I will be speaking from my own experience in being involved in the
exhibition and sale of my work through the gallery market over the last
eighteen years. While I have had considerable experience in this
particular area, my knowledge is limited to my own experiences and my
views are not necessarily the same as other artists. However, having
achieved a certain degree of success, which is to say, I make my living
at this point solely from the sale of my art work, perhaps some of my
observations will be of use to others.
To make a living as an artist is probably one of the most difficult,
frustrating and close to impossible things that anyone can decide to
take up as a goal in life. Nevertheless, if you achieve this goal, it is
one of the most rewarding achievements that anyone could hope for.
Imagine the thrill of going into a bank to get a loan for a house solely
on your art income and having the banker not only take you seriously,
but actually approve the loan! I did this very thing just last year.
Wow! What a feeling! Just three years ago I couldn't make the electric
bill and had my power turned off more than once over the years.
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being poor if you don't
mind not being able to buy the supplies that you need or have a studio
to work in or be taken seriously by your family or the community at
large for that matter. Like it or not, people in general think that you
are just puttering around and not taking life seriously if you are not
making a living from your work. Strange but true.
option #1 If there is some other way that you can enjoy making a living,
go for it. Your art will suffer in terms of the amount of time that you
can devote to your art making but there is no pressure on you to produce
a living from your art activity. For many, the security of having a
steady income from teaching or some other activity is well worth this
sacrifice. If you are married, your spouse will be happy that you are
making a living at some socially acceptable activity but will be jealous
of your free time and not too crazy about you spending it in the studio
that you have confiscated from your living space especially if you are
spending some of the household budget on your unproven (financially)
activity. For all but the imaginative, if your not producing objects of
clear and obvious value, then you are just screwing around.
option #2 If you know that you will not be satisfied with option #1 but
are not financially independent try this. Work at something that will
make you some kind of a living but work hard in the studio on off hours
with the idea that art making is you first priority and that you have
every intention of eventually making a living from your efforts. In this
case you will want to do 'outside work' as a way to derive income to
support your goal of becoming a full time artist at some point in the
future. But don't get confused. Don't let the steady or perhaps good
income that you might be making from your job seduce you into reverting
to option one. You may not see any real income from your art for years
so dig in, work hard and don't think about what you could have done or
that what you are doing might fail. It is easy to fall into this trap so
you have to insure that you won't. How do you do that? How do you have
the confidence and faith to go on for years in the face of the near
impossible odds of 'making it'?
Secret: Most artists don't make it because they don't think that they
will make it and therefore it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most
artists don't make it because they don't plan to make it. If you don't
think that you will be successful; if you don't plan to be successful;
if you don't put in the effort to be successful, you won't be
successful. No question about it.
Is it sheer stupidity to think that you can succeed as an artist? No. It
may seem that there are too many artists and too few galleries and
buyers but there is always a place for good work and a serious,
dedicated worker. When you go to the galleries you will notice that a
sizable portion of the work is not that great.Yet, some of those artists
are making a living from their work so there is always room for good,
solid work.
Is there a way to plan on being successful? Yes. You make a business
plan with short and long range goals. You schedule your time just like
any body else that plans on being successful. You set deadlines that you
work toward to get the work made and to get the work out on the market.
You study the logistics of your art and hone your production into
manageable, shippable, handleable, storable, affordable products.
Business-wise you are doing research and development, manufacturing,
representing your art business, wholesaling and shipping your product to
retail outlets (galleries).
Most artists may regard this as crass commercialism and it is, but let's
get real, this is the environment that we currently live in and it isn't
going to change any time soon. The way I think about it is like this.
When I am in the studio I am an artist engaged in my own weird art
activity. I think about my art, I make my art and I admire my work. I
hang it in my house and look at it. I consider all of the same issues
that I would other wise think about. But then, when it is finished and I
am finished with it, I become a business man with an object that I want
to convert to cash so that I can buy more supplies and pay the household
bills and maybe even go out for dinner once in a while. Being an artist
is the first thing you have to achieve but if you plan to support
yourself and your activity you have to put considerable efforts into
making business an equally important area of disciplined effort.
Secret: You can only make as much income as you have in production.
This seems very obvious yet it took me years to realize and exploit this
simple truth. It dawned on me like a revelation. I felt like I was
selling a lot of work and was starting to become successful but my check
account didn't agree with me. I wondered, what can be the problem? I
decided to keep meticulous records of my production in a journal noting
the size, medium, retail and wholesale price, date of completion, and
what gallery it went to. It didn't take long before I figured out that I
was only producing a small amount of wholesale income over the course of
a year due to my low prices and very small works so that even if I sold
the entire year's production - which is asking a lot - I still would be
very poor. No wonder I wasn't making enough money! I then decided to
make significantly larger works so that when they sold it would be a
good chunk of money. I then also made the sizes that I knew would sell.
In addition, I raised my prices. Between these two things it wasn't long
before I was actually making enough money to support myself. So simple,
and yet, if you don't analyze, and take into account this very practical
matter, you will keep yourself in the poorhouse no matter how hard you
work.
So keep a production journal. You might want to keep much more extensive
notes or even more rudimentary than mine but be sure to keep a steady
track of you work. Maybe you title your work maybe you don't but at the
minimum give each work an inventory number so that you can track you
progress or lack of progress and so that, without looking at the work,
distinguish one from another. Doing this will yield all kinds of
important information. You can track what times of the year that you
tend to be the most productive. You can study the range of sizes and
types of work that you have been making and you will be able to discover
your working pattern and rhythm. Knowing these things from your record
keeping will greatly increase your ability to plan out your future and
understand your limits.
As a young artist you have no history except the history that you
learned in art school. From keeping records of your work, you are
building a history for yourself that you will later be able to deepen
your self-knowledge with. This will help you to focus on your main
interests instead of drifting along from one impulse to another without
being aware of the larger patterns that will be emerging in you work
over long periods of time. The more clarity that you can achieve about
you working process, the more clear and refined your work will become
and therefore, the better it is for your business.
Personally, I found that if I work in series, I can build several
cohesive bodies of work that I can market and that viewers can identify
as my work. This does not mean that you have to develop a 'signature
style' that you are going to be stuck with for the rest of your life.
Break down the various concerns within your body of work and isolate
them into several different series of work so that you can pursue
several avenues of research at the same time. This way, when you have
come to an impasse in one branch of your work or you have played it all
the way out, you have several other ongoing series of work that you can
jump over to without coming to a standstill. In addition, this gives you
the ability to experiment in one body of work and then import successful
techniques or elements into other compatible series of your work.
Working like this with several directions being developed you can work
on without a pause.
Picasso, I notice did this - by doing something else, he took a break or
rest from one thing while doing another and then went back to the first
thing when he was refreshed. Put yourself on the same rigid schedule you
would do on any job. Being an artist is about the hours put in to it not
the years. Lots of people can say they have been working as an artist
for years but they might mean they put an average of 5 hours a week at
their art on saterday afternoon. You can see that someone who puts in 60
hours a week for a year has put in the same as 12 years of the other
person who put 5 hours a week. Big difference!
Secret: Talent without disciplined effort is worthless. Develop
disciplined work habits and be efficient with your time.
If you plan on being a full time artist you must learn to work in a
self-motivated and disciplined manner. This means that you are not
standing around waiting for inspiration to work. Inspiration comes while
you are working. To go into the studio and begin to work is the primer
that your mind needs in order to access intuition and inspiration. Much
of the work in the studio doesn't need to be inspired anyway. There is a
lot of work that you can do even if you are not able to get inspired.
Build stretchers if your a painter or sweep and organize or catch up on
your notes or read an art magazine. You can do some research at the
library looking for galleries that you might want to send slides to,
and, oh yes, take slides of your work (digital photos), label them,
organize them by type and date and protect them.
Set 'job hours' for your self and no matter what, work when it is time
to work. Make your working habits into a daily routine and stick to it.
When you use your art time for other purposes you are seriously
undermining your future. It is going to take "X' number of hours to
achieve a favorable business condition and it is a shame of you piddle
away those hours over years of time when you could have fit those same
number of hours into half as many years. In addition, if you work
regularly the people around you will realize that you are serious
eventually and won't see your art time as free time that you could be
doing some favor or task for them during that time period. When do your
friends come to bother you or expect you to drop what you are doing if
you are at a 'job'? Not very often! Thus, tell people you are at work
and you cannot be disturbed. Also, the advantage of keeping regular
hours creates a rhythm so that it becomes easy for you to work because
you don't have to waste energy getting yourself cranked back up like you
do if your work habits are more sporadic. Light incense of do some
repetative ritual every time when you first start working for the day.
This trains your subconscious mind to know when to be creative. And it
will be!
Secret: If you don't take yourself seriously, don't expect anyone else to.
It took me until I was nearly thirty before I was willing to say, "I am
an artist." When you are not making a living as an artist and your
hardly working in the studio, it is indeed a strange feeling to hear
these words coming out of your mouth. You feel like a sham.
Nevertheless, if you are doing the above mentioned items you have a
right to call yourself one even if it doesn't seem to ring true.
There are a number of things that you can do to help you take on the
personal identity of an artist and that you are in the process of
creating a profession out of your efforts.
1) Make up a name for your business like, John Smith Contemporary Art go
down to city hall and get an Assumed Name Certificate for your business.
2) Then go to your state comptroller's office and get a state sales tax
number.
3) go to the bank and open a business account with your company name.
4) get a Federal Tax I.D. number from the federal government. You can
write off you business expenses from your taxes if you are making enough
money that you are paying taxes.
5) start looking around for places where you can buy wholesale as a
business. Most places won't give you a discount but some will. Find out
who they are. For instance, you can buy canvas in bulk for wholesale
from canvas and awning distributors. As an artist you are a wholesaler
that means if you have a sales tax number, anything to do with business
can be purchased without paying the sales tax.
6) get some business cards, stationary, etc. with your business name on
it so that when you approach galleries you look like a business. This
always helps and make you look like your serious. Galleries want to feel
that they can depend on you to provide professional service to them when
they need it. Business-wise, think of yourself as a manufacturer and
wholesaler. If you don't feel that you will be at you current address
for a long time but will probably be living in the same city, get a post
office box for an address and don't put a phone number if you think it
will change. Or just put your website as an address and keep your
current address on your website.
7) put together your artist packet that includes images of your art, an
artist statement, a resume, a cover letter and a list of the images with
information about each one on it. Have several of these set up and ready
to go in a file box.
With a focused effort you can do all of these things in about a week's
time assuming that you can get some time during day-time business hours.
All of this effort and this business-image development can make a big
difference in conditioning your mind into the proper mind-set for taking
what you are doing seriously and encouraging others to do the same.
Secret: Even if people don't understand what you are doing they will, at
least, respect how well it was done.
I remember reading an article that someone wrote about a biennial in
Italy that discussed the general public's attitude about sculpture. If
the sculpture was in a traditional medium and of apparent quality,
nobody messed with it. If recognizable quality was absent, the pieces
were defaced. There are a number of interpretations that can be advanced
about this but for our purpose I am proposing that people in general
expect to see quality in art and when craftsmanship is lacking so is
respect from the viewer.
<>If there is any field where extravagance, in terms of craftsmanship,
can be lavished onto an object, it is art. Everyone can appreciate
quality and after a work's initial interest has been assimilated, it is
the quality of the work that will then be scrutinized. To be creative
without the application of craft-skill seriously undermines the
appreciation of a work of art and viewers will soon lose interest and
you will too. But if a work shines out, because of the skillful
attention put into a work's construction, the viewer will linger to
enjoy the fineness of the work's craftsmanship even if they would
otherwise not be interested in the type of art that is being presented.
To keep quality uppermost in your mind, think to yourself that your work
will one day be hanging in the museums of the world and everyone will be
handling it with white gloves. You don't want to be embarrassed by the
fact that you didn't bother to put enough attention on the quality of
your work to warrant such treatment. Construct your work so that it can
hang with confidence on the same wall with any masterwork of a similar
style found anywhere. Whether your work ends up in such places or not
makes no difference. But, by virtue of the fact that you have taken such
standards into consideration , you will greatly enhance the quality and
future value of your work.
Secret: If you don't have a place to work, you won't.
Without a dedicated studio space that is sitting there waiting for you
to come and work in it, the possibility that you will work on a regular
basis is greatly diminished. Depending on the type of work that you do,
you must design a dedicated working space into your living space. Even
if all you can set aside is a space the size of a drafting table, at
least it is something. It is a dedicated space. I have worked is spaces
as small as a tiny bedroom and been able to continue making art. So it
is not the size of the space that is so important as it is the fact that
it is a studio space that is not used for any other purpose. If you say,
"I can't work because I need more room to make the scale of work that I
need to make." then you are really saying , "I don't want to work." Live
within you abilities. If you don't have the space or money to work at
the scale that you dream about, adapt. Make smaller works, make models
of the pieces and use those as the main body of your work until you have
a bigger space and more money. There may be things that can only be
experienced at a large scale but if your prohibited from working at this
scale that shouldn't stop you from working. If you want to work you have
to figure out how you can do it. It is much better to make a hundred
models of future works and develop you image and style than to wait
around to win the lottery so that you can build that dream piece.
Secret: There is a market for almost anything.
When thinking about your work as a product to be sold, don't confuse
this with trying to guess what collectors want to buy. It is a bad
mistake to attempt to make art that you think people want to buy. Make
art that you want to make. Make art that is important to you. There is a
market for your work because there are collectors who will appreciate
what you are doing. Your market may be large or small but you won't know
that until it is out there in the public eye. So don't worry about it or
let this effect your creative impulses or progress.
However, there are things that you can do in designing you work so that
it is easy for galleries to show, store and handle it and for collectors
to buy and display it. For instance, if you make a lot of drawings, make
them on good paper instead of napkins or what ever is laying around.
This way, you are more likely to be able to convert you drawings into
sellable objects instead of just scraps of paper that have some drawing
marks on them. If your going to mess around with sculptural ideas, use
some decent material instead of a ratty piece of cardboard unless, of
course, that is an important material aspect of the piece. In short,
take presentational considerations into account on even the most
fleeting of your creative impulses. You are going to make art anyway so
why not add a little extra attention and make something that can be
appreciated as a work of art and sold when you are finished with it?
Secret: Art is art and business is business. Don't confuse the two.
Don't take business matters into account when you are working in the
studio. Make art! While you will want to make life easy on yourself by
designing your work to be sold, transported and stored, don't let
business effect your creativity. On the other hand, when it is time to
deal with the business end of things, be professional and be serious.
Don't let sentiment or ego as an artist effect you business judgment.
You, the business person are a representative of you, the artist. As a
business person, your interest is business not art. As an artist, your
interest is art not business. Learn how to interchangeably wear these
two different hats. When you can integrate these two very different
things and create a harmonious balance between the two, you will be
successful.
Secret: Respect your audience. Nobody likes to be insulted or made fun of.
If you intend to publicly exhibit and sell your work, you must take your
audience into consideration. Art is a form of communication so be clear
as to what you are communicating and to whom. Since your work will be
seen one on one with your viewing audience, you are carrying on a
conversation with the viewer all be it visual instead of audial. Thus,
imagine, while you are working that you are at a public gathering and
conversing with people. This is a good guide for how to work.Give enough
information in your art for people to feel that they have somehow
understood what you said instead of being cagy and making your work
impenetrable. This doesn't mean you have to be overly obvious or
excessively intellectual or provide a map to the uneducated. But it does
mean that you need to realize that most of the viewers don't know you
personally and if they cannot find an opening into the conversation,
which is your art, then you have lost them. This is your fault not the
viewer's. Provide enough cues in your work to give some modicum of
access to the viewer just as you would in a conversation.
Additionally, if your work is aggressive and insulting in its imagery or
is excessively crass or crude, it may have some shock value that will
get people to look at it for a moment, but not many people will be too
excited about having such work around on a permanent basis in their
personal environment.
exhibition and sale of my work through the gallery market over the last
eighteen years. While I have had considerable experience in this
particular area, my knowledge is limited to my own experiences and my
views are not necessarily the same as other artists. However, having
achieved a certain degree of success, which is to say, I make my living
at this point solely from the sale of my art work, perhaps some of my
observations will be of use to others.
To make a living as an artist is probably one of the most difficult,
frustrating and close to impossible things that anyone can decide to
take up as a goal in life. Nevertheless, if you achieve this goal, it is
one of the most rewarding achievements that anyone could hope for.
Imagine the thrill of going into a bank to get a loan for a house solely
on your art income and having the banker not only take you seriously,
but actually approve the loan! I did this very thing just last year.
Wow! What a feeling! Just three years ago I couldn't make the electric
bill and had my power turned off more than once over the years.
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being poor if you don't
mind not being able to buy the supplies that you need or have a studio
to work in or be taken seriously by your family or the community at
large for that matter. Like it or not, people in general think that you
are just puttering around and not taking life seriously if you are not
making a living from your work. Strange but true.
option #1 If there is some other way that you can enjoy making a living,
go for it. Your art will suffer in terms of the amount of time that you
can devote to your art making but there is no pressure on you to produce
a living from your art activity. For many, the security of having a
steady income from teaching or some other activity is well worth this
sacrifice. If you are married, your spouse will be happy that you are
making a living at some socially acceptable activity but will be jealous
of your free time and not too crazy about you spending it in the studio
that you have confiscated from your living space especially if you are
spending some of the household budget on your unproven (financially)
activity. For all but the imaginative, if your not producing objects of
clear and obvious value, then you are just screwing around.
option #2 If you know that you will not be satisfied with option #1 but
are not financially independent try this. Work at something that will
make you some kind of a living but work hard in the studio on off hours
with the idea that art making is you first priority and that you have
every intention of eventually making a living from your efforts. In this
case you will want to do 'outside work' as a way to derive income to
support your goal of becoming a full time artist at some point in the
future. But don't get confused. Don't let the steady or perhaps good
income that you might be making from your job seduce you into reverting
to option one. You may not see any real income from your art for years
so dig in, work hard and don't think about what you could have done or
that what you are doing might fail. It is easy to fall into this trap so
you have to insure that you won't. How do you do that? How do you have
the confidence and faith to go on for years in the face of the near
impossible odds of 'making it'?
Secret: Most artists don't make it because they don't think that they
will make it and therefore it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most
artists don't make it because they don't plan to make it. If you don't
think that you will be successful; if you don't plan to be successful;
if you don't put in the effort to be successful, you won't be
successful. No question about it.
Is it sheer stupidity to think that you can succeed as an artist? No. It
may seem that there are too many artists and too few galleries and
buyers but there is always a place for good work and a serious,
dedicated worker. When you go to the galleries you will notice that a
sizable portion of the work is not that great.Yet, some of those artists
are making a living from their work so there is always room for good,
solid work.
Is there a way to plan on being successful? Yes. You make a business
plan with short and long range goals. You schedule your time just like
any body else that plans on being successful. You set deadlines that you
work toward to get the work made and to get the work out on the market.
You study the logistics of your art and hone your production into
manageable, shippable, handleable, storable, affordable products.
Business-wise you are doing research and development, manufacturing,
representing your art business, wholesaling and shipping your product to
retail outlets (galleries).
Most artists may regard this as crass commercialism and it is, but let's
get real, this is the environment that we currently live in and it isn't
going to change any time soon. The way I think about it is like this.
When I am in the studio I am an artist engaged in my own weird art
activity. I think about my art, I make my art and I admire my work. I
hang it in my house and look at it. I consider all of the same issues
that I would other wise think about. But then, when it is finished and I
am finished with it, I become a business man with an object that I want
to convert to cash so that I can buy more supplies and pay the household
bills and maybe even go out for dinner once in a while. Being an artist
is the first thing you have to achieve but if you plan to support
yourself and your activity you have to put considerable efforts into
making business an equally important area of disciplined effort.
Secret: You can only make as much income as you have in production.
This seems very obvious yet it took me years to realize and exploit this
simple truth. It dawned on me like a revelation. I felt like I was
selling a lot of work and was starting to become successful but my check
account didn't agree with me. I wondered, what can be the problem? I
decided to keep meticulous records of my production in a journal noting
the size, medium, retail and wholesale price, date of completion, and
what gallery it went to. It didn't take long before I figured out that I
was only producing a small amount of wholesale income over the course of
a year due to my low prices and very small works so that even if I sold
the entire year's production - which is asking a lot - I still would be
very poor. No wonder I wasn't making enough money! I then decided to
make significantly larger works so that when they sold it would be a
good chunk of money. I then also made the sizes that I knew would sell.
In addition, I raised my prices. Between these two things it wasn't long
before I was actually making enough money to support myself. So simple,
and yet, if you don't analyze, and take into account this very practical
matter, you will keep yourself in the poorhouse no matter how hard you
work.
So keep a production journal. You might want to keep much more extensive
notes or even more rudimentary than mine but be sure to keep a steady
track of you work. Maybe you title your work maybe you don't but at the
minimum give each work an inventory number so that you can track you
progress or lack of progress and so that, without looking at the work,
distinguish one from another. Doing this will yield all kinds of
important information. You can track what times of the year that you
tend to be the most productive. You can study the range of sizes and
types of work that you have been making and you will be able to discover
your working pattern and rhythm. Knowing these things from your record
keeping will greatly increase your ability to plan out your future and
understand your limits.
As a young artist you have no history except the history that you
learned in art school. From keeping records of your work, you are
building a history for yourself that you will later be able to deepen
your self-knowledge with. This will help you to focus on your main
interests instead of drifting along from one impulse to another without
being aware of the larger patterns that will be emerging in you work
over long periods of time. The more clarity that you can achieve about
you working process, the more clear and refined your work will become
and therefore, the better it is for your business.
Personally, I found that if I work in series, I can build several
cohesive bodies of work that I can market and that viewers can identify
as my work. This does not mean that you have to develop a 'signature
style' that you are going to be stuck with for the rest of your life.
Break down the various concerns within your body of work and isolate
them into several different series of work so that you can pursue
several avenues of research at the same time. This way, when you have
come to an impasse in one branch of your work or you have played it all
the way out, you have several other ongoing series of work that you can
jump over to without coming to a standstill. In addition, this gives you
the ability to experiment in one body of work and then import successful
techniques or elements into other compatible series of your work.
Working like this with several directions being developed you can work
on without a pause.
Picasso, I notice did this - by doing something else, he took a break or
rest from one thing while doing another and then went back to the first
thing when he was refreshed. Put yourself on the same rigid schedule you
would do on any job. Being an artist is about the hours put in to it not
the years. Lots of people can say they have been working as an artist
for years but they might mean they put an average of 5 hours a week at
their art on saterday afternoon. You can see that someone who puts in 60
hours a week for a year has put in the same as 12 years of the other
person who put 5 hours a week. Big difference!
Secret: Talent without disciplined effort is worthless. Develop
disciplined work habits and be efficient with your time.
If you plan on being a full time artist you must learn to work in a
self-motivated and disciplined manner. This means that you are not
standing around waiting for inspiration to work. Inspiration comes while
you are working. To go into the studio and begin to work is the primer
that your mind needs in order to access intuition and inspiration. Much
of the work in the studio doesn't need to be inspired anyway. There is a
lot of work that you can do even if you are not able to get inspired.
Build stretchers if your a painter or sweep and organize or catch up on
your notes or read an art magazine. You can do some research at the
library looking for galleries that you might want to send slides to,
and, oh yes, take slides of your work (digital photos), label them,
organize them by type and date and protect them.
Set 'job hours' for your self and no matter what, work when it is time
to work. Make your working habits into a daily routine and stick to it.
When you use your art time for other purposes you are seriously
undermining your future. It is going to take "X' number of hours to
achieve a favorable business condition and it is a shame of you piddle
away those hours over years of time when you could have fit those same
number of hours into half as many years. In addition, if you work
regularly the people around you will realize that you are serious
eventually and won't see your art time as free time that you could be
doing some favor or task for them during that time period. When do your
friends come to bother you or expect you to drop what you are doing if
you are at a 'job'? Not very often! Thus, tell people you are at work
and you cannot be disturbed. Also, the advantage of keeping regular
hours creates a rhythm so that it becomes easy for you to work because
you don't have to waste energy getting yourself cranked back up like you
do if your work habits are more sporadic. Light incense of do some
repetative ritual every time when you first start working for the day.
This trains your subconscious mind to know when to be creative. And it
will be!
Secret: If you don't take yourself seriously, don't expect anyone else to.
It took me until I was nearly thirty before I was willing to say, "I am
an artist." When you are not making a living as an artist and your
hardly working in the studio, it is indeed a strange feeling to hear
these words coming out of your mouth. You feel like a sham.
Nevertheless, if you are doing the above mentioned items you have a
right to call yourself one even if it doesn't seem to ring true.
There are a number of things that you can do to help you take on the
personal identity of an artist and that you are in the process of
creating a profession out of your efforts.
1) Make up a name for your business like, John Smith Contemporary Art go
down to city hall and get an Assumed Name Certificate for your business.
2) Then go to your state comptroller's office and get a state sales tax
number.
3) go to the bank and open a business account with your company name.
4) get a Federal Tax I.D. number from the federal government. You can
write off you business expenses from your taxes if you are making enough
money that you are paying taxes.
5) start looking around for places where you can buy wholesale as a
business. Most places won't give you a discount but some will. Find out
who they are. For instance, you can buy canvas in bulk for wholesale
from canvas and awning distributors. As an artist you are a wholesaler
that means if you have a sales tax number, anything to do with business
can be purchased without paying the sales tax.
6) get some business cards, stationary, etc. with your business name on
it so that when you approach galleries you look like a business. This
always helps and make you look like your serious. Galleries want to feel
that they can depend on you to provide professional service to them when
they need it. Business-wise, think of yourself as a manufacturer and
wholesaler. If you don't feel that you will be at you current address
for a long time but will probably be living in the same city, get a post
office box for an address and don't put a phone number if you think it
will change. Or just put your website as an address and keep your
current address on your website.
7) put together your artist packet that includes images of your art, an
artist statement, a resume, a cover letter and a list of the images with
information about each one on it. Have several of these set up and ready
to go in a file box.
With a focused effort you can do all of these things in about a week's
time assuming that you can get some time during day-time business hours.
All of this effort and this business-image development can make a big
difference in conditioning your mind into the proper mind-set for taking
what you are doing seriously and encouraging others to do the same.
Secret: Even if people don't understand what you are doing they will, at
least, respect how well it was done.
I remember reading an article that someone wrote about a biennial in
Italy that discussed the general public's attitude about sculpture. If
the sculpture was in a traditional medium and of apparent quality,
nobody messed with it. If recognizable quality was absent, the pieces
were defaced. There are a number of interpretations that can be advanced
about this but for our purpose I am proposing that people in general
expect to see quality in art and when craftsmanship is lacking so is
respect from the viewer.
<>If there is any field where extravagance, in terms of craftsmanship,
can be lavished onto an object, it is art. Everyone can appreciate
quality and after a work's initial interest has been assimilated, it is
the quality of the work that will then be scrutinized. To be creative
without the application of craft-skill seriously undermines the
appreciation of a work of art and viewers will soon lose interest and
you will too. But if a work shines out, because of the skillful
attention put into a work's construction, the viewer will linger to
enjoy the fineness of the work's craftsmanship even if they would
otherwise not be interested in the type of art that is being presented.
To keep quality uppermost in your mind, think to yourself that your work
will one day be hanging in the museums of the world and everyone will be
handling it with white gloves. You don't want to be embarrassed by the
fact that you didn't bother to put enough attention on the quality of
your work to warrant such treatment. Construct your work so that it can
hang with confidence on the same wall with any masterwork of a similar
style found anywhere. Whether your work ends up in such places or not
makes no difference. But, by virtue of the fact that you have taken such
standards into consideration , you will greatly enhance the quality and
future value of your work.
Secret: If you don't have a place to work, you won't.
Without a dedicated studio space that is sitting there waiting for you
to come and work in it, the possibility that you will work on a regular
basis is greatly diminished. Depending on the type of work that you do,
you must design a dedicated working space into your living space. Even
if all you can set aside is a space the size of a drafting table, at
least it is something. It is a dedicated space. I have worked is spaces
as small as a tiny bedroom and been able to continue making art. So it
is not the size of the space that is so important as it is the fact that
it is a studio space that is not used for any other purpose. If you say,
"I can't work because I need more room to make the scale of work that I
need to make." then you are really saying , "I don't want to work." Live
within you abilities. If you don't have the space or money to work at
the scale that you dream about, adapt. Make smaller works, make models
of the pieces and use those as the main body of your work until you have
a bigger space and more money. There may be things that can only be
experienced at a large scale but if your prohibited from working at this
scale that shouldn't stop you from working. If you want to work you have
to figure out how you can do it. It is much better to make a hundred
models of future works and develop you image and style than to wait
around to win the lottery so that you can build that dream piece.
Secret: There is a market for almost anything.
When thinking about your work as a product to be sold, don't confuse
this with trying to guess what collectors want to buy. It is a bad
mistake to attempt to make art that you think people want to buy. Make
art that you want to make. Make art that is important to you. There is a
market for your work because there are collectors who will appreciate
what you are doing. Your market may be large or small but you won't know
that until it is out there in the public eye. So don't worry about it or
let this effect your creative impulses or progress.
However, there are things that you can do in designing you work so that
it is easy for galleries to show, store and handle it and for collectors
to buy and display it. For instance, if you make a lot of drawings, make
them on good paper instead of napkins or what ever is laying around.
This way, you are more likely to be able to convert you drawings into
sellable objects instead of just scraps of paper that have some drawing
marks on them. If your going to mess around with sculptural ideas, use
some decent material instead of a ratty piece of cardboard unless, of
course, that is an important material aspect of the piece. In short,
take presentational considerations into account on even the most
fleeting of your creative impulses. You are going to make art anyway so
why not add a little extra attention and make something that can be
appreciated as a work of art and sold when you are finished with it?
Secret: Art is art and business is business. Don't confuse the two.
Don't take business matters into account when you are working in the
studio. Make art! While you will want to make life easy on yourself by
designing your work to be sold, transported and stored, don't let
business effect your creativity. On the other hand, when it is time to
deal with the business end of things, be professional and be serious.
Don't let sentiment or ego as an artist effect you business judgment.
You, the business person are a representative of you, the artist. As a
business person, your interest is business not art. As an artist, your
interest is art not business. Learn how to interchangeably wear these
two different hats. When you can integrate these two very different
things and create a harmonious balance between the two, you will be
successful.
Secret: Respect your audience. Nobody likes to be insulted or made fun of.
If you intend to publicly exhibit and sell your work, you must take your
audience into consideration. Art is a form of communication so be clear
as to what you are communicating and to whom. Since your work will be
seen one on one with your viewing audience, you are carrying on a
conversation with the viewer all be it visual instead of audial. Thus,
imagine, while you are working that you are at a public gathering and
conversing with people. This is a good guide for how to work.Give enough
information in your art for people to feel that they have somehow
understood what you said instead of being cagy and making your work
impenetrable. This doesn't mean you have to be overly obvious or
excessively intellectual or provide a map to the uneducated. But it does
mean that you need to realize that most of the viewers don't know you
personally and if they cannot find an opening into the conversation,
which is your art, then you have lost them. This is your fault not the
viewer's. Provide enough cues in your work to give some modicum of
access to the viewer just as you would in a conversation.
Additionally, if your work is aggressive and insulting in its imagery or
is excessively crass or crude, it may have some shock value that will
get people to look at it for a moment, but not many people will be too
excited about having such work around on a permanent basis in their
personal environment.
I stumbled across this after linking through the Living Your Wild Creativity blog. It comes at a perfect time as I'm also reading The War of Art. Thank you for distilling so much information and motivation into this. Well worth the read.
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