained databases for artwork, art auctions, medical records and medical billing. She recently finished a year-long teaching fellowship at Whittier College teaching various studio classes.
 
Julia Brown is GYST's data entry and archiving manager. Please direct all inquires concerning our data entry and artist's archiving services to her.
 
http://www.juliabrown.net
 
Contact Julia Brown >>
 

D. Jean Hester: Internet Technology Manager
 
D. Jean Hester is an artist whose practice involves installation, drawing, video and performance by exploring communication, interaction and language. Through these mediums Hester focuses on the frailty of language and our repeated efforts to connect verbally despite its inherent failures and misinterpretation. Hester holds her MFA in Art and Integrated Media from CalArts and a BFA in Cinema from USC. Her work has been exhibited in numerous exhibits, festivals, and screenings in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
 
Since 1996 she has worked as a Web Programmer and Web Designer. During the dotcom boom days Hester was a Web Consultant and Team Lead on numerous high-profile commercial web projects for clients such as Toyota and Lexus. More recently, Hester was a Web Developer and Lead on internal projects at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Currently, she teaches web design and new media full-time, and is the Internet Technology Manager for GYST-Ink. Please direct all of your website questions to her.
 
http://www.divestudio.org
 
Contact D. Jean Hester >>
 

Bernard Brunon: Contributing Writer to Artists*At Work GYST's newsletter
 
Bernard Brunon, a French born and U. S. resident since 1978, is an internationally recognized artist, writer and curator. For the last 20 years, he has run the house-painting company THAT'S PAINTING Productions as a conceptual art project. THAT'S PAINTING Productions has done paintings in North America, Europe and Asia. Bernard has curated shows for museums and non-profit galleries in Europe and the U.S. He is moving to Los Angeles from Houston in September.
 

The GYST Story
 
GYST: Getting Your Sh*t Together is an artist run company that applies the creativity of an artist's mind to the complex and daunting world of professional practices in contemporary art. Our mission is to support artists and arts organizations with an integrated mix of software, services and information in order to keep artists working. Founded in 2000 by Karen Atkinson as a software company, GYST's products and services now include professional practices software, a newsletter, workshops, artist resume and statement review, archiving, and consulting services.
 
GYST got its start in the late 1990's, Karen Atkinson used her knowledge as a media, installation, public artist, independent curator, CalArts professor, grant writer and collaborator to create the first professional practices course for artists in the country called Getting Your Sh*t Together. Taught at both CalArts (Valencia, CA) and Side Street Projects (Pasadena, CA), artists came from as far away as San Diego to attend a ten-week workshop. Originally, an eight hundred-page binder containing twenty years of collected resources was given to each attending student. In response to the success of the course, GYST was founded and created GYST v1.0, for MAC & PC, which included over five hundred pages of professional practices resources culled from over twenty years of lectures, resources, and teaching experience.
 
Since 2006, GYST has been rapidly expanding by bringing on four new team members, updating our computer software to v.2.1.1 for MAC & PC, new website, offering new products and services that are a direct response to the artist community at large. GYST Ink publishes a free, bi-monthly themed newsletter ARTISTs* AT WORK. The first issue (August 2007) is about studio visits, which includes articles, information, checklists, and a column about artists who run their own businesses. Our team now consists of the President/Founder (Karen Atkinson), Marketing Manager (Bari Ziperstein), Internet Technology Manager (Jean Hester), Business Advisor (Ari Kletzky), and Database Manager (Julia Brown). There is also a range of other arts professionals from grant writing and gallery management experts to lawyers that are part of the GYST extended network. This dynamic team of professional artists enables GYST to expand our national mission to provide tangible professional practices information and resources to contemporary artists through various support services in order to keep artists working.
 
All kinds of artists, including students and art school graduates, self-taught artists, young and older artists, emerging and established artists benefit creatively, personally and professionally from having an organized and directed professional life. We believe that creating artwork and having business skills go hand-in-hand in order to avoid pitfalls, heartbreak and botched opportunities and are committed to supporting artists and arts organizations
 
For further information on the GSYT Team click here.