Happy New Year

Happy 2008! Now is the time for resolutions which for most of us won't last past the end of the month. However I figure if I put my resolutions for Noadi's Art up on this blog I can't avoid them or conveniently forget, because I'm sure someone will bring them back to haunt me.

I have two categories of resolutions, one for sculpting and one for the more business side of things.

Sculpting:

1. Finish more large sculptures. I had a grand total of 3 big sculptures that I finished this year, the Satyr, Odin's Runesong, and Lionfish Mermaid. Though I did 17 medium sculpts (baby rat, turtle, lots of perma-pets, etc.), and dozens of necklaces and ornaments. The small stuff is fun and it sells more often but they aren't really challenging. I currently have a pretty big stock of small stuff that I shouldn't need to make lots in the near future except some of those gargoyle couples I just started doing.
2. Improve my anatomy. Especially hands.
3. Try wax! I've never sculpted in wax and I'd love to give it a try.
4. Improve my workspace. Right now I have a tiny corner of the living room for sculpting and part of the unheated basement for airbrushing. I'm unlikely to get more physical space so I need to optimize what I have. Right now it's really jumbled without much storage aside from stacks of little plastic boxes and a book shelf behind my desk. Also I have that great new toaster oven and nowhere to put it.
5. And definitely get a better chair. My desk is too low to stand while sculpting and too high for my chair even at it's highest setting so I need a taller chair.

Business:

1. Sell more! (of course)
2. Do more art shows and festivals. I've not had much luck selling lots at shows but the experience I've had meeting and learning from other artists makes them so worth it.
3. Promote my sculpting more locally. Aside from the one tiny gallery I'm in and the two shows I did in 2007, I haven't done as much as I think I should to get my name out in my area. I know my work is a niche market so the internet will probably remain my main way of selling.
4. Blog more! I've already been writing more often but I really need to keep it up.

Ron Mueck

I've recently become slightly obsessed with Ron Mueck's just amazing lifelike sculpture. To make me an even bigger fan of his I found out on the wikipedia page about him that he used to work with Jim Henson and was one of the performers of Ludo in Labyrinth! I love that movie so much, I can practically recite every line.

If you aren't familiar with his work here are a few links:
Ron Mueck on Wikipedia

Images of his work

Video about his sculpting process
(150mb so slow connections be warned, however it's totally worth it)

One thing that has irritated me reading article about him is the big deal made about his lack of formal art training. As if working in the special effects field didn't give him loads of training? Since I also have virtually no art training it really annoys me the emphasis that is put on attending art school by many people. Now I'm sure art school is a great experience and students learn a lot (and if I could I'd love to take a few classes). However I feel like art is a field where there are so many possible paths you can take to become an artist that one of those paths shouldn't be given all the emphasis as the "right" way to do it.

Moore Art not as Successful as I Would have Liked

Well the Moore Art in the Park Festival was a complete bust, I didn't even make back the cost of my booth. It was really frustrating, not just for me but for all the artists, people just didn't seem to want to spend any money. My necklaces range from $20-$30 and even those didn't sell. There was a jewelry artist there too who had beautiful and very affordable work (as low as $10) and she told me she only made enough to cover her booth cost (which was $40). The lady with the booth next to me who had just gorgeous watercolors (and was very nice she kept me cheered up after the show when I was a little upset) only sold a few watercolor postcards, nothing larger sold.

I thought about it for a bit last night, and I think I've figured out the problem. The show was advertised quite a bit as a family event. Now in my experience when you call something a family event it means that most of the people who show up are families with children 5 years old or younger, families with older kids, single people, couples without kids (or with grown kids), don't attend nearly as much. I think it's great to expose young kids to art and I wouldn't have wanted the show to discourage people from bringing kids since I think art education is very important. The simple truth is that parents with young children aren't likely to buy much art either because they don't have the money or something I heard a few times is that little kids break things.

I really hope that the people running the show send out a questionaire or call the artists who participated because I have a few thoughts about how it could be improved for next year. Top of that list is definitely not to call it a family event. I think if I had been planning the advertising for it I would have gone with something like "Art for Everyone", make it clear that it's an accessable art show. You don't have to be a connoisoire of art to appreciate all the great talent that was on display at the show but that it had something for everyone, from serious art collectors to casual art lovers to families and kids. I'm not ready to give up on this show but I think I want to see some changes made for next year before I commit to doing it again.

Okay to get away from complaining about the negative parts of the show some things did go well. I talked to various representatives of art organizations and owners of galleries. I'm going to spend part of this coming week making calls and maybe meeting with some of them to expand the number of places where my art is seen. An idea which someone gave me was to call some of the quirkier restaurants in the area and see if they are either interested in either buying or displaying for sale my sealife sculptures like the Squid or Perma-pets. I was also told that I really should do the Norway Sidewalk Art Show which is very well established and popular (and importantly for me not too expensive to get into).

I do have to say that despite the lack of sales, the actual running of the show was done very well. Things went about as smoothly as they could have gone, the organizers were very helpful, they got everyone to their assigned lots quickly, I didn't have need of the parking because my dad drove me over with his van then went home but for those that did they had valet parking of a sort, the music groups that played were pretty good. I got a lot of compliments and positive feedback about my work, no one suggested I had priced things too high so I'm pretty sure people thought my prices were fair even though they didn't buy anything. I got to talk with some cool people, in particular one teenage girl who works in polymer clay, I gave her a list of sculpting links to help her out and I wish her lots of luck.

I know I've been putting off the Ebay and Etsy thing for a while now because it's a bit intimidating but I'm starting to realize that I don't have much choice. Sales through my website are slim and local sales are getting frustrating. I think my necklaces will probably do well if I sell them through a popular site like Ebay or Etsy (I'm leaning towards Etsy because I don't like auctions).

Another option is that since tourists are often a good market for art is that my dad is going to talk to a friend of his who has a fairly popular shop selling things like handmade furniture (he just gave us a beautiful garden bench as thanks for all the work my dad's done for him). I hope that pans out because it would be even more exposure for my work.

Lastly here are some photos of my booth and a pretty monarch butterfly who just loved the flowers I brought along with me. It was just totally unconcerned with everything going on around it.

Gearing Up for Moore Art

August 11th I'll be participating in my first ever big outdoor art festival. It's the first annual Moore Art in the Park in south Paris, Maine. I picked this one because it is new, I don't have to worry about an established idea of what the festival has for art, it's going to be pretty small the aim is between 75 and 150 artists compared to the 500+ that some festivals have, and of course it's close to home. That has since become very important since I can't drive it makes it much easier for me to rope friends into driving the truck for me since my parents will be out of town at a wedding that weekend.

I have a lot of preparation to do for this one. The Shy, Novice, and Closeted Show was easy, I just needed my art and a few other things, Moore Art is a whole other deal. Aside from needing enough art, I need tables, displays, the tent, a sign, business card, sales books, and at least a dozen more things, the list is huge and a little overwhelming. I'm slowly chipping away at the list and getting things done.

Over the last couple weeks I've been making more tags for my work, getting more business cards printed, collecting my business stuff that needs to go to the festival in a box, building a necklace display, and more stuff. Most of it is rather boring tedious work but I did get two rather fun things done that I want to show off.

First of all I needed to paint a sign. After a mad search for a suitable board (ended up with a piece of particle board that no one can remember what it was for originally) and a few hours of complete artist's block when it came to a design for my sign I got to work. Since I couldn't come up with an idea, I just decided I'd stop stressing about it and just paint the base coat, I figured that since I did know the base color I wanted that if I got that done maybe something would come to me.

A few months back I refinished an old desk I had been given that was really ugly so it's now much prettier and is the center of my sculpting space. While I was able to strip the hideous varnish off the top and the front of the drawers the rest was a lost cause so I got as much off as possible and painted it using this really pretty sage acrylic latex paint. I still had about a quarter of the can left so I wanted to use it as the base color for my sign. What I hadn't expected is that particle board doesn't like taking color evenly so instead of trying to get a flat finish I broke out the sponges and sponge painted it. The texture came out great and gave me the idea for a dusty green and purple Art Nouveau look.

Second, I decided some Noadi's Art t-shirts would be great to both wear at the festival and as some advertising this weekend when I go to Mollyockett Day in Bethel. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do so I googled "DIY t-shirts" and "t-shirt tutorials" to see what turned up and if it would jumpstart some ideas. What I found was this great tutorial on do it yourself screen printing. So I pulled up the greyscale image of An tEach Uisce that I used to print up tags and adjusted it until it was completely black and white and added the Noadi's Art text. After I printed it out I traced the image onto the nylons streched onto an embroidery hoop and used modpodge to cover all the blank areas. First I tested the design on the white shirt for my mom, then did the black shirt for myself both with acrylic paint mixed with textile medium. I think they turned out pretty cool.

Going to give this blogging thing another try.

I haven't been a very good blogger in the past, I have a tendency to forget to update. I have a busy summer coming up though so I decided it's time to give this another try because I have stuff I want to share that's coming up that I really don't have a good place for on my main website.

So far this is my summer schedule:

July 7 - The Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show at 18 High Street in Bethel, ME. I participated in this last year as well and it was a lot of fun.
July 21 - Mollyockett Day in Bethel, ME. Annual festival, I'll be there all day and it's tentative at the moment but the Elements Gallery may have a booth on the common.
August 11 - Moore Art, Show and Festival in the Park. Historic Moore Park in South Paris, ME. This is the first year for the festival which I think is appropriate for my first full fledged art festival.
All summer - Helping out with the Elements Gallery which also happens to sell my work.
All summer - Further promoting my sculpture with the goal of more gallery representation.
All summer - I'm going to attempt the leap into selling my sculpture on Ebay.
All summer - More sculptures and I'm going to attempt to create molds and cast again hopefully with better results than previously.