Artist & community innovator, Ingrid Thomas establishes www.gippslandartists.com

Ingrid Thomas thinks like Pigs Will Fly – she has seen a need in her community and she is doing something about it, for a minimal fee to cover costs.

A Gippsland Artist, Ingrid has had a career in teaching and studied Graphic Art and Information Technology at a tertiary level. She has been down the road of lugging all her ‘stuff’ to exhibitions and recognised that it’s hard for solo artists in Gippsland.

After mulling things over for some time, realising that a single web page is pretty useless on its own, she came up with the idea of linking the many talented Gippsland artists and presenting their current work to a wider audience via www.gippslandartists.com.

Web designer husband Steve has set up the site which provides a free ‘basic’ web-page or link to an existing web-page. Additional pages can be requested and pages can easily be updated for a small fee if works are sold and new works are to be added.

Featured Artists pay $50 pa and appear on a random basis in the header of each page. New artists are always welcome!

The greatest hurdle Ingrid has faced is ‘getting the idea out there’. La Trobe City’s Arts and Culture Officer has enthusiastically emailed all the artists on her list and well-known Gippsland artist Gary Miles is happy to be involved to support her project.

Ingrid did approach Regional Arts Victoria but the thought of going through the grant process and the obligatory report writing on ‘outcomes’ was a turnoff after so many years teaching. She is taking things quietly, allowing momentum to develop, a believer in ‘word of mouth promotion’ and happy to ‘give something back to the community’.