● Program Overview

Professional Development

Build the career infrastructure your art practice deserves.

Most artists are never taught the unsexy-but-essential side of a creative life: how to find funding, navigate galleries, pursue residencies, or turn your practice into something sustainable. This bi-weekly course fills that gap — giving you the tools, networks, and real-world knowledge to move through the art world with confidence. From grants and teaching positions to licensing, museum exhibitions, and alternative curatorial paths, you'll leave with a clear-eyed roadmap and the connections to walk it.

● Program Overview

What You’ll Learn

  • How to identify and pursue funding opportunities (grants, residencies, fellowships)

  • How galleries, institutions, and alternative spaces operate—and how artists enter into them

  • Ways to sustain a practice across multiple income streams

  • How to position your work for exhibitions, teaching opportunities, and collaborations

  • How to write about your work (statements, proposals, applications)

  • How to build professional relationships that support your practice over time

  • Practical tools for navigating the art world with more clarity

Enroll Now

Program Structure

Meets every other Tuesday and unfolds across alternating lecture and workshop sessions.

Each month centers on a single topic, introduced through a lecture and then developed in a workshop where participants apply the material to their own practice and share work with peers.

Lectures are recorded and available to view at your own pace; workshops are not recorded.

● Program Overview

Meet the Instructor

Lexa Walsh

ARTIST, CULTURAL WORKER & eXPERIENCE MAKER

With a background in both sculpture and social practice, Walsh makes site specific projects, exhibitions, publications and objects, using an array of materials and employing social engagement, institutional critique, and radical hospitality. She creates platforms for interaction across hierarchies, representing multiple voices and inventing new ways of belonging. Walsh has exhibited and performed internationally for over 25 years at institutions large and small, and in public spaces.

Walsh is a graduate of Portland State University’s Art & Social Practice MFA program and holds a BFA in Ceramics from California College of Arts and Crafts. She was Social Practice Artist in Residence in Portland Art Museum’s Education department, received the CEC Artslink Award, the Gunk Grant, the de Young Artist Fellowship, and Kala’s Print Public Award. She has twice received Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Award, Walsh has participated in projects, exhibitions and performances at Apexart, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Cité de la Musique, the de Young Museum, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Exploratorium, Federal Hall NYC, For-Site, Kala Art Institute, Mills College Art Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Oakland Museum of California, NIAD, Portland Art Museum, SFMOMA,  Smack Mellon, Shelter Gallery, Taipei Artist Village, Walker Art Center, Williams College Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Zero Art Fair. She has done several international artist residencies, tours and projects.

● Program Overview

  • TAAS is for artists, curators, makers, and doers at every stage of their artistic life. Many of our members already have undergraduate or graduate art degrees. We believe strongly that this mixed-level experience is an incredible opportunity.

  • The uniqueness of TAAS is that our instructors are often working artists and curators with complex schedules, therefore you’ll see amazing artists come, go and return from quarter to quarter.

  • TAAS is not accredited — intentionally. We believe the most valuable art education happens in dialogue with working artists and curators, not through institutional checkboxes.

  • TAAS operates on Zoom embedded in a networking software that operates as our digital campus. The platform includes a variety of messaging options, profile pages for artists to represent themselves and their work, and clubs in which they can host break-out sessions outside of classes.

  • The Alternative Art School uses Mighty Networks as our online campus and platform. This media-based learning environment allows artists to collaborate, upload their work, and share across vast distances.

  • TAAS is an online school and students need access to a dependable wifi network and a desktop or laptop computer with a working webcam and microphone. Some students find Direct Ethernet cables helpful to boost connectivity if their wifi networks are unstable.

  • While TAAS is not a non-profit, we have a fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, that accepts donations on our behalf and offers a tax-deduction for all donations. We certainly encourage those with means and a big heart to support this initiative (see “Support” tab to donate.)

Frequently Asked Questions