Lisa Call

A few weeks back I first wrote about the Gee’s Bend quiltmaker that filed a lawsuit against those that were promoting her art.

Since that time at least 2 other Gee’s Bend quilters have filed suits and there have been several articles on blogs and in newspapers about the events.

Here are some snippets from some of these sources.

The first from a brand new Tinwood Alliance blog from the Arnetts, who are being sued:

The Arnetts and The Collective decided years ago to promote their quilts as a community – the Quilts of Gee’s Bend. Ms. Young now seeks to promote herself over the group; she is no longer a team player.

This is an excerpt from the Alabama Press-Register:

Echoing statements made by the Arnett’s lawyers, [Louisiana] Bendolph said many quilters didn’t want anything written down about the money they were earning because they were afraid it would jeopardize their Medicaid eligibility.

Bendolph acknowledged that she has made several times more money than Annie Mae Young says she earned in the years since the Arnetts showed up on her doorstep, asking to buy quilts.

That discrepancy in earnings is at the heart of the lawsuit filed by Young, whose works are among the most reproduced of all the quilters.

Bendolph said the reason she has made so much more money than Annie Mae is because she has control of her copyrights. She said all of her income was related to a series of about 200 limited edition prints produced from quilts designed by her and her mother-in-law.

“I have the copyrights for the quilts on these prints because I didn’t sell them to the Arnetts,” Bendolph said, noting she keeps 90 percent of her earnings and gives 10 percent to the collective, instead of the usual 50/50 split.

I’m confused. How can the Arnetts claim that Ms. Young isn’t being a team player when all players aren’t being treated the same?

Was that comment supposed to make me think: How dare some little old lady stand up and ask for what she believes is rightfully hers? She should shut up and sit down and just accept what she’s given and stop making waves.

I don’t think so. Hurray for her. I don’t know all the facts and I’ve never spoken to her but I give her huge marks for asking questions. From her side things don’t look right and instead of sitting there quietly and accepting it she’s doing something about it. For that I’m behind her 100%.

We don’t need to accept everything the powers that be tell us. If it feels wrong – question it. If you don’t get answers that make sense, go to the courts. That’s what they are for, to help sort out these types of issues.

Don’t try to tell me this woman isn’t being a team player. I’m not buying it. The Arnetts look out for themselves and even have a new blog to tell their side. And so should Ms. Young and the other artists that have filed suit.

Structures #75    ©2007    17" x 19"

 
I spent yesterday evening at Alyson Stanfield’s beautiful home in Golden with a group of wonderful artists to help her figure out what her upcoming book should look like. It was a fun evening with delicious food and an in depth conversation about book design. What color should the cover be, how should the information be laid out, how much white space, what kind of paper, etc. There was amazing energy in the room and lots of great ideas were tossed around. I hadn’t ever put much thought into these issues so it was an interesting evening.

I’m really looking forward to Alyson’s book – I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion. Great title and the contents will undoubtedly be wonderful knowing Alyson. She makes this topic, which makes me wince at times, easy to understand and sometimes even fun.

I stopped by Cynthia Guajardo’s studio on my way to Golden and got a fascinating tour of her ceramics studio. I love her work and it was great to see more about how it is made and it was nice to have company on the drive up to Golden.

 
I made the above piece, Structures #75, last weekend. Different color palette than Structures #76, which I posted yesterday. This piece is much more along the lines of my normal color pallete. Although I have plans to branch out more and try some different color combinations. That is one nice thing about smaller work, I can play with new colors and not have to invest several weeks into the piece. These smaller pieces are taking about 4-6 hours to complete.

One thing I’d like to work on is not having such straight lines in all of my smaller pieces. In the larger pieces I can get the expressive quality of line I like fairly easy but I haven’t mastered this yet with the smaller work – they are definitely much more rigid.

Structures #76    ©2007    12" x 12"

 
I decided to take my advice and yours and this past weekend I took some time off to relax. I also spent some time in the studio just playing. I made a sketch for this quilt over 2 years ago and finally decided to take the time to make it. I’ve been trying to loosen up with my work and this is definitely going in the opposite direction, but it was fun to just do something different for a change.

I need some small pieces for a few upcoming shows. I’m not sure this one will make the cut but I’m processing my digital images now to get some slides ordered from iprintfromhome.com.

Markings #15    ©2007    43" x 43"

 
Thank you to everyone that commented on my last post about my current pondering. I have a lot to think about and a lot of good points were raised and they gave me even more to think about. As usual it is always good to get input from other artists that have been through or are going through or even thinking about similar things.

My first thought this morning was that I need to stop whining and just do the work and things will happen. I do have realistic goals for selling my work, I’m not expecting to make a living from my art over night. For this year if I make my goal I won’t even cover my expenses and I have a very slow ramp up speed in mind. It’s just a matter of doing the marketing/promotion/gallery hunting work.

I do understand the gallery system and my artwork is priced to include the normal 50% gallery commission. I have always priced my work assuming there will be a commission, and most of my work has sold this way. I believe is if someone else is selling my work they should be paid for their effort. If I sell the work I deserve the commission. Selling and marketing is hard work, the person doing the selling certainly deserves to be paid and it is part of the cost of the artwork, as with any product.

Daniel Sroka’s comment and his related post was really right on track to my line of thinking. What are the markets? What are the costs and payoffs for each of these markets? Where should I align my work? Like Daniel I believe that multiple different markets might be the answer.

But in addition to those thoughts, I think – should I even be aligning myself to the market at all? That is always my struggle – selling out. What does that mean, what are the costs, what are the benefits?

Doing the marketing work has added another level of stress to my already very busy and crazy life – fulltime software engineering career, single mom, art career, home owner. Some day it would be great to get home from my day job and just sit down and relax and not worry that I should be doing something for my art.

I think that is a large part why I am questioning it. I feel I have little time for doing anything other than work and work. I should set aside at least 1 day a week to do nothing but relax, work on my yard, go hiking, read books, sleep, hang with my kids, etc.

If I removed the stress of marketing, my life would be easier today. But then I would forever be stuck in a cube to pay bills. Is it worth the pain today for a better tomorrow? Or am I better off just pushing myself, on my own, to make the very best art I can, which is what I have been doing for the past 7 years with good success. I’ve gotten some really good recognition for my work and I’m happy with it.

 
I’m now rambling so I’ll stop but thank you again to those that shared their thoughts here and in private email and I’d welcome further thoughts if you have any.

The piece above is Markings #15 and I’m extremely pleased with it. I love the lines and shapes and colors and pretty much everything about it. Someday the art just makes itself, and this is an example.

With one exception. Remember all those dangling threads from this post? It took 5 hours to tuck them all in. About half way through I bought some self threading needles and it definitely helped but I hate to admit part of my problem is that my near eyesight is not what it used to be. The last few months I’ve noticed a marked deterioration so taking advice from Tracy Helgeson I’m going to read a few books about how I might be able to correct this without glasses.

I just need to find some time to read.

Aspens #1    ©2002   16″ x 13″ (wxh)

 
This week I sold the above quilt from my etsy shop. Most of my readers know I don’t sell much work and until a few months ago I wasn’t try to sell work so it wasn’t surprising.

Now I’m trying to sell my work.

It feels really great when someone I have never met loves my work enough to purchase it (thank you G if you are reading this!). It is definitely a big wonderful affirmation.

 
But it confuses me. Before I knew what I wanted to do. I just made what I wanted to make (generally really large work) and I didn’t worry about the market. And I was happy.

Except I have to work 40 hours a week doing something other than making artwork so I can pay my bills, which is exhausting and really cuts into the time I have to make my work.

But more so it really cuts into the time I have to market my work, because my studio often seem to win over my office. I spend 8 hours a day in front of the computer at work, it is very hard to force myself to do it again once I get home.

I had amazing goals for this year to really get going on the promotion of my artwork but I have found I simply do not have enough hours in the day to do everything. I’m still plugging along but I see so many missed opportunities it’s driving me nuts.

So I’m stuck in this paradox where if I work as a software engineer I have to continue to work because I don’t have the time to truly devote to making the art produce an income.

It’s such a confusing catch-22 situation I’m not sure what direction to turn.

But I worry if I quit my job I might have to stop making the work I want to make, because I know that few people can afford my larger work such as the work I have for sale on the Artful Home website. So I think the reality is I need to find some galleries to sell my work if that is what I want. I love my work and know it is worth every penny I am asking for it but I do not have the time to market it myself directly. This is what galleries do and maybe it’s time to find some that will work for me.

I also really enjoy making smaller items and selling them to people that can’t afford my larger work. I have a small budget for artwork and I could never afford large work so I’m very happy when artists that I love have small pieces I can afford. So I need to figure out how to make smaller work that doesn’t undercut the pricing and quality of my larger work but is also more affordable. [something I think is probably no easy task]

 
I do know I have too much on my plate at the moment. My goals were very aggressive for this year and I can’t keep up. So I’m going to revisit them and come up with a revised plan for the second half of the year. So look for some posts about my new goals before July 1.

I’m not sure I’ve made much sense in this post. So I suppose the point is I have a lot of thinking to do about the direction I am going. The biggest one I have to sort through will be this:

Is selling my work something I really want to try to do. Or should I just go back and make what I want to make and forget about trying to sell.

 
One of the quiltmakers from Gee’s Bend has filed a lawsuit against several of the corporations that are using images of their quilts and the three men that were promoting their work, William Arnett and his sons. She claims she didn’t know her images were being used for anything other than the book and that she has never received "one penny from these enterprises".

You can read a short article here.

I always wondered if these women were being exploited and wondered what they felt about their work being reproduced on coffee mugs and rugs. I was sure hoping they were seeing a large portion of the proceeds. It will be interesting to watch this develop.

The Architecture of the Quilt, the second of the Gee’s Bend quilt shows will be at the Denver Art Museum in April 2008. I saw the original exhibit in Washington DC and I’m looking forward to seeing the second show. I have mixed feelings about the work. I’m not sure all of it is at the same artistic level and the show could use a heavy curatorial hand, but there are some beautiful pieces of abstract artwork made by these women.

I’m a little late but yesterday I finally got my veggie garden planted. I figure I missed 3-4 weeks of the growing season and we have a short season to begin with so I’m not likely to get much of a harvest. But it just isn’t summer without fresh veggies from the garden.

My daughter has been interested in flowers lately so we ripped out the strawberry bed that never seemed to produce much and yesterday she planted a bunch of flowers. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works out. I’m hoping the deer are gone for the season or I suspect these will all get munched down.

Today it rained all day. Hopefully a good thing for the garden, although I also worry it could have washed away the smaller seeds. Things had gotten really dry and we needed the moisture but I’m not sure the timing was so good.

I still need to mulch the flowers and new trees and fix up the edging around a mulch bed and then I can go back inside and ignore the yard again. It sure takes a lot of work. Definitely fun at times but also very draining.

Now off to the studio to hopefully finish Markings #15, tonight is my first chance to quilt in weeks. I’m looking forward to a more laid back summer.

Structures #59    ©2006    70" x 56"

 
On sunday Kaizaad Kotwal reviewed several of the art quilt shows currently on exhibit in Ohio for the Columbus Dispatch. I’m most excited – I got my first mention in a review (okay not entirely true – my work has been mentioned favorably in some Studio Art Quilt Association reviews printed in the members only SAQA journal – so this is what I consider to be my first real review as it is printed in a publicly available source).

The review of the Pieced Together show has the following comment:

One can get lost in Lisa Call’s monochromatic studies, reminiscent of constructivist art and including detailed stitching that unifies each work.

You can read the entire article here.

Yay!

Markings #15 – In progress

I haven’t had much studio time since I got home from my workshop in Ohio a month ago. Last weekend I was feeling very unbalanced and unhappy about the situation so I abandoned the yard and garden for a day and finished piecing Markings #15 and started quilting it.

One thing I learned from other participants in the workshop was that I was making my life much more difficult than necessary. Before the workshop, when I would finished a line of machine quilting I would pull the threads to the back of the quilt and tie them off and tuck the loose ends into the layers of the quilt so it looked nice and neat.

Now at the end of each quilting line I pull the threads to the top of the quilt and just leave them there. After I’ve completely finished with the quilting I’ll go back and tie them and tuck them in all at the same time. This should be more efficient. It will certainly be easier than trying to tie the ends off on the back with the quilt right side up on my sewing table.

Makes for a rather snarly looking mess right now. Although it’s easy to avoid the threads when working on different areas. If they were hanging on the back of the quilt they would get caught in newer stitching lines and cause a serious problem.

 
A few years back I used to just take a 1/4" of very dense (.5mm long) stitches at the end of each line of quilting. That was certainly quicker and easier than either of these methods. I’ve since decided that even though it is very unlikely to happen, if the thread did decided to come loose after doing this, it would look rather tacky and unprofessional. I want my work to be the highest quality, and so I now tuck in the ends.

I haven’t done much artwork lately as I’ve been busy with end of the year activities for my kids. This year in addition to performances, graduations, parties, etc I also volunteered to make a quilt for my daughter’s teacher. As you may recall I made a quilt for the school’s silent auction back in April and the teacher’s quilt looks very similar to the sailboat auction quilt. I used commercial batik fabrics for the teacher’s quilt so it’s not quite as bright but same layout and size.

Above is a picture of the back of the quilt. This is typically what the backs of my quilts look like. At least the very few bed quilts I make. I never buy large pieces of fabric so I always have to piece the backs together, which I sometime think looks better than the front.

I occasionally do this for my contemporary work but not as often as I will dye large pieces of fabric for the backs of my artwork.

 
I took inventory on how I’m doing on my goals for the amount of artwork I’d like to complete in 2007 and honestly – it’s not looking good. At the end of March I was on track with 9 completed pieces and things looked great but I completed only 1 large quilt in April and no pieces finished in May. So I’m a bit panicked about June. Can I catch up? Well no – I can’t finish 8 quilts this month but next monday the kids are off to camp or their dad’s house for 2 weeks so I’m planning on really buckling down and my goal is to complete 5 pieces in June. Not the 18 quilts I’d like to have finished by end of June but not bad.

 
I have been doing okay on my business goals, I’m still behind but I’ve definitely focused on the business side of art more this year than any other so that feels great. I have a couple big items, a press release and my first studio newsletter, that I hope to get out within the next 2 weeks and then I’ll feel pretty good about things.

[If you haven't signed up yet and are interested check out the info on my studio newsletter.]

 
As this is the first year I’ve tried to sell my artwork I’ve tried out a variety of plans. The last few days I’ve been thinking about my etsy shop and wondering if it’s really worth the effort. The only piece I’ve sold on etsy so far was to a friend of mine. After thinking I’ve decided that I really didn’t put much effort into it and I should give it a real shot. So I’m going to try. If after 6 months of honest effort it doesn’t work I’ll bail out, but I have to first really put in my best effort before declaring it a failure.

Reading a post on Seth Godin’s blog from a few days ago about different types of marketing. It’s pretty clear that I’m marketing to a few. He claims this is mostly about being exceptional and standing out, which is definitely part of the equation.

I certainly believe my work is exceptional. My work is interesting original designs, meticulously made with top quality materials and precision techniques that I have perfected over the last 25 years. So the thing I will need to figure out is how to stand out as exceptional in the sea of etsy, where there are 200,000 artists and craftfolks looking to sell their work. I definitely have my work cut out for me.

If I thought I could get away with it I’d probably just say “I’d rather be in my studio“, but that is just an excuse. Time to step up to the marketing thing because someday I’d sure like to stop being a software engineer in addition to a full time artist.