By Casey Rafter
Stencils, pencils, paper and hands are all viewers can see in an image captured from above. Two people face each other, prepared to create. There aren’t rules. There is only opportunity for community, creativity and conversation.
Artist and art enthusiast Justina Martino has compiled these series of conversations into a video on her YouTube page. For these conversations, she invited a few people to join her in an activity she’s found solace in since she was a teenager: creating artwork with others.
“It was an experiment to see if I could feel closer to people I didn’t know that well,” Martino says. “And seeing where the conversations go, if making art would take the conversations in a different direction.”
Growing up in Rhode Island, Martino discovered joy in bringing people together to create art in a high school art class. She remembers that in that environment, different cliques seemed to come together.
“Most of the art classes, we were just sitting around a table, making art together and working on our individual projects. In the art classroom, we were all artists,” Martino says. “There were cheerleaders and athletes. … I was a typical artistic introvert kid, but the art classroom was where I really shone and that’s where I developed my closest friendships.”
Art Tonic, the artistic community-building business Martino directs with fellow artist Julie Bernadeth Crumb, who functions as the company’s project coordinator, helps artists find community and locate spaces for their projects. The company previously collaborated with London artist Joshua Sofaer on a project called River Crossing: I Want to Communicate with You, which used maritime flags to spell out two people (one from Sacramento and one from West Sacramento) nominated by members of the community.
“Thinking about what I really love about art, it always comes back to the positive experience of making art with others, helping other people make their artwork and bringing people together to make art together,” Martino says.
After a scholastic career that saw her earning three art degrees, Martino realized there’s no place of employment for the position of “artist.” In her career following graduation from UC Davis, she focused on painting and ceramics, but eventually found herself trying to solve a problem every artist faces.
“Originally, I just wanted to solve the mystery of selling artwork,” she says. “How do you make money from your art? Who’s buying art beyond super rich collectors? What makes people buy art?”
In hopes of answering some of these questions, Martino enrolled in a startup accelerator through Hacker Lab in Sacramento. With the notion that she might open an art advertising service or a gallery, the lessons learned informed her motivation to create Art Tonic.
Through the startup accelerator, Martino interviewed people who owned art to learn how and why they had it. Most results were that the art was a gift, an inheritance or the product of the buyer connecting with the artist.
“I learned through those interviews that people buy art that they feel some sort of personal connection to,” she says. “It was never like, ‘Oh, I just saw this at a gallery and just bought it.’ That was very rare. So how can I get more people to connect with artists? I started doing panel discussions with artists, just to get more people to learn about what artists were here in Sacramento.”
Now, Martino says Art Tonic focuses on two main functions: community-engaged public art, as well as artist professional development and business support. On their Instagram feed, the organization regularly posts about upcoming workshops to help artists develop a pathway to success including grant writing and becoming more business oriented. She says a big part of an artist’s success comes from becoming familiar with the business side of things, self advocating and reading contracts before they’re signed.
“You don’t learn this stuff in school,” Martino says. “Our model for artist support is connecting artists to each other and facilitating the sharing of resources among each other. I think that’s the only way forward, because there’s no one path to just being a successful artist.”