Artistry Community, Part 1 – Built on Care, Facing a Crossroads

How one small idea sparked a movement — now facing challenges that could change everything.

"Breaking the brush."

In Korea, when a writer or an artist decides to stop telling their story or quits their creative work for some reason, people often say, “They broke their brush.”
So, when does this happen? Excluding cases caused by political oppression or external pressure, in most cases, the reason is simple—financial hardship. And I’ve personally seen this happen many times.

I remember reading an article in Korea about a poor artist who suddenly passed away. The life insurance he could receive was less than the legal minimum wage. I don’t know how much has changed since then, and to be honest, I’m skeptical. The fact that artists are left unprotected in the blind spots of the insurance system is often mentioned, yet no one really takes active steps to address it. Why is that?

"Why did you start this organization?"

I had many artist friends back in Korea, as I majored in fine arts and also studied art history. For a time, I worked in a related field, which allowed me to become closely connected to the local art community. I’ve seen many of them “break their brushes”—each with a heartbreaking story. I constantly thought: Isn’t there a way to help them earn more and continue their work? (The artists we, Artistry Community, support are not the so-called "celebrity" artists)

That was around the time I moved to Canada, where I encountered a different kind of challenge.
I first settled and studied in London, Ontario, which is the fifth-largest city in Canada. Not too far from Toronto, it has everything one needs—but to me, the biggest hurdle in life was the lack of access to artistic experiences.

Opportunities to indulge in rich art exhibitions or gallery tours seemed only available in Toronto, and even then, unless you actively searched for them, it was hard to find out what was happening and where. To me, Toronto felt like a distant cultural league of its own—difficult to reach and even harder to access.

After finishing my studies and moving to Toronto to find work, I was briefly filled with joy—only to realize how hard it was to land a job in the field I truly wanted.
Even though I kept getting rejected in the third or fourth rounds of interviews, I was still grateful. I found myself, like a fish in water, diving into everything I had always wanted to try. Of course, job hunting is practically a full-time job in itself. I never had the luxury of pouring 100% of my time into preparing for interviews or polishing my portfolio. I had to toss aside polished English or elegant interview expressions.

One of the projects I passionately poured myself into during that time was what is now called Artistry Community.

How did you build the team?

Even after I got hired at a small company and continued running my design studio as a freelancer, I never let go of the Artistry Community project.

After completing the initial user research and UI design using Figma, I reached out to a Korean developer community in Canada through a group chat and pitched the project via Zoom. I asked anyone who was interested in “making this project a reality” to contact me. That’s how I gathered six developers.

Through Google Forms, I asked about their desired roles (frontend/backend), how long they could commit, and what they hoped to gain from the project. And so, our project officially began on July 23, 2023.

Contrary to my expectations, aside from one founding member, our core team—myself as the designer and marketing lead, and six developers (along with a few short-term members who joined along the way)—continued the project for over two years, holding weekly regular Friday meetings and many times sudden meetings.

Wow, I think it’s amazing that we’ve been together for over two years. Honestly, I know I’ve truly cared for every member of our team, and I believe that care has been a great source of strength for us. I plan to write about this in the future.

Our purpose was to build this project together and learn as a team. Despite being students or working professionals, we’ve done well, staying together for a long time.

Project Launch and Team Disbanding

But now, as I write this, I have to share that right after our platform launched, almost all team members—except myself and the team lead—have now left.

A wave of issues, both expected and unexpected, surfaced around the time of our first online exhibition launch. Some problems came from places we never anticipated, while others were issues we had brushed off for too long, thinking they weren’t serious.

After all the effort put into marketing, recruiting artists, and developing the platform, technical issues began to surface immediately on launch day. In fact, we had to postpone the launch by two days from the originally scheduled Friday release. I sincerely regret any inconvenience this caused to the participating artists; unfortunately, some issues remain unresolved. For example, during the data retrieval process, the artists’ videos and artwork titles are not loading correctly. My apologies to Michael and Nina for this issue.

With the disbanding of the team and the accumulation of fatigue, I haven’t been able to make any real progress in the past two weeks.

For the first time, I’ve found myself questioning whether something I am so passionate about is also something I can truly do well.
What will happen to our team now?
What began with a pure desire to support artists now feels like it's demanding a cold, business-minded approach.

Will there be someone out there who’s still willing to join us with that same pure intent?
Still, I plan to start again this week. I believe I must repay the trust of the artists who believed in us and joined the exhibition in some way, shape, or form.

I want to share this journey of restarting as openly as I can.
And I plan to revisit and document our entire project journey from the beginning.
For someone out there, that process might become a valuable insight.

📌 If you have any questions about our team or if you’re interested in collaborating with us or supporting our online exhibition platform, please don’t hesitate to reach out anytime. You can contact us at hello@artistrycommunity.com. Also, feel free to follow and message me on my personal Instagram @say.juna or our community account @artistry_community. We’d love to hear from you!