Mindful Marketing Practices, Step One

 AUDIENCE 

       This image is from http://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagogeek/4333114156/

 Since I’m endlessly curious, clearing my mind to practice mindfulness is important to me. So are setting intentions. I started this year with a personal vision quest – eight full days -- through snowstorms and subzero temps (in Chicago, I’m told, the zookeepers even brought the polar bears indoors!). 

 My retreat unfolded this way. First I happened onto a self-inventory called "The Gifts of 2013" from Susannah Conway. I spent New Year’s Day writing until I had filled it all out.  When I reviewed what I had written about the pluses and minuses of 2013, I savored the confident, positive woman I saw reflected back to me.

 A few days later I met with two fellow artists with long corporate careers and much expertise to discuss our desires and directions for 2014. I acknowledged that I am very savvy about marketing for others but not on my own behalf.  Could I change that mindset and still be true to my own values? Indeed I can.

As I take steps this year to make my work more visible, then my audience -- those people who will invest in my works -- will find me. How can people purchase my work if they don’t know it exists?

Just who is my desired audience? As I visualize them, here's what I see:

• You appreciate contemporary art. It ignites your interest and delights you. You surround yourself with original art in your home and office.

• You have confidence in your taste. You trust your instincts.

• You're informed. You learn about the artists who interest you.  If possible, you visit their studios and connect with them personally.
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•  You're comfortable with contemporary art. You make it a point to visit museum exhibitions and gallery shows because you enjoy learning.  You spend time with a work to really see and appreciate it.

• You share your enthusiasm for the arts and artists with your friends, family and co-workers. You may be low-key about it but you are definitely an advocate for artists. 

• You think for yourself. You enjoy purchasing art that will increase in value but you don’t make your purchases based on profits. Today’s stars come and go in contemporary art as in music and movies; you choose to buy art that captivates you rather than follow trends and passing fads.

• You are a genuine, compassionate and interesting person. You probably wouldn’t find visual art appealing if you weren’t!

My audience is out there – and since I  have a clearer idea of who they are, it will be easier to develop ideas for how to reach them.

 

 

Attempting a Reclamation

Is there a single one of us who hasn't made a piece that just never worked out well? What do you do with yours? While I read often of painters burning failed works, I'm more frugal -- also more optimistic about recycling my materials.

An old, failed project revisited the design wall this week. The original idea, attempted last October and November was to build a surface where letter forms appear to be falling down like rain. One of the other reasons it failed, I decided, was that I just didn't like the letter shapes themselves. I twisted and turned and painted and overworked the surface to death. I completed it and then realized that I basically could never show it in public.

But this week it occurred to me that I could re-vision this "finished" piece strictly as an under-painting, pushing back the original composition to a mere suggestion by layering painted, manipulated cheesecloth over it.


I planned to develop cracks and fissures with elongated Etruscan letters applied along with hand stitching onto the cheesecloth layer -- again referencing age and accumulated layers over time.

But then I went to the hairdressers and saw a picture in a decorating magazine of a painting with an abstracted bowl shape in it. I have been drawing bowl shapes and musing on how to integrate them into my language pieces for two years. When I came home, I drew some variations inspired by the shape I saw and decided to consider the idea of adding abstracted bowl shapes to the surface rather than more letter shapes.


Here's the first effort. I question whether the bowl shapes really integrate with the language forms still faintly visible through the manipulated cheesecloth.

My dear friend and fellow artist Rebecca Howdeshell saw this and suggested the shapes might integrate better if I age their surfaces, which is an excellent idea to try next. What if they have cracks and fissures and maybe even fragments of letters on them?!

So that will be tomorrow's studio agenda, creating ancient, cracked fabrics to cut into bowl shapes and try in place of the ones shown above. If either of the new ideas work, then I will add hand-stitched cracks as line work for definition and emphasis and reclaim this. If they don't, the piece goes deeper back into the storage closet or off to the local Goodwill thrift shop!