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WORDS |
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an Artists life
"After
all, I think I should still rather be a shoemaker than
a musician in color." In a letter to his
brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh expressed his own kind
of doubt at his chosen love. All artists at times
question the need, want, ability, reason and clarity
of their work, the same as workers in other fields.
But for the artist, it is more intense, a more
personal doubt, lasting longer, finding fewer
comforts. Internal conversations, rationalization,
sometimes even intervention from outside rarely
contain the spread. And then the artist stands up
alone and steps back, either after finishing a piece
or taking a breath or just listening to a noise
outside the door. Suddenly, doubt is gone, its
expansive space filled with color and canvas and clay
and glass, the once hopeless now ambitious.
Why do you insist on being an artist? Because you can.
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The International Language
One
of my oldest friends (I have two and one's a dog) fled
Hanoi in the seventies for Saigon and then fled there
for America in 1980. I met him in 1982 after I walked
into the used bookstore he owned and operated out of a
junk storefront. Books were and are almost his life ,
as he was a professor at university in his old life.
He particularly enjoyed books on the lives of
philosophers and artists. In Vietnam, he laughed with
the French and more than a few times drank from the
absinthe bottle, enhancing color, sound and music
temporarily.
After twenty years in America, even still, he speaks
with a haunting acceptance of our words and phrases,
struggling to say all just right and explain what is
behind the words. We frequently go to pen and paper to
communicate, his writing a flow of thoughts coherent
beyond the brightest sun and deeper than the clearest
ocean.
Today (06-22-02) he called me on the phone, like a
bolt. "Young John", he said. " I have
three thoughts or ideas you must hear and then tell me
what you say." There was an edge to his voice and
impatience behind his tone.
"Sure, Oanh", I yelled into the phone. He
can't hear. ( The other day when I went to his
apartment, he had a transistor sized thing in his
dress shirt pocket and a set of headphones on his
small head. "What's that?", I asked and
immediately knew he had found a type of hearing aid by
the sound of my voice blaring from the set.)
"You know van Hock, we talk often, van Hock the
artist?", he asked. He calls van Gogh van Hock.
"Yes", I yelled. "I know van
Gogh."
"OK", he said," I have decided he might
have a serious flaw. Are you ready?"
I said I was ready and quickly tried to imagine what
was next.
Oanh started with a big breath and said "I think
he seeks to make the unclear clear and the clear,
invisible. Is it serious?"
"No", I yelled, "not serious. Not a flaw.
His art alone."
Oanh asked me the other two things and we quickly
wrapped up the conversation.
"Young John" he said before hanging up.
" I am sure now it is not a serious flaw. It is
mostly his art. I knew before calling. Goodbye."
And he hung up. |
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Virgil
Cantini
Pittsburgh hosts an amazing show of
artwork everyday from one of the best artists
anywhere...The Amazing
Virgil Cantini . Cantini's art rests in corners of
libraries as wooden sculptures, hangs in the lobbies
of skyscrapers as public displays of power and vision
and sometimes even lays hidden in the closets and
unused rooms of institutions. Cantini used fires
of the kiln, the tools of a carpenter and even steel
from the furnaces to create for us a view we cannot
hope to see on our own. In his seventies now , Virgil Cantini deserves a look.
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Pricing Artists Work
In 1943 in New York City, two
artists held almost simultaneous shows of their
work. Jackson Pollock and Louise Pershing
exhibited their works for sale in galleries steps
away from each other. Pollock's 12 works were
priced at $50 to $750 and Pershing's 14 were
priced $25 to $500. Today, sixty years
later, Pollock's art sells over the millions and
Pershing's work still brings around $500 to a
thousand.
You deserve a fair and equitable
price for your work and your current and future
collectors deserve a fair and equitable cost. One
of the hardest parts of being an artist in any
medium comes when you step back, look at the work
and say "Ahhh...I think its done. How much
can I sell it for?" All of a sudden the
genius of production of art gives way to the
babbling idiocy of marketing and pricing, an
almost impossible task for the artist...unless
you form a base of understanding with your work,
with your collectors and with people who see your
art for the first time.
Any consistent artist deserves $40
an hour. Now, rip out your hair and scream at the
monitor. Finished? I don't mean every artist,
I mean any artist. So that's your base. And
you can quote it. Two hours painting...time and
materials ...overhead...that little sunrise on
canvas board prices at $125. One hour...drops the
price to $70.
Some artists, including some we
have directly represented in sales and shows,
deserve much more and the price can't be tied to
time, materials, subject or size. The price gets
determined by the people buying and the desire to
own. Then, that little fifteen minute sketch sells
for $2500. Who knows why and, really, who cares?
How did I sell a paint by number for $500? Someone
developed a desire and paid the price.
I'll shut up soon but in
closing....you can control the creation of your
work and you can control your pricing. Concentrate
on those two things. Try not to divine the
reasons, motivation or tricks of the market that
cause one artist to sell and the other to dive.
Create your work the way you want, the time you
take and the colors you use. Put a fair and
equitable price on the art and let the buyer
choose. And when your art sells for more...way
more...than our little $40 example...buy some more
paint, find some new granite, weld some new
pieces.
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Making an Art Website
You're
an artist; what you do best is create art. But if you
take your time and take some advice, you can probably
have a pretty effective website gallery at a pretty decent
price. With four steps, you can be live on the
web...register a name, find a host, design a site,
publish your design. Let us tell you what we think...
Register a Name
Dotster.com is the place to start to
register a domain name. The name can be as simple
as yours or anything up to 26 characters total.
Dotster charges $14.95 per year for .com's and
they are extremely easy to use. Only get a year to
start cause you can always renew prior to the end
of your first year.
Find a Host After you register a domain name,
you need to get a host for the website you will
design. You only need 50 mb of space.
CIHost
offers 50mb for $10 per month and many other sites
do too. Total annual cost will be around $150.
Design a Site
The
design of your site should be straightforward with
your artwork as the star of the show. Keep flashy
banners and moving images to a minimum and
collector/buyers will stick around longer. Your web host
may provide software for design or you may
purchase a software package like Microsoft's
FrontPage or even use Netscape's built-in design
tool Composer. No matter what you use, your site
will function best if you have a home page that
loads fast and gallery pages under the home page.
The gallery pages should always have thumbnails of
your images instead of the large images
themselves. But be careful...many software
packages and even many website designers make a
big mistake...they only visually shrink an image
instead of actually changing the image and making
the file smaller. For a thumbnail to be effective,
the actual file must be small and linked to the
larger image file.
After the actual design of the home page and
gallery pages, include a biography and a little
background on the actual work involved when you
create your art. Collector/buyers are encouraged
to purchase your work when they feel an attachment
to the art and an attachment to the artist. You
can create that attachment with text designed to
carefully describe the process and the artist
leading to the artwork.
Publish Your Design
Publishing
your design to the web and making it a live
internet site finishes the process and provides
you with an online presence. Most software
packages make this as easy as pushing a button. If
you aren't using software, then an ftp program
will automate most of the publishing tasks for
you. Once published, your design is more a
chalkboard than a piece of granite. The design can
be changed, updated, reworked, added to, subtracted
from. Your site will change with you.
Making an art website doesn't come
easy to most of us and is sometimes especially hard
for an artist to accomplish. But if you take your time
and make your mistakes you can have a functioning
website that serves as an online gallery for
collector/buyers to , at the minimum, view your work.
Good luck. |
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Artist
Outlook...U.S. Department of Labor outlook and
descriptions |
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