Trying to Figure Out the Whole Marketing Thing

I'm an artist, business just isn't something that comes naturally to me. So trying to figure out what I should produce to actually make a profit is difficult. Another problem is how much should I have in inventory? Hopefully I'll be able to figure this out before the show and festival that I'm doing.

What I've got so far.

Original one of a kind sculptures. These sculpts like my Wood Nymph, Satyr, and An tEach Uisce.

One of a kind sculpture series These are one of a kind sculptures that fit into a set theme. So far this only consists of my Perma-Pets.

One of a kind jewelry series. These are my Gargoyles and Cthulhu's Gems necklaces.

What I'd like to add.

First of all of course I'd like to increase the numbers of everything I have so far.

One of a kind sculpture series I'd like to come up with at least one more one of a kind series. So far I've got no ideas for this, I'm trying really hard to come up with something.

Cast sculptures. I have some resin and ordered some hydrocal and mold latex. I'd like to start with some small cast plaster pieces. One of the ideas I had was to expand on the idea of my Mermaid Bust and do a full figure. A baby Cthulhu has also been floating around in my head.

Larger scale sculpture. Odin's Runesong right now is my largest sculpture to date. I'd love to do some even larger work, in the 3-4 foot high range. Due to the limitations of the size of my oven any really big work would have to be either sculpted in sections in polymer clay, mixed media, or cast. I have a few ideas for this right now one is the Wild Hunt and also the Man in the Moon as a large moon globe that opens to show clockwork and a little guy operating it.

Future online sales.

Right now I'm focused on local sales, the festivals and gallery. I really hope to get into selling on ebay in the near future, I've set up my account and I'm looking at other sculpture auctions to see how I want to present mine. I think that ebay will probably be something that will remain in the works for a few months, the Moore Art Festival is August 11 so it will probably be after that. I just think trying to learn both things at the same time is just too much on my plate.

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.

Update on the Art Show

First a little explanation about why it's taken me so long to update. My mom grew up in fostercare and she had the most wonderful foster-mother. Me and my brother were very close to her and as far as we're concerned she was far more out grandmother than my mother's biological mother. She was 85 years old and for her age quite healthy until the first week of July, she had a series of heart attacks and strokes over two weeks until she passed away due to bleeding in her brain that the doctors are pretty sure was caused by an undiagnosed tumor. Obviously that knocked me for an emotional loop. On top of that my mom had already arranged several years ago to become my mentally disabled foster-uncle's guardian when my grandmother could no longer care for him so he's been in the process of moving in the past couple weeks which has really taken up a lot of time and energy.

Okay back to the Art Show. It went pretty well considering it was a very small show competing with a much larger better advertised one. I sold two small sculptures and generated quite a bit of interest in my art including an invitation to display in a new local gallery.

Here is the photo I took of my display:


I think the best part of it all was networking with the other artists and getting to talk to people who've been doing this a lot longer than I have. I really learned a lot from the show which makes it more than worth it. As for that invitation for the gallery I'm proud to say I currently have several pieces in the Elements Gallery in Bethel, ME which I can't describe how excited I am about that.

Rolling along

Hooray, an update in less than a week. Lots of stuff going on so here's an update.

Working on the art show preparation, I bought some matboard to get all my drawings displayed nicely. I had planned on buying precut mats but the local store doesn't sell them but they do sell their matboard remnants (all museum matboard too) in bags for $10, and there were a lot of remnants in the bag I bought, 75 to be exact and I swear the bag weighed about 20lbs so it was a very good deal. They're mainly the windows that were cut out of the mats when the store does framing. They are a bunch of sizes, and none are really huge but since my work is all on the smaller side it's perfect for me. Now I just need a mat cutter this weekend, I'm planning to get a cheap little Xacto board cutter which can do 45º bevels but from what I've heard it does take extra patience, I'm not going to be doing enough matting to justify buying a good mat cutter right now. If I ever start producing drawings faster or start selling them quickly then I'll invest in one.

I have 2 sculptures I'm showing which haven't been completely painted yet that I'm working on. My mermaid bust recieved some damage during my unsuccessful attempt to mold her so I had to repair her and she's awaiting some touchup painting. Probably a good thing I wasn't planning to sell her anyway since now I can't with the damage even patched well.

Add to the list trying to figure out how to price the pieces I do plan to have for sale, printing up information on my art, trying to write an artist statement and I'm just a little stressed. It's probably just me doing it to myself since it's supposed to be a more casual layed back show but I'm too much of a perfectionist for that I guess.

In non-art show related stuff, my mom wanted photos of her garden (she's addicted to gardening) so I spent a couple hours with my digital camera Tuesday taking photos, here are my 3 favorites scaled down so they'd fit here.

Big update about what I've been up to.

I know I'm the world's worst blog writer when it comes to updating often enough. I keep saying I'll change but so far it hasn't happened.

So lots of things have been going on for me in the past few months. The big one from a personal standpoint is that my mom was diagnosed with cancer, she's finished her treatment now and she's feeling better every day, the outlook for her is excellent according to her doctors. So that has been a big stress for me recently and is part of my lack of updates to both my blog and my website which is why I never added work from February until this month.

On a more professional and happy note, there has been a lot going on for me and my art. First of all I took life drawing class and the results you can view here, it was a great experience if you are an artist and have never taken life drawing I really recommend it.

Second, I've gotten a summer job at a local studio. I'll be cutting mats, framing, and keeping track of print sales. It's only part time but the experience I'll get seeing how professional artists run a business will be very valuable for me I think.

Finally third and biggest in my mind, I'm going to be doing my very first art show on July 1st. I'm really excited about the chance to sell some of my work, I'll have both drawings and sculpture there. If you are in the Bethel, Maine area that day please stop by the "Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show", it's the same day as an art show for more established artists as well so you'll have plenty to see.

Mold Making First Attempt - part I

So I've started my first foray into molding and casting. It's been interesting so far. No major disasters but a couple minor ones.

Here's the victim.



First here's a cardboard prop to keep the bust I'm molding in the right position. This led to minor disaster number one, I managed to both cut myself with my knife and burn my fingers with the hot glue gun. The prop worked well though.



The next couple steps I forgot to take pictures of, I built a layer of Klean Klay (sulfur free modeling clay) over one half of the bust and then layered plaster of paris on top. Once dry I flipped it over and did the same on the other side, this gave me a nice plaster mother mold that will be filled with the mold rubber. Here's where minor disaster number two and three come along. On one side of my mother mold layer of plaster for some reason didn't quite adhere to the first layer and flaked off so I wasted quite a bit of plaster and time. Then I managed to spill plaster all over my floor which I'm still working on cleanign up. A minor annoyance was finding out after I used vaseline as a release agent for the plaster that I could have used liquid soap instrad which would have been far far easier to clean off.

After all the plaster was dried I had to open up the mother mold, that went well even with the vaseline making a mess all over my hands. I removed the klean klay from one half of the mother mold, and on the other side you can see the clay bed that will be a barrier to the rubber when I pour it. I had to position the clay bed so that when I open the rubber mold that it won't catch uder her ears which was the only majot undercut on this bust.



Next step will be to pour the first half of the rubber mold, that I will probably do tonight so it can cure overnight.

Impatience

I've come to the conclusion that being able to track a package being sent to you online makes waiting for it even worse.

I ordered some sculpting and casting supplies and they should be arriving soon. I'm planning to document my first casting attempt here, I'm hoping it goes well rather than embarassing.

I've continued brainstorming sculpture ideas, a little more seriously than last time.
- The Dord Fian, mythical celtic horn that calls the fianna (army of heros led by Finn Mac Cumhail)
- Boudicca - I love history and Boudicca was a very heroic and tragic woman who defied the roman empire. She supposedly had hair down past her knees, sculpting hair liek that would be a wonderful challenge.

What a sculptor does when she's bored.

So I was on IRC(#pixelation on irc.sorcery.net) last night a bit bored so I did some brainstorming for sculpture ideas. The guys on the channel found them funny so I thought I'd share here.

1) Squirrel holding a ring "my precious".
2) Kitten in the holy grail.
3) Bonsai kitten assembled kind of like those ships in bottles.
4) Hatching baby gryphon based on baby cockatiels (they are ugly beyond words).
5) Christmas Platypus. Okay, this was an idea I had a while back but I still like it.

I have no idea if I'll ever sculpt any of these but it was fun coming up with them.

Sculpting

I suppose I really am not that great a blog writer, I don't update anywhere near as often as I should but I'm going to start trying to update a little more often.

So I've been seriously sculpting lately, I really do seem to have found the medium I work best in. I still draw and paint but I'm definitely not as good at that, my theory is that 3 dimensions is easier for me to work in than 2. With a drawing I can't rotate it to see it from a new angle. You can check out my Sculpture Gallery to see all my finished sculptures.

Mostly I've been working with a mixture of Super Sculpey and white and black Premo Sculpey to get a nice nuetral grey color. Plain super sculpey is a translucent beige pink, the translucency makes fine detail difficult to see sometimes.

This is my most recent work in progress sculpture a wood nymph, she still has a ways to go, the hands need work, the feet don't have toes yet, and a few other things still are unfinished.

As sort of an offshoot of my sculpting I plan to try casting copies of my sculptures in resin. I'm still waiting on my materials to be delivered but as soo as they are this will be the first piece I attempt to cast.

My hope is to sell some of them, whether or not that works I'll have to wait and see but I hope it works.

Katrina

I'm sure by now everyone has seen the damage caused by Katrina. I want to add my voice to the many advocating donating to charity. Donate to the Red Cross or other reputable charites and please be careful of scams. I've already recieved a few spam emails that say they are about the disaster that I'm pretty sure are viruses or phishing scams.

I also want to encourage anyone reading this in the United states to contact your senators or representatives and urge them to overhaul FEMA. The delay in getting those desperate people food, water, and medicine verges on criminal in my opinion. FEMA and the Homeland Security department must be more prepared for emergencies like this. Natural disasters occur all over the country and are always a matter of when, never if, we should be more prepared whether it's hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards or anything else mother nature throws at us. I remember the ice storm that hit the Northeast in 1998 and I thought that was bad being without power or heat for 2 weeks in the winter but at least I had food water and shelter, many of the victims of Katrina don't have that. They deserve better, all human beings deserve better.