Distraction from California Art

If you are a follower of my blog or just know me, you are aware that I have a bit of a knitting hobby. Hmmm, that may be a bit understated. I have a bit of a knitting obsession. I am not just a knitter, I am a Knitter. Today was one of the most fun I’ve had with a paintbrush in a while. Painting yarn is the best way I know to combine 2 of my favorite activities (although i suppose I could knit with paintbrushes instead of needles).

One more to go – I think it will have a combo of 3 new colors of yarn. They have to dry so I can sign them and then take official portfolio photographs. Ahem. This is a serious art/business endeavor, you know!

C Words

Eighth in the series “Thoughtful Thursdays”

(yes a bit out of order – why WordPress didn’t publish this as scheduled is a mystery to me. Why I didn’t notice is perhaps because I was doing other things – I need people for this!)

Two of the most common ways to earn a living in art are consignment and commissions. They are not at all the same, but I am discussing them here in the same article because those two large “c” words are often confused.

Here are the definitions: consignment is an agreement to pay a supplier of goods after the goods are sold. A commission is an order or authorization for the production of a piece of art.

Consignment means that the artist provides the store or gallery with work that is not paid for until a sale is completed. The advantages to the artist are that she doesn’t lose control of her pricing and can reclaim her work if it is needed somewhere else. The disadvantage is that things can become shopworn, keeping track is added work, and sometimes it can be hard to collect one’s money.

Commissions are orders for custom work. This is a very important part of earning a living as an artist, especially in times when people are spending cautiously. The advantages to the artist is that she is almost guaranteed a happy customer, and there is a check waiting at the end of the job. Two disadvantages are that the artist isn’t freely creating from her own ideas and often there is a deadline. Occasionally a commission customer will say these magic words “You’re the professional!” or “No hurry”.

Since we are learning “c” words here, allow me to add one more: conversation. This word means an exchange of words, not orders and not money. Despite repeated experiences with this reality, my greatest talent still remains counting my chickens before they hatch.  For the first several years of my business, I got so excited when someone told me he’d like me to do a specific drawing for him. I was counting eggs, chickens and dollars, forgetting that until money exchanges hands and there are photographs on the table, it was simply CONVERSATION. It never hurts to remember those chats and even follow up with a phone call or an email. That is also part of the business of art.

Colors in Three Rivers sells some of my paintings on consignment.

A lady of great taste commissioned me to paint this apple.

A Co-op is Not a Coop

Ninth in the series “Thoughtful Thursdays”

What is a co-op? If the hyphen is eliminated, it could be mistaken for a pen of poultry! In this context,  “co-op” is an abbreviation of the word “cooperative” and means a joint venture or collaborative effort.

In an area of few galleries and other places for selling artwork, artists often combine their time, money and art to create their own gallery. Everything is shared – the space, the expenses, the “sitting”, and many many decisions.

It takes a tremendous effort and a bit of luck to put an effective co-op together. The participants need to share a vision, to have approximately the same level of professionalism, and most of all, to have a leader or two, depending on the size. In all groups, there will be those who work their fingers to the bone, those who coast and all sorts in between.

A shared vision has to be addressed before anything else. If some envision a cute store full of unique tchotchkes and others want spacious white walls hung with a few knockout pieces, there will be conflict. If some think it should be open to any and all artists while others believe a certain level of quality should be maintained, there will be conflict. If some never notice dust and spiderwebs while others develop a twitch each time something lands on the countertop, there will be conflict.

There are those who want all types of art, others who only want 2 dimensional pieces. Some think a mix of styles is preferable, others want only representational, and some think that abstract is the only true art.

Regardless of the decisions reached about style, a compatible level of professionalism is necessary for retail success. There can be endless discussions of “art versus craft”, and reaching agreements on quality can almost require Solomon-like wisdom. If some art is clearly made by hobbyists and other is made by highly skilled practitioners, the difference will confuse the customer.

Personalities can make or break a co-op. To combine a large number of opinions in an orderly fashion requires a strong leader with good organizational and delegational (not a word, but you know what I mean, right?) skills. There has to be lists of tasks, assignments, goals and accountability for completion. Meetings need to be kept on subject and participants need to be kept on task, or things result in chaos.

Co-ops tend to be a bit fluid as artists grow and change. With the right mix of artists sharing a vision, a co-operative gallery can be formed for a season, or it can last for years.

These are 2 co-ops I belonged to in the past 2 years. The top one is no longer active; the bottom one is still going, but with a new mix of members than when it began.

Painting in the Studio

It is cold out. Today I needed to do work in the studio and also paint (and run around, but that isn’t part of this story). My studio is a little office/gallery where I do paperwork, phone calls, packaging reproduction prints and cards, and, believe it or not, actually draw! When I began painting, it seemed prudent to keep that mess away from my drawings and paperwork. We have a workshop with lots of windows in the front half, and it is a fairly mess-proof place. That is not exactly right – it is full of messes, but it doesn’t matter. As I said, it is cold out, and it made sense to only heat one building. So, I did 5 miniature paintings because they seemed to be the least likely to create a mess.

These are 2×2″ – miniature, for sure! The purpose of these little poppies is to sell at Colors for the First Saturday of March. March 5, Three Rivers, to be specific. The theme is. . . POPPIES!  I know. duh.

What is Geotourism?

According the the web definition it is ” ‘best practice’ tourism that sustains or even enhances the geographical character of a place, such as its culture, environment, heritage and well being of the residents”. What does that have to do with cabinart? The National Geographic Society is making websites of maps for geotourism. Currently they are building the site for the Southern Sierra Nevada, and it includes Three Rivers. We who choose to participate are nominating ourselves to be on that map. This is a wonderful opportunity to market Three Rivers, to present our best self, and to show us to be irresistible to those who are planning to visit Sequoia. All the sites in Three Rivers are currently pending nominations, but they are visible if you go to the National Geotourism website. Click on the Main Map page, and when you mouse over the Three Rivers area, bubbles appear with a title, photo and description. (If it is too cluttery, use the sliding scale at the top to make it larger and more spread out.) I invite you to visit my site and if you like it, please give me a thumbs up. Thanks! Thanks a lot!

I thought it a fine example of my very regional oil paintings – showing off our river!

Three Kinds of Artists

Seventh in the series “Thoughtful Thursdays”

A simple way of categorizing artists is to divide the approaches to art into 3 varieties: those who make art for fun, those who make art as a secondary occupation, and those who earn a living from their art.

Those who make art for fun undoubtedly have it the easiest. Without thinking about what might sell or being bound to any one style, this type of artist is free to try any medium or technique. He can bounce from teacher to teacher, class to class, pottery to watercolor to drawing in any order. He can dabble at anything that strikes his fancy. Goals may be set, and even reached, but in the end, fun and self-expression seem to be the main purpose. Once I even had a drawing student tell me, “I don’t care much about art – I just want to meet women!”

Those who straddle the line between a day job and making art probably have it the hardest. To make quality art in enough quantity to sell takes an enormous amount of time, and it is very difficult to fit this into a week with a 40+ hour bite already missing.  There is a struggle while working a “real” job to focus on the task at hand while one’s mind is roaming the halls of Artland. I remember working in a dining hall at a camp and constantly being distracted by the deep golden brown color of a giant container of tea, or admiring the brilliant orange of grated carrots against the spring greens of lettuce. Needless to say, my co-workers thought I was a nut-job.

Engaging in art as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime is a highly rewarding approach to art-making. It takes a strong commitment, an unwavering resolution to never give up. When sales drop, galleries and shops close, students get old and no new ones come, long-term art shows fold, there is much to do besides make art. If sales don’t happen, there is no income! Art is a luxury item, not a necessity, and in the current economic atmosphere this fact is more evident than usual. Tulare County has higher unemployment, poverty and welfare dependence than much of the country even in good times. Despite that, it is possible to earn a living as a professional artist here. In upcoming articles, I will explain some of the avenues I have followed to make that dream a reality.

Wave Action, 10×8″, graphite, $100

Broken Sleeper

My sleeper is broken. In the olden days of my life, 9 hours a night was a requirement. For the last several years, I feel lucky to get 8. What does one do in the middle of the night if sleep won’t happen? I think, I pray, I plan, and sometimes I just give up. Library books, knitting, and the internet are all good quiet occupations for those wee hours. Looking at the art of those I admire is one way I try to not just veg-out, because it is a given that I will be fairly useless during the day after one of those super-early mornings. I hope that by looking at the art of the Big Boys and Girls, something helpful will get absorbed into my memory. These are the artists I am currently watching:

June Carey – I saw a piece (reproduction) by her at The Wooden Indian in Visalia and never forgot her light, the lay of the land, the subjects, the realism combined with impressionism, the brilliance of her colors. She paints orchards, vineyards, hillsides, all with purple shadows on the roads, high contrast, fuzzy edges, perfect proportions, a building or two, Italy, Sonoma (or is it Napa?) and has typos all over her incomplete web pages. Who cares when her paintings just stop me in my tracks? Maybe I should sell my car and buy one. . .

Morgan Wiestling – “First Dance” was my first vision of this man’s mind-blowing fabulousness. It was at Masters of the American West in 2008, and it almost made me flip over the handlebars because I stopped so suddenly. My hand had to mechanically reach up to close my mouth, because my jaw truly fell open in awe. I don’t know where he gets his material – maybe he hires models and stages his scenes a la Norman Rockwell. Maybe he finds old photos and recreates the scenes in color. Maybe he is just a freakin’ genius! His edges are a little blurry, the light is subtle, the colors are muted and yet everything almost looks photographic in its proportional perfection. No maybe about it – he must be a genius!

There is something both encouraging and discouraging about viewing work of this caliber. The negative side of my brain says “Give up, you Poser because you are already 51 years old and aren’t even 1/100th of the way of getting to where these folks are and besides, you quit school and didn’t even go to a real art college”. The positive side of my brain says “WOW oh WOW, I’m just sure if I keep painting the subjects I love that one day my work will grab people as this work grabs me”.

Perhaps instead of producing 100 paintings per year at a very low price, I should paint just 10 and price them at $6,000-10,000 each. What do you think??

Get real, Toots.

Doesn’t this look like something June Carey might choose to paint? maybe if it had a house or a barn. . .

I Love February

Because there are flowers in the yard and the flowering quince is coming soon.

Because it is green around the studio.

Because the daylight lasts longer, the sky is blue, and the cats don’t beg to stay in the house during the day.

Because Kaweah is waiting for me to go paint.

And although she prefers my lap, she is content directly underfoot while I stand to paint!

Hope I never squash her sweet little self!

Working from Photos

It isn’t popular in the artworld to admit that one works from photos. In fact, the closest you’ll get to reading that someone works from photos is “I use them for reference”. Brings to mind something Jack White, my painting inspiration/guru/mentor said – “All realistic painters either work from photos or they lie about it”. Me? I TOTALLY work from photos – if I just use them for reference, it is because the scene was so complicated that I just started making things up!

The other JB and I visited the Buckeye campground in Sequoia National Park over the weekend. There is a mellow little trail that leads to a picturesque footbridge over the main fork of the Kaweah River. (You can read about it in the  January 17 blog post.) When JB saw the view, she burst forth with the declaration, “If you paint that, I will buy it!” Being a hard-nosed business tycoon (snort, guffaw), I said, “Okay, I will show you some sketches first so you can see if you like it and after I paint it, I won’t hold you to buying it.” (Jack White would not be pleased with me for that!)

Here is the main view that JB was so taken with; you can barely see the bridge in the photo! This is why I will have to sketch things in advance of painting – how large can I make the bridge without distorting reality? How much rock, if any, in the foreground is actually necessary? Can I “grow” the river, because in our memories, it is The Main Event?

All these photos will be useful to create a small (“thumbnail” in Artspeak) sketch that will determine what size and where each part should be in proportion to the other parts. If I was carrying a backpack that day, a sketchbook would have been a helpful item. But I am a modern chick who uses a digital camera with tremendous gratitude for the technology.

Thinking About Facebook

A Thinking Place, 11×14″, colored pencil

In the fast-paced, always-changing high-tech world we occupy,  there are decisions that need to be made. By not making a decision, a decision is still made. (And some people think I just stand around painting all day, lah-lah-lah, happy little idyllic pastoral groovy life!?)

I’m trying to decide if Facebook is a good idea or a bad one in terms of business promotion. If you are on my email list, you received a request for your opinion on the subject. The number of responses was wonderful – honest, helpful, informative and abundant! And I was able to respond privately to everyone of you with real gratitude in my heart.

I love the personal and immediate nature of email. In snooping around Facebook (some of the pages are visible even without an account), it seems as if the nature of communication is quite shallow. Of course that could be due to the fact that the pages I saw are not private!

Here are some of my conclusions from the feedback you provided.

  1. The correct term is to “be on” Facebook, not to “use” it.
  2. I am an ICG, not a DBO, and the correct spelling is “Okie” because “oakie” is a little tree. ICG means “Ivanhoe Country Girl”.
  3. About half of you are on FB
  4. Most of you are on FB just to stay current with family, particularly newly grown children or grandchildren.
  5. The staying current consists of seeing photographs rather than having conversations.
  6. More women than men are on FB.
  7. They are not “sites”; they are “pages”. (It IS called “faceBOOK”)
  8. Very few have ever visited a business’s FB page; if so, it was for coupons and freebies.
  9. A business page has “fans”; a personal page has “friends”.
  10. There are many privacy options to be learned and used.
  11. If the page isn’t updated daily, people lose interest.
  12. Many of you offered the help of your sons, daughters, nieces and nephews, all of whom are quite good at this sort of stuff. I thank you!!
  13. A participant can quit any time. (like smoking or drinking??)