Inkodye Printing System

Lumi is a new DIY alternative to screen printing. The process works on cotton, linen, silk, rayon, canvas, and any other natural & absorbent fiber. Once finished, your print is permanent and can be machine washed without fading. Link.

Fair? Jealousy? Typical

One of the more irritating aspects of working in the visual arts in one particular divide I straddle.  My host institution (a fine art university) bases its curriculum on the professional exhibiting artist (and not the artist who sells work). I often feel that the language and practices of my colleagues in my academic/conceptual world betray a consideration of artists who sell as "second class."

There is that concept of "selling out," and there seems to be a distain for the market as opposed to the curator and/or critic. Perhaps I have a chip, or something larger, on my shoulder because I had to sell to pay my bills. In fact, I could not afford to work on anything that was unlikely to sell and doing so kept me from having to do any kind of work extraneous to my creative practice.

And then there is that capacity for our kind to turn viciously on success — to tear down those who earn considerable financial reward. All these things had me shaking my head over this article (on The Daily Beast) about a backlash against Bansky.

“Plenty of artists are very envious of his success as a commercial artist because at the end of the day that’s what he’s become: he’s a brand, he’s a corporation, he’s a commodity,” says music and television producer Sacha Jenkins. Jenkins is currently curating a history of graffiti called Write of Passage in New York City and says the “writing” community is unhappy with Banksy being portrayed as one of them, calling his popular depiction as a graffiti artist a misrepresentation of the art form and culture, which is strictly letters. Graffiti writers also “resent that he has the ability to do whatever he wants -- his finances afford him the ability to skip around the world and generate his art and if he gets caught he’s just going to get a slap on the wrist.”

Some are frustrated that an Englishman has waltzed into New York, considered by many the birthplace of graffiti, to wild fanfare, while true graffiti artists struggle to get by. But their main gripe is the stencil-welding spray painter is not actually part of the graffiti world. Some in the community have taken to tagging over his work, sometimes out of anger and jealousy.

Are you a Loner?

Being good at drawing or painting is what we think it takes to be a successful artist. In fact, besides being good at composition, colour theory and technique, a successful visual artist (however you define successful) must have:

• Some basic financial security to underwrite your development
• A specialized space to work (temporarily or permanently)
• Great photography skills and access to specialized equipment
• Excellent writing skills for:
• Artist statements
• Appeals and negotiations with gatekeepers
• Marketing
• Communications
• Compelling oral communication (and public speaking) skills for dealing with gatekeepers, public programs, marketing, sales and self-promotion
• Administrative skills and an orientation to detail for:
• Inventory recording/record keeping
• Bookkeeping
• Graphic design skills for branding, advertising and packaging
• Decent time management skills

There are many artists selling successfully who are not skilled at composition, colour theory or technique; conversely, there are many highly skilled artists selling no—or very little—work, and there are artists are every point along the continuum. Being a “professional” visual artist means that you have to have to be good at all of the skills listed above or you must trade or buy the skills and services you lack.

I often feel that the greatest obstacles we face are ourselves; too many of us thing that we can do all it takes to be successful on our own. Few people can. I have a lot of the skills listed above, but when it comes to applying them to my own career and work, I can’t do it.

I have a show opening in April 2013 in Vancouver. I have hired five professionals to provide essential services, I have two other professionals donating their accomplished services for two modest components of my show and I am paying an honorarium to a friend for services way beyond the value of her reimbursement. I also have several skilled volunteers helping me. I am doing what I do best and by involving colleagues I am bringing excellence to every aspect of the project.

Few emerging artists can afford what I am doing and the irony is that they need the professional skills more than an experienced person like me. So what can an emerging artist do? To me, the answer is obvious.

You become an active part of a community of artists (in the real world and or online). The key word in that last sentence is “active.” CARFAC, artist run centres, visual art collectives, arts councils, sales/marketing collectives, etc.—these are valuable assets for visual artists. Each one of them can provide you with access to peers and from their human resources you can create a community for yourself from whom to learn and with whom to network. Don’t try to be it and do it all. Join a visual arts organization and get involved. Help them; help yourself.

Don't Be An Artist

Do you, or have you ever, called yourself “an artist?” This title, which I once coveted, is now anathema to me.

I remember when I was young wanting so very badly to be able to say legitimately that I was an artist because I thought it was the supreme profession. Nothing, I thought, could fill me with greater pride than to be an artist. But things started happening to me to deter my ambition early in my education.

My problem was academics. I was reasonably good at them—particularly with sciences—and so everyone around me, my teachers, family and friends, encouraged my academic advancement. A practical benefit of my academic success was scholarships that served to make my post-secondary education affordable, but they also forced me into an academic track increasingly focused on the sciences.

As an undergraduate college student, academic success seemed to create increasing limitations. The more I succeeded, the narrower my world seemed to become. I found myself in smaller classes, exposed to fewer students and my courses became more and more focused on biology. The trouble for me was that my success was unfulfilling.

Academic success seemed to me, as an undergrad, to be involved with nothing more than memorization and regurgitation. The quantification of learning into marks and the pressure of the competitive academic hierarchy created an unwelcome atmosphere; I craved the ambiguity and freedom of the creative courses that had disappeared from my life as a scholar. I wanted to be “an artist.”

My discontent was my secret. Everyone around me was so pleased with what I was doing I felt that I could not express my frustration. But at the end of my third year at college, I was forced to declare my dissatisfaction: I turned down an opportunity to be semi fast-tracked into a pre-med program. For the first time, out loud, I said I wanted to become an artist. The effect was as though I had said I wanted to become a cannibal.

Anyone can memorize, I thought. Anyone that had academic potential, it seemed to me at the time, could be a doctor or a lawyer if they were prepared to work hard, but being creative seemed to me to be about the nurturing of a “gift.” Learning could enhance creativity, I thought, but it could not be academically induced. I craved the opportunity to test myself in a creative environment instead of academics—creative success, I knew, would fulfill me.

Now, a career later, I teach business skills to artists at Emily Carr University and every term, in every class, I can be heard saying: “Do NOT be an artist.” (I love using what I call “the provocative tense” when I teach.)

So how have I come to abhor the title that once so inspired me? The answer is simple. The word “artist” has no meaning as a professional identifier. It is an insulting answer because it tells the asker nothing.

Research says the majority of sales by local contemporary artists are to people with whom the artist has a relationship, so visual artists with aspirations must make the absolute most of every single opportunity to establish or to further a relationship, and the question, “What do you do” affords visual artists with the opportunity to do just that. But if you answer, “I am an artist,” what is the listener to conclude? You are a dancer? A writer? An actor?

A person who is truly interested in you, a person who may become a customer, a fan or a word-of-mouth advertiser for you, learns nothing from the statement, “I am an artist;” the person is forced to ask, “What kind of artist?” Even the term, “visual artist” is lacking in enough specificity. The question, “What do you do?” is an opportunity that you should maximize. Your answer to this question should be a thoughtful and carefully crafted one.

The better answer is one that helps the asker learn more precisely about what you do. I am not advocating that you respond with a virtual advertisement or that you bore your interlocutor with too much information. What I advocate is that all visual artists have a thoughtful, meaningful answer. Consider, for example, these responses:

• I am a (master) printmaker
• I am a creative self-employed professional
• I am a watercolour landscape artist
• I am an artist that, according to the Leadington Star, is a “national treasure”
• I am a wildlife photographer with a fine artist sensibility
• I am a contemporary impressionist
• I am a fine art painter and I teach technique

All these responses to the question, “What do you do,” are from my students after they have discussed the importance of a life-long professional identity. Every one of these examples is from a visual artist who, prior to our discussion, self-identified as simply “an artist.”

The issue here, is your professional identity; your “brand.” What you call yourself is a vital business decision worthy of thoughtful reflection. Your professional identity should help people understand exactly what you do. If you say, simply, that you are “an artist,” you are throwing away an opportunity.

Every time you introduce yourself to an individual, to a group, to a jury, a curator, a customer or a potential customer you have an opportunity to impress and to inform and you should use it. My advice is to not identify yourself as “an artist,” but instead, to think of a self-descriptor that is more meaningful and engaging. Reward the person who expresses interest in you with a thoughtful answer.

Old Technologies

The object of professional communications for artists is to deepen or strengthen my relationships and a prime concern is to stand out. But whereas not so long ago it was the new technologies that were helping us to achieve these objectives, now I find it easier to stand out and warm hearts with telephone calls and hand-written and drawn notes.

Since reverting to these old forms of corresponding—particularly to important clients/customers/friends—I have been deluged with comments of appreciation and it pleases me enormously to know that my extra efforts are appreciated.

Today, the unsolicited correspondence that fills up your email inboxes are “junk” to some, valued reading to others; and they no longer only come from corporations. Now everyone is creating promotional communications, advertising their lives and activities via Flickr streams, blogs, newsletters and via social media. Consequently, it is hard to stand out, and hence my reversion to old communications practices to achieve that end.

Franke James Vs Prime Minister

She calls it her “blacklisting dilemma." As she tells it, it is a David and Goliath story; her versus the Canadian government. She feels her government is angry with her, but can that be? Can a government be angry with one of its citizens? No, it can’t. Only people get angry, so who is angry with artist Franke James?

Ms James lives in Toronto. She is a prolific and eclectic creator who has a concern for the challenges facing our environment. She has a Masters degree in Fine Arts and she is an active member of several professional artistic associations. Recently, Nektarina, a non-profit Croation organization purchased a series of images by Ms James that they planned to assemble as an exhibition and use as a basis for youth workshops on the environment. They successfully earned the exhibition a sponsor who pledged $75,000 to finance a tour of the exhibition and workshops to other countries.

Ms James sought Canadian government support for aspects of the project, and Nektarina sought support from several Canadian missions in the countries proposed for the tour, and from this point on, things get complicated, but the end result is that the tour is now in jeopardy. The corporate sponsor withdrew their donation and the Canadian missions in the countries proposed for the tour declined to support it.

Ms James believes firmly that all the misfortune that has befallen the project is because our government is angry with her for publishing her visual essay: “Dear Prime Minister, Why are you making us choose between the economy and the environment?” She believes that the Conservative government is angry about her graphic attacks directed against our Prime Minister and that he, in vengeance, engineered the undoing of the project.  

If you go to her website, www.frankejames.com, you can read far more about this incident than I can write here, plus you can see samples of her work. I went to the site, read her posts and several of the articles she generated, and looked at samples of her work, and it left me with the impression that Ms James is a graphic editorialist. I say this because of the style of her work and because of the primary role of text in her imagery (and its subjects, tone and language). Consequently, I am not surprised that her work evokes response; a response is what she seeks. A response is what makes work like hers powerful and effective.

A government, however, should not allow their response to motivate petty acts of vengeance in their mission cultural programming and funding—and that is what Ms James claims our federal government is doing.

But here’s the deal: I would neither know of Ms James nor her work had the Harper government and its missions funded the Nektarina project. All the considerable press referenced on her website is publicity she generated and none of it could have happened without the government persecution she is reporting.  

The government may have acted immorally and unconscionably with regards to Ms James and the Nektarina project. And that is a sad thing for Canadian artists to ponder, but lets look at how cleverly Ms James has turned her disadvantage to an advantage.

She has created scores of thousands of dollars worth of publicity for herself and considerably advanced public awareness of her name. Further, she has put herself in public consciousness as a creative environmental voice and that may open many new doors for her. She has advanced her “brand awareness” beyond the capacity of most artists I know and for a contemporary Canadian visual artist, national exposure can be more meaningful than sales.

Ms James is a sincere person who is passionate about the environment. She did not create this situation and it angered her. Perhaps subconsciously, however, she has achieved something many artists would envy (though not, perhaps her innocent methodology). She is now a fairly widely known and much discussed contemporary Canadian visual artist. There’s a lot to be learned from a careful consideration of Ms James’s story of her project with Nektarina. What that story is, is all in how you look at it.

Why Do Artist Websites Suck So Much?

The title of this post was taken of Andrew Sullivan's blog today (more on that later). Jesse Ford, the creative director of a New-York based design firm, feels much as the same as the programmer Andrew quotes. Here's a quote from Ford (who is focusing his firm's marketing on artists):

“As an artist myself, I am very upset by the uniformly poor quality of art on the internet”, said Josse Ford, Creative Director at BWA. “ Artists invest huge amounts of time and energy in their work and they need to take much more care in how they display it. This is particularly true now because more and more galleries and collectors are looking to the worldwide web in selecting and reviewing art purchases. Our aim at Beautiful Websites For Artists is to showcase each artist’s work as if it was in a museum or high-end commercial gallery.”

While many good artist websites do exist, the sad fact is that most art is displayed on websites that look cheap and folksy or are so generic that none of the personality of the artist shines through. “Beautiful Websites For Artists” addresses this need by providing cost-effective website design and consulting services specifically geared to the needs of artists.

“Arts professionals want to see that the art looks great, but they also want to get a feel for who the artist is,” commented Daniel Tardent, responsible for new business at BWA. “A well executed website will never replace a physical meeting with a collector, but it can be the key factor that sets the meeting up – and the value of that is priceless. You just can’t get that from any old designer – they have to understand artists and the art industry”

The text on the grey background, below, is taken from Andrew Sullivan's wonderful, award-winning, widely-red blog, The Dish. I am a huge fan of this ex-Brit who now lives in the USA. This is one person's point of view about artist websites, but an interesting one!

From my perspective, as a web programmer, if you really want to see some reliably lousy websites, then look no further than those that artists (painters, sculptors and the like) put up for themselves. They may not have the "discoey" music gaudiness of some restaurant websites, but as far as everything one shouldn't do when making a website goes, they hit all the major notes:

Using a 10 different fonts on one web page? Check.

Having a bunch of broken links on the front page? Check.

Gaudy color schemes (you know, because the website is an "extension of their work")? Check.

Uploading image files that are way too large, thereby causing any visitor to the website to have to wait ten minutes for a page to come up because each work sample is 4 megabytes? Check.

Updating the website once every six years? Check.

Putting their personal Hotmail address on the front page of the website, thereby contributing to the world-wide junk mail scourge (and not to mention making themselves look like a hack)? Check.

Forgetting to pay their web hosting fees, so that half the time their website is "down for maintenance"? Check.

Oh, and this might be the worst ... taking their visitors' emails and including them in large, un-blind-copied show announcement emails? Great big check.

The list goes on, but aside from the bad aesthetic and bad internet manners, they're lousy as customers - a lot of micro-managing, obsessive-compulsive attention to every unimportant detail (I had a woman once call me and complain that a line break was 2 millimeters lower than where it should have been ... she was holding a ruler up to her computer screen), fickleness, and of course the lack of ability to pay for any of the work they've just demanded too much of your time for.

I learned these lessons long ago and don't service many artists anymore. Unless they pay in advance and have a day job.