Posts tagged artist

Jacks Are Wild

2013 Accomplishments

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Last year, for the first time, I made a list of my accomplishments in 2012 — followed by a later posting of goals for 2013. I kept better track of my time than I had before — and both used my goals and, for some items, ignored them when they didn’t suit me. (I’m allowed.)

2013 was a big year for me — I sold three of the six pieces that I made — and I finally broke into the sunshine at the International Quilt Festival/Houston by winning a blue ribbon in my category. I made a lot of new friends — and lost one just before Christmas to breast cancer.

It was a year of highs and lows — but I’m still here — I’m still kicking — still creating — and I hope to share a lot more in 2014.

The BowlJudgments

The Bowl Judgments

– Made spreadsheet of goals with a timesheet.

– Printed two years of blog posts into books (1997 & 1998).

– Developed seminar on choosing fabrics creatively (delivered to my Fiber Art Fusion group in February).

– Accepted into Sacred Threads in Herndon, VA (The Bowl Judgments, Beach Guardians).

– Published in book Sacred Threads Exhibition 2013 (The Bowl Judgments, Beach Guardians).

– Piece published in Machine Quilting Unlimited article about Sacred Threads (Beach Guardians).

– Piece published in Martha Sielman’s book Art Quilt Portfolio: People & Portraits (Celtic Woman).

– Juried into invitational Sacred Threads-Omaha in Omaha, NE (The Bowl Judgments, Beach Guardians).

– Accepted into International Quilt Festival special exhibit It’s Raining Cats & Dogs (Firecracker).

– Accepted into Internal Quilt Festival/Houston World of Beauty (Lincoln, The White Raven).

– Won first place at IQF/Houston in the People, Portraits, & Figures category (Lincoln).

Firecracker sm

Firecracker

– Accepted into the La Conner International Quilt & Fiber Arts Show in La Conner, WA (Amelia Earhart).

– Won 1st place at the La Conner Quilt & Fiber Arts Show (Amelia Earhart).

– Sold The Bowl Judgments to a private collector.

– Sold Firecracker to a private collector.

– Sold The White Raven to the International Quilt Festival collection.

– Created 5 portraits and 1 abstract. Original goal 6 portraits. Currently halfway through a family portrait.

– Entered Art Quilts XIX (was not accepted).

– Exhibited at East Cobb Quilt Guild Show (Beach Guardians).

The White Raven

The White Raven

– Won 2nd Place in the Original Design category at the East Cobb Quilt Guild Show (Beach Guardians).

– Accepted into Georgia Artists show at the Abernathy Arts Center (Lincoln).

– Participated in SEFAA’s Fiber ARTlanta show (Bukonyan Elder).

– Accepted as an artist at ArtsyShark.com and was featured on their website July 1st.

– Increased Facebook fans from 23 to 77 (goal was 46).

– Designed new labels to use on the Mac.

– Designed & printed new business cards.

– Designed thank you cards with Lincoln. These were used to thank all of the IQF/Houston sponsors.

– Updated FaceBook banner with new work.

– Updated the menus on my website by moving older work to the back and grouping portrait and abstract work into new galleries.

Jacks Are Wild

Jacks Are Wild

– Started tweeting articles of interest to fellow Creatives.

– Started a weekly blog post of my tweets called Tweek!

– Tweeted 183 times during the year (although 46 of them were made during my time in Houston).

– Made 254 posts on my FaceBook page and met my goal of posting 3 times per week 85% of the time.

– Made 42 blog posts on my website and met my goal of posting at least 1 blog post per week 65% of the time.

– Spent 455 hours in my studio, 55 hours on my website, and 53 hours doing other administrative things related to my work (like entering shows, shipping, shopping).

– Updated my website for each of my new pieces.

– Added Buy Now buttons (with links to PayPal) to all of the pages of pieces for sale.

– Updated my artist resume.

– Maintained a regular log to account for my time in the studio, on my website, & other administrative tasks related to my art.

It's All Relative

It’s All Relative

– Reached my pre-pregnancy goal weight (took me 17 years but I got there!)

– Continued to take hundreds of sports pictures and share them through DropBox.

– Curated the Fiber Art Fusion exhibit It’s All In The Cards with Rebecca Reasons-Edwards which showed at both The Art Place in Marietta and the SEFAA Center in Atlanta.

– Grappled with my hosting service to move the website from a legacy server to the grid. (I should get a medal for this one. GoDaddy just let my site crash and never notified me that I needed to move to newer technology. I now plan to call them annually to discuss the health of the server on which my site resides.)

– Played role of year round lacrosse and choir mom.

– As of 12/27/13, there were 13,483 views on my website, an increase of just under 6% from the previous year.

– I started my Twitter account with no followers and currently have 21 (small — but it’s growing every day!)

Golden Moment

Golden Moment

– From August through December, donated over 100 hours in a start-up company.

And then there were some things on my list that I just didn’t do. I saw them there — and I either didn’t enjoy what I had started — or I didn’t feel motivated to do it at all.

– Complete draft of book on textile portraits. I may still do this — it’s just not at the forefront of my mind right now. I’ve also been asked to teach classes. The truth of the matter is that these are big projects — and doing them would take away from studio time.

– Create email/snail mail list. I see this in practically every article I read about art marketing. Maybe I’m lazy but I struggle with keeping up with the blog and Twitter. I don’t have an interest in making a newsletter right now.

– Participate in SEFAA Square Foot Fiber Art Pin Up Show & the Abernathy Art Center Pin Up Show.  These are shows that ask for 12″ or smaller pieces — which is not what I typically do. It’s hard for me to pry myself from one of my larger projects to work on smaller ones. I tend to work on one project at a time and don’t start the next one until I’m finished with the one I’m working on.

– Visit at least 12 galleries in Roswell & write a blog review (only did this in January and February). This sounded like a great idea at the time. It was my desire to spread my wings and prepare material for my blog other than my own studio work — but the truth of the matter is that I work in a vacuum. Leaving the house changes the creative dynamic for me, and when I get wrapped up in a project, I like to concentrate on it to the exclusion of other things. I did find a different outlet by sharing articles about art on my Twitter account and then summarizing them each week on the blog in a Tweek!

– Make 2 small pieces a month & list small pieces for sale at ArtFire.com or ArtfulHome.com. This was (and is) a great idea — but as I’ve said, I tend to work on a larger scale. There is something to be said for creating smaller pieces — they are infinitely more marketable and more likely to sell (particularly in the current economy). However, to be smaller, they also need to be simpler — most of the pieces that I find engaging and develop into fuller projects are complex — and I find that more interesting.

I did spend the year with a focus on marketable pieces. I stopped working on people (with the exception of The Bowl Judgments — although you could argue that the angel falls into a category of her own). Many people will see a portrait of a person and say something like “one day I’d like you to do a piece of my grand-children” — but moving that into an actual sale is extremely difficult. Animals have much broader appeal as subjects than people. Anyone that has had a bull-dog will see artwork of a bull-dog and want it.

And although I sold three pieces — which I think confirms my theory about the marketability of certain subject matter — I have to acknowledge that the blue ribbon of Lincoln tells me that there is still room to work on portraits of people — as long as the subject is carefully chosen.

I won’t say that my end goal is to sell all of my work — I think I make my work for me — but it is nice to have a way to cover your expenses and have something left over to contribute to your family.

Good-bye 2013 — it’s been a hell of ride!

Designing Business Cards for Artists

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As I’ve mentioned, I have a couple of openings coming up soon, and one of the goals that I listed for this  year was to produce new business cards. I had made some a couple of years ago — printed them on my inkjet printer using tear-able sheets — and comparing them to the professional ones that several artists have given me & I’ve saved for posterity — they are truly tear-able / terrible.

With literally a week to go, I needed to come up with something fast. I had been toying with the idea of using a non-standard size. I googled best cards for artists and came up with oodles of original ideas. The biggest take away from that was that one of the easiest ways to make your card stand out was to either make it a different size from a standard card — or make it out of non-standard materials. Knowing the enormous amount of time that could go into making cards out of fabric — like mini Artist Trading Cards — I decided that the mini-moo’s were probably the best way to go with my limited time table.

The mini moo’s are from moo.com — they are half the size of a typical business card (in length). I debated using someone local — but in the end, I was able to design a card using their template in a short amount of time, upload it, and still get them back quickly.

I knew that one side would have my information. I debated adding a QR code — I had actually convinced someone else to use one recently & researched how to make one — but it just didn’t make sense in terms of size on the mini-moo.

The other side would essentially be part of my brand — so I had to think carefully about what I would use. It would stand for my work as a whole — but it had to be small enough to look good on a mini-moo.
Minicard MockupIn the end, I went with a small closeup shot from a piece I made a few months ago — an eyeball. I am fairly proud of this eyeball — I love the color and it gives you an idea of the depth that I put into my pieces while still being small enough to fit on the card. I did end up trimming the sides with black to even it up with the template and help make the picture pop.

I’ll concede that I also used an eyeball on my last business cards. The majority of my work in the last few years has been portraits so it makes sense to me to use an eyeball. A full portrait would not have stood out on a mini-moo — the eyeball seems just right.

Business Cards

I used rush printing but regular shipping. I was ordering on a Thursday & moo.com printed them on Friday & shipped them out. I received them, surprisingly, on Monday.

The picture is dark — but I expected that. Monitors use the RGB (red green blue) color model — and printers use CMYK (cyan magenta yellow key or black) — and my Photoshop Elements isn’t advanced enough for me to use professional printing standards. I still think it looks fine.

It is also matte. I wanted gloss — but that isn’t available with rush printing. C’est la vie. I still think they look professional.

Notice I used different fonts. I think that mixing fonts can be an effective way to draw the eye. The font for “textile paintings” is more drawn out than the one above it. My name at the top is in bold & in a larger font. The combination draws the eye to the name.

The email address & website are variations on the name so they’re in the same font as the name at the top. The phone number is in the same font as the subtitle “textile paintings” — I think it makes the numbers easier to read.

For a long time, I had “Fiber Artist” as my subtitle — both on my cards and on my website — but I’ve come to see that that is not as accurate a description as I should have. I work in fiber as a medium — and I am an artist — but my pieces have a strong relation to paintings and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. I am often told by people that glance at my pieces that they think that they ARE paintings. “Textile Paintings” describes my work better.

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