Lisa Call

Another post on my series on Scrum and how it relates to my art business. You can read all of the posts here: Scrum and Art.

Product Owners

There are 3 roles that people can play when they are on a Scrum team: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team Member. All 3 of these roles apply to activities I do as an artist so I’ll cover them in differing amounts of detail. I feel the product owner role is a key role so I’ll probably talk about it the most.

A product owner is responsible for something called a Product Backlog in the scrum world. In simple terms this is a list of things, called user stories, that need to be done. In the software world this is the set of requirements of the system being implemented. The product owner creates the back log and, maybe more importantly, they prioritize the items on that back log. They are the ones with the vision for what the product should and could be.

Today I became a product owner for one of the scrum teams at work. As the former requirements engineer of the team, I got elected (and I agreed) that I would do well in this role, as writing user stories is a lot like writing requirements. Okay, actually it’s the same thing. The entire team will help out with prioritizing the list and the vision as we all have a vested interest in the outcome of this experiment.

The Artist as Product Owner

This role of product owner applies to me as an artist in couple of ways.

First with my art itself, I need to determine what type of artwork I want to make. Oil paintings? Textile paintings? Ceramic pigs? That’s all pretty straight forward and obvious that an artist needs to do this, although not always easy. Nor is it always simple to restrict ourselves to just one or even two mediums. Today I found my self hunting through the Denver Art Students’ League class schedule thinking about taking oil painting classes.

In addition to the art, I also need to define my art career business objectives and prioritize the activities. Should I blog or should I enter a juried show tonight? What is the ROI (return on investment) for each of these activities? How long will it take to do these activities? Should I have a facebook account? Should I sell my art on etsy? Should I make reproductions of my work?

Some of the aspects of scrum can help me figure all of this out. Or at least organize it in a way that will help me see what my options are. The first piece is to figure out what the art product backlog is - what are all the projects and business ideas that I have. For those that like the Getting Things Done lists - this is very similar to a project list, although with more detail so prioritization and estimation of the size of the job can be more easilty determined.

The other day I created a bunch of user stories for my art business, in the next post I’ll share info on the details of that activity and what goes into a user story.

Remodel Update

The builder has come up with a very cool design for my house. Scope creep (ie it’s getting bigger) is occurring again but hopefully not horribly so. It is by far the best design so I’m excited to see some plans soon.

A huge bonus will be I don’t have to move out of my house for them to do the remodel. I was not looking forward to moving out a few months after moving in. The last design, which I eventually rejected, involved picking up my house and setting it in the backyard to put in a basement. Hard to live in a house when that happens. The new idea is just a backyard addition, with some remodel work in the existing house to fix stuff in need of repair. Not as much entertainment, but more realistic.

Purple Water ©2008 Tina Mammoser
2 1/2" x 3 1/2"

 
Not enough brain power tonight to write about scrum. I tried, I got distracted and have now spent 45 minutes typing with no satisfactory results.

So on to other miscellaneous short topics I’ve wanted to mention recently (mostly links out to the blog world):

1. Above is an ACEO I bought from the Cycling Artist - Tina Mammoser. I love her seascapes. Gorgeous. When my house is done and I have room for art again I hope to purchase a larger piece, but couldn’t resist this little purple one the other day.
2. Seth Apter over at The Altered Page has started up another round of The Pulse, a compilation of artist interviews.
   
   At the moment, he’s posting answers to the question about collecting stuff. My bowl of rocks is in this post: Show and Tell Part 1. This is all a huge amount of work on Seth’s parth - so thank you Seth. It’ll be a fun few weeks as the answers to the 5 questions are posted.
3. Came across a new artist blog, which I can already tell I’m going to love, by Diane McGregor. Definitely check out her blog Working Space for some interesting reading. Every post is packed full of great content.
4. This weekend I went gallery hopping with Alyson Stanfield, of artbizcoach.com, and a handful of other artists. We had a really good time and saw some of the preview art for Dialog: City, an arts and cultural event in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention, happening right now in our wonderful city. I can’t decide if I’ll head downtown tomorrow to see some of these events with the crowds or not. Looks fun, but also looks like a potential zoo.

Alyson took many pictures (if you subscribe to her newsletter you would have seen me this morning in the intro, well, except I haven’t been able to get it to load yet today - I think the server is having problems).

Here’s a photo she took of just me. Behind me is the Pepsi Center (the red building in the far back) - where much of the political action is. We’re standing on the top of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

Scrum It Is

I’ve decided after my last post on my Scrum Master training, and the positive response and my interest in the subject, to do a series of posts about scrum and the aspects I think are relevant to my art business.

Although scrum is a project management process for groups, and a lot of the focus of the process is on group dynamics, there are other parts of scrum that are quite useful for an artist maintaining a solo art business.

Today I’m starting with a concept that will fit into the larger framework of scrum later. But I want to just introduce it today as it feels like a good place to start (maybe because I feel I’m spinning my wheels some and not completing anything).

Quality and Done

One of the things scrum does an excellent job addressing in the software development cycle, is the issue of quality. Writing really good software takes time. Unfortunately time is something that there is generally not enough of during a development cycle. The result is almost always a compromise on the quality of the software.

Scrum addresses this by focusing a lot on the definition of Done and declaring that a feature is not to be delivered to customers unless it absolutely meets the definition of Done. Absolutely no exceptions are allowed if one truly follows the scrum model. In software this is difficult because management wants what they want by the date they want it. So to implement scrum correctly requires buy in from upper management.

For an artist we only need ourselves to buy into this. I know I’ve been bitten a few times by saying that a bunch of artwork was done when really it wasn’t. Then show deadlines approach and I end up having to stay up late to actually finish the art (add hanging sleeves or finish bindings, etc). Or I’ll ship some art out the door without the proper images in my database. The work sells and then I never get the images and when needed later I’m out of luck.

I’ve informally worked on defining what it means for my art to be done over the past years (from creating it, to the hanging sleeves, to logging it in the database and photographing it) but I never finished. Now I’m going to formalize this with a definition of what it means for a textile painting to be done, then I’ll hang it on the wall and remember my agreement with myself as to what this means and I’ll ensure that all artwork is completely done before dropping it from my

Business Done

I think this has a lot of relevance for the business side of art also. Many a project gets started but it never gets finished. I just move on to something else. Leaving behind many "gee - I should finish that" ideas and projects that pull me back in as I didn’t tie up all the lose ends.

Certainly blogging and other ongoing tasks like updating mailing lists and writing newsletters are never done. But each of these has a discrete component that does have a definite start and ending. I am going to work on focusing on my art business projects with more thought on completing the projects in their entirety before moving on to something else. And again thinking about what it means for these things to be done.

The sense of accomplishment that comes when something can be marked off a list and declared truly done is great. And I need to find that a bit more often.

The House Remodel

After a month+ of work, I decided to scrap the remodel plans. I had been concerned they were going to be too expensive and yesterday I got the first hint of numbers and it confirmed I was right. I had hoped I could turn this house into my dream home/studio/kitchen but the neighborhood and my checkbook can’t support the cost of doing that.

So after an afternoon/evening of sadness I got over it and went back to basics. Why did I move to Denver? What were the goals? I’ve decided while I might love this house and neighborhood this is not the right time in my life to build my dream home. Instead it’s time to live as cheaply as possible so I can retire as soon as possible. This was about downsizing, not dream home.

Although as much as I love this house, I can’t live in it for 6 years as is. First there are all the fixer-upper things that need to be fixed - like mold, electrical, quack quack. Then there is the issue of lack of studio space. My previous dream home list "must have" list included more bathrooms, a study, a bigger kitchen, master bedroom, and of course the 600 sq ft studio.

The new "must have", I really am downsizing, list:

• A studio with room for my 2 tables and some floor space - probably under 300 sq ft
• A second bathroom - but just a powder room - after flushing my cell phone down the toilet yesterday I decided this was really important. The kids and I will still share the single bathroom with a shower.
• A laundry room - again a bit of a luxury - but having the washing machine in my kitchen and dryer in the garage isn’t great for resale
• Fix the broken/hazardous stuff
• Add insulation and replace all window for energy efficiency
• Remodel the existing kitchen and bathroom with very simple features
• An air conditioner (I’m not crazy Alyson!)

So still a big project and certainly costly, but not ginormous and too expensive. The result should be a house that fits wonderfully into my neighborhood and is a cozy, happy place to live.

The Great Big Dream

Yesterday I went through a bit of mourning over the dream home that isn’t going to happen. I loved the floor plan we came up with and it would have be really wonderful. But I’m not giving up the dream. I’m just recognizing now is not the time for that particular dream to come to life. I’m not going to stop believing I can build my dream studio - cause I know it’ll happen eventually - when the time is right.

What is Scrum

Today was the first day of my 3 day Scrum Master Certification Training for my day job. Yes, I kid you not, Scrum training. It’s all the rage in the software development world. And no, scrum is not an acronym as you might expect from the software world, but instead it’s just like the term might be used in rugby - a bunch of folks trying to get stuff done in a way that might seem to be a bit of a jumble.

In short scrum is a framework for managing software development. It’s "agile software development " in that it’s adaptive and intended to respond quickly to changes in the market place. If you are really interested (or more likely bored or procrastinating) you can read about it on wikipedia here.

Why Scrum

The idea of Scrum is to not plan out an entire year or 2 year software release in it’s entirety before starting work. Requirements for a release always change as software is developed and in the old models of development responding to these changes was difficult and costly and always met with resistance from all parties.

With Scrum only a few of the features are decided up front (the highest priority ones) and after they are implemented, the next highest priority features are determined and then implemented. In addition each feature is completely implemented and tested before it is called done and the team moves on to something else. This ensures a high quality product by not leaving about bits of unfinished work.

Is This Topic Even Remotely Related to Art

In previous years I listed my annual goals in January, spelling out everything I wanted to do with my art and my art business for the year up front. Then spent 12 months attempting to get it all done, and occasionally changing my mind. Pften leaving bits unfinished, which is never very satisfactory.

This year I decided to take a different approach. In January I posted my annual goals and they were quite simple - do the most immediate and high priority tasks and when they were finished I would figure out what came next. See my 2008 Art Goals post for details.

Turns out what came next was moving. Now that I’m moved I have another month before I move out for my remodel. So art isn’t the top priority this year. That’s not to say I’m not working on it a lot, I’m just not setting big goals and getting upset about not meeting them.

Apparently I’m an early adopter of scrum for my art business and it’s worked out pretty well. I’m not all stressed out that I have a long list of goals for the year that will not be met. When the move and remodel are over I’ll just pick back up again with my next highest priority art business goal and get to work on it.

There are some similarities between Scrum and David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), which I really like, such as single list of all projects. I can see that some of the way I manage my GTD project and next task lists fit neatly into the the scrum methodology.

So in a way, this is kind of an art related post. It was also something to do as my new printer aligned the print head.

Structures #60    ©2006    33"x89"

Honorable Mention

Last thursday or friday I intended to write a blog post about the Denver Modernism Show. A few years back one of my readers recommended that I enter my work into the juried portion of this show. This year I finally took their advice and did so.

I had a textile painting accepted, Structures #60, and in fact won honorable mention in the show. They accepted 45 out of 135 pieces submitted to jury. I believe my piece was the only fiber piece in the show but I’m not certain.

It’s a short weekend event that came and went this past weekend (blogging after the fact is maybe not my best marketing effort). I didn’t manage to find time to attend as I was busy being interviewed by Spike for her upcoming new book, celebrating my son’s 16th birthday, and getting kids ready for school, which started today.

Next year I plan to enter, to win best of show, and go see the show. And, of course, sell the work I have in the show. Best to go for the gold.

As I don’t have a TV I can’t watch the olympics, fortunately a friend dvr’d some womens’ gymnastics and I was able to watch it this weekend. It’s amazing what those girls can do. When I was in high school my junior varsity gymnastics skills weren’t quite the same thing.

Thread racks installed in bedroom studio

Ready for Texture

Two days ago I prepared Structures #97 for the surface stitching. Last night I spent the evening with my builder working out what might be the final floor design so tonight I was ready to sit down and start quilting Structures #97.

Problem was all of my thread was jumbled up in plastic bags, placed there when I packed up my house a few months ago. It was all tangled together due to neglect and shuffling about the studio. Not very presentable or useable.

I use dozens of colors of thread on each textile painting and the thought of selecting the colors I wanted for this piece, without having them organized, hurt my head.

More Studio Set Up

So I spent a couple hours tonight putting the mettler thread back in order - around 190 spools.

[yes, I store it in numerical order by color on the thread racks - you can read more details of my super organized thread inventory of around 500 spools in this post about my thread.]

I moved the Valdani thread in plastic bin tonight as I don’t really have room on the wall for all of it.

My bedroom has more color with the thread racks on the wall. They may only be there a couple of weeks if I don’t have to go through a long building permit process. I should found out tomorrow what the approximate start date is on that project. I love the floor plan we came up with and am excited about the remodel.

Tonight when I sat down and spent about a half hour actually sewing and adding the texture to Structures #97 I was at peace. Making art, specifically textile paintings, is definitely my passion. It felt great to get organized and back to this part of the process.

Structures #97   (In Progress)    ©2008

Basting on a Bed

This evening I layered the composition for Structures #97 with the batting and backing, so I could baste the layers together with safety pins, before I start the surface stitching. As I talk about in my how I baste blog post, this step is extremely important in ensuring a flat finished piece.

I’ve perfected my method by pinning the layers to the carpeting in my studio (see the post above for details). I know exactly how tight to pull each layer for it to come out right for my style of stitching.

Problem is there’s not a lick of carpet in my new little house. Hardwood floors everywhere. I’ve been pondering how to baste this quilt for a week and finally came upon the idea of basting it on my son’s queen sized bed - the only large flat surface in the house.

It worked out quite well and I think the final textile painting will be wonderfully pucker free. Although I have to admit I had to remove at least 80% of the pins and redo them as I ended pining the layers to the mattress pad. I finally got my long rotary cutting acrylic ruler out to slide between the quilt and bed to prevent this little problem. With carpet, if a pin catches some fibers I can just yank it up and no harm is done.
 

The Right Tools

Today Photoshop CS3 arrived at my house and I installed on my new laptop. It’s amazing what 4 gigabytes of memory and a fast processor can do to speed up the manipulation of images. It’s wonderful. I’ll save hours of time each month not sitting around waiting for photoshop to load my huge raw image files.

The other exciting news is that I can process the raw images from my new Nikon D200 with this set up. I was unable to get my older version of photoshop to behave with a mixture of D70 and D200 raw images. This means I can now take my own high resolution images for publication.

Finally, I have all the right tools to do what I need with my images. It’s definitely time to take some classes to learn how to use them instead of my very improvised methods I use today.

Structures #97   (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

This evening I finished the construction of the composition on Structures #97, as shown above. The next step in creating a textile painting is to baste it, then add the surface stitching.

I don’t have my large custom sewing table set up in my new house yet but I think this piece is small enough to do the stitching with my smaller table. If it’s too frustrating I’ll stop and put it aside for later and move on to creating new compositions but I hope it will work. It will be fun to have a textile painting that was started and finished in my tiny bedroom studio.

Upcoming Week

This weekend was pretty laid back and relaxing. Friday night with friends, saturday in my studio and getting a few things done, sunday a beautiful 7 mile hike in the mountains with a friend and the evening spend in my studio.

Next weekend is crazy busy with birthday celebrations for my son (he’s turning 16 this week), a day/evening long interview for inclusion in an art quilting book, a free composting class offered by the city of Denver and my work will be in the Denver Modernism show over the weekend (more on that later), so any progress on art or art business goals will have to happen M-Th. Not a lot of time.

I decided the focus this week should be about making art - and doing a bit of organizing - specifically:

1. Baste Structures #97 and begin surface stitching - finishing at least 1/3 of the piece.
2. Play around with some of the house/home ideas I have in fabric.
3. Finalize floorplan for my remodel/addition (we are getting close).
4. Finish setting up my new laptop and retire my desktop.
5. Update my Getting Things Done list with all my projects (art and personal). I’ve let this lapse since my move and I’m starting to lose a bit of focus as a result.

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

The above image shows the current state of my latest textile painting. The past few days I’ve been focusing on paperwork and other necessary but maybe not so exciting household maintenance chores. It’s a nice reward to get in a bit of sewing on this piece through the day.

I use traditional quilt making techniques for sewing a pieced quilt top to construct the compositions for my textile paintings. There are no raw edge of fabric showing on the front side of my work as all seams are sewn and pressed to the back for a smooth finish.

Step By Step Construction Images

1. Remove the background and strips (that become lines) from the design wall and place on rotary cutting mat:

 
2. Determine cuts to be made for this step and place remaining strips aside for future cuts. Cut lines in background for inserting the fabric lines (the yellow handled thing is a rotary cutter - it’s like a pizza cutter for fabric and its how I do most of my cuts - occasionally I will use scissors also):

 
3. Stitch the fabric strips into the cut lines with a home sewing machine. I use a 1/4" seam allowance:

 
4. View of the back side before pressing

 
5. After pressing seams to one side (on the back), the front now has 2 thin lines sewn into the composition. I always press from the front side of the fabric and use a ton of steam:

 
6. Continue cutting and inserting lines until the section is constructed. This is the front side of this section completed:

 
7. The back side - you can see the fabric seams are pressed to one side. After layering with batting and doing the surface stitching this side will be inside the work and not see, yet the back side of my constructed compositions are always this neat as I think it adds to the quality of the finished artwork.

 
I construct each section using this method and then sew the sections together into a single completed composition. I hope to have Structures #97 completed by the end of the weekend. I think that will determine how long it takes me to set up my router and printer and scanner. So far I’m not having a lot of luck with my older peripherals working with Vista but I have a new version of photoshop CS3 on it’s way and am hoping that will solve my scanner problems. I’m likely going to give up with the printer as they are cheap.

ACEO #7
3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″
sold

ACEO #10
3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″
sold

 

ACEO #11
3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″
sold

Motivation Revisited

I wrote an article about motivation in my latest studio newsletter outlining 5 steps I take to stay motivated and on task to complete large projects (you can read it here - it’s the 3rd article: studio newsletter).

Another thing I do to keep motivated is to give myself rewards along the way and when the goal is reached. Nothing like getting something I really want to keep me moving forward. Sometimes it’s a simple as a container of expensive decadent ice cream or new art book to keep me plowing through a task. The best reward for doing household chores is a few hours in my studio.

Dell Studio 17

My big reward for getting my house sold and moving to my new home was to buy myself a new laptop. My old computer was 7 years old and not in the best shape. I upgraded the memory last year and that helped but it really needed to be put to sleep. In addition, having the big thing in my bedroom/studio/office was heating up the room and it was taking up way too much space.

So I ordered myself a "desktop replacement" laptop, which means it is big and heavy. It’s a Dell Studio 17 (17″ screen) with a fast processor, 4 gig of memory, beautiful high resolution screen and even a finger print scanner for security (okay - so it came installed - it’s kinda silly and I have no time to set it up right now but it’s still a fun toy). And best of all it’s orange.

I also bought my kids new laptops, also with 17″ screens, but theirs’ were Dell Inspiron 1720s and instead of an ATI video card they had nVIDIA. A few weeks after the computers arrived I found out that these graphic cards are probably faulty. HP has been offering extended warranties for effect computers but Dell is still dragging their feet. It looked like a situation I didn’t want any part of so I shipped the kids’ laptops back this morning and will replace them with Studio 17s with the ATI video cards.

Their laptops aren’t quite as nice as mine, but still way nicer than any kid might need. They were a big help during the move and deserve a reward also. I’ve also told them these laptops are their birthday presents, xmas presents and bribery for helping me move out and back in for the remodel. They grumble a bit with that comment but they are happy to have such nice computers they aren’t really complaining.

Markings #21 In Progress   ©2008

ACEOs For Sale

There are still 3 ACEO’s available for sale that I made last month to include with my newsletter. If you are interested in purchasing one (shown above) please send me email and let me know which one you’d like. They are $21 US and include shipping to anywhere. These 3 Art Trading Cards were all inspired by Markings #21,.

ACEO stands for “art cards, editions and originals”. Originally known as ATC, Artist Trading Card, and are traded between artists. When sold to the public they are referred to as ACEOs. The primary rule for an ACEO or ATC is they be 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ - the size of a trading card. They are created in many different mediums and are collectible, trade able and affordable art for everyone.