Lisa Call

The New Studio

Moving Day

Last night I moved everything out of my old bedroom into the new bedroom and new studio in the addition. It is amazing the amount of stuff I had crammed in that small 10′x12′ room. Woohoo! A studio.

For now it’s temporary furniture as the real stuff is in storage (and not yet built). The studio is lacking lights and carpet but those will arrive eventually. I won’t put up all my design walls til the carpet is in.

I figure I have another month til it is completely done but it’s awesome to be there now with the temporary furniture.

I haven’t uploaded construction photos for the last couple days but I’ll do that later this weekend and put in some links. My cabinets are 1/2 up and things are changing fast. It’s beautiful.

Lines

Today is the last day to purchase my art at my previous prices. Starting tomorrow (when I get up and get to the computer to do the update) all of my prices will be going up.

These are last pieces I have for under $50:

Lines #12
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Lines #13
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Purchase Here

Lines #14
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Purchase Here

Lines #15
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Lines #16
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Lines #17
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Crazy Logs
©2009 Cherie Bagadiong
33" x44 "

Beauty from Scraps

For a while Cherie would leave comments on my blog asking to buy my hand dyed fabric scraps and I’d tell her "Oh yeah, some day". When I sold my house last year that day arrived as I was getting rid of anything that didn’t seem essential. We came to an agreement on the price and off the fabric went.

She’s been telling me for a while that the first piece (of many as I hear this barely made a dent in the pile) was nearly done. Today I finally got to see, and now you all do also.

Wow! Is that cool. To think those are all my scraps and actually a bit of my piecing as Cherie says: "The line with orange and white and a few others are the pieces that you sewed originally for your pieces." I think the white with red lines is from Structures #18, from 2003.

Cherie I’m honored with the lovely quilt you’ve made with my scraps.

Beautiful Stitching

Check out the great stitching she’s put on the piece also – she does this with a home sewing machine (with the feeddogs for you sewing types out there – it’s not free motion or with an industrial machine).

Great job!

Less Art

Today was a day with less art than yesterday (I painted the edges of canvases for Ascending #1 and Home #8 – so at least something). Instead more admin stuff that keeps our lives busy. Like calling insurance people, and ordering tile, and checking on where my studio lights might be and paying the mortgage. And working the day job.

And tonight I got another email from the folks that write my mailing list software (phplist) with a security update. It’s been a year and half since I upgraded so decided I should. And ran into a little technical problem that had my mailing list down for about an hour.

In the process of fixing that I accidentally deleted an important configuration file for my website (.htaccess for you geeks). Oops, no back up (er oops again) – so I had to recreate it. So if something is broken on my website please let me know – I probably broke it myself.

I did discover I needed to add my .ico file into my hotlink protection list so in the end it was a good thing.

Wonderful Response

And wow, in less than 20 hours I sold all of the ACEO’s I had left (I suppose an impending large price increase doesn’t hurt for selling work today). Thanks everyone that purchased one.

Today I also set up an art trade with Nichole Hyde for Markings #11. I very excited about this exchange as I love her work and I’m going to get a beautiful orange and gray piece that will look fabulous on my new purple bedroom walls.

This means there is almost nothing left for sale on the small arts for sale website. The last couple of months I’ve been so focused on the large textile paintings, which I can’t show until next year, that I’ve been remiss and making new smaller pieces.

Here are the 6" or larger pieces that are left:

Home #3
©2008
10.5" x 8"
Purchase Here

Structures #102
©2008
6"x 6"
Purchase Here

Structures #25
©2003
8"x 8"
Purchase Here

Structures #6
©2001
20"x 26"
Purchase Here

 
 
For those curious the new prices on these textile paintings will be as follows on February 1st if they don’t sell in the next 3 days:

Home #3: $640
Structures #102: $350
Structures #25: $350
Structures #6: $3000 (it’s currently priced at 60% of it’s old price as it was on sale at artfulhome.com)

Artful Home Changes

Speaking of Artful Home, there are changes afoot at the well known and successful online art website. Yesterday they announced a $25 a month fee for artists to be listed online.

It’s an interesting move to charge artists a fee for the privilege to be represented by a gallery. I suspect the video format of the announcement is an indication of some really great ideas to come from artfulhome even in our current economic climate, so I’m quite optimistic about the change and will definitely sign up.

The first wonderful change is that the artists will be able to edit their own information and control their retail prices and upload their own images. Yay! That will be nice (currently we have to ask to get things listed or changed and while I’ve had good turn around times it’s not as immediate as I would always like).

As long as they continue to do an amazing job jurying the artists, which I believe they will as quality is key to their brand, I suspect we have some really good things to come from this website. Will it be worth $300 a year? Their reputation is worth the investment to find out.

Change is exciting. Gotta think big and expand!

Ascending #1(working title)
Textile Painting
©2009
8" x 8" – To be mounted on stretched canvas
In progress

Ascending

The other day I was browsing facebook and came across a note that Martin Puryear had a fan page.

I started looking through photos of his work, which I love, and came across this piece: Ladder for Booker T Washington and it reminded me that I was going to do ladder themed art way back in 2001 but got side tracked by fences (my structures series, which currently is comprised of 111 textile paintings and still growing).

I wrote a note (ie tweet) about this on twitter. Encouraged by a friend who saw the note (thank you Joanie) I headed straight to the studio to get to work.

It’s taken a few more studio sessions to work out the kinks but Ascending #1 (still working on the title) is above. It’s not yet got the surface stitching so the texture, which will soften it a bit, is missing. I’m loving what I see so far. Much to explore in this new series.

Why Ladders?

It feels like the right transition from my Home series,which might be over, or it might not, we’ll see, right now I’ve got ladders on my mind.

This year is about expanding and growing. Ladders are all about moving up. And I’ve certainly looked at plenty the last few months during construction.

Not to mention the original inspiration behind ladders, which was my growing up in Northern New Mexico. I spent many hours at Bandelier National Monument climbing up the ladders to hang out in the caves.

We used to tell the tourists we were native Anisazi – er – make that Ancient Pueblo People – apparently Anasazi is no longer correct according to the Bandelier website:

This outdated term has a Navajo origin and can be roughly translated as "ancient enemies," thus the term is no longer used.

Hm – guess I missed that update.

Anyway, back to ladders, a popular hike in Bandelier is to the ceremonial cave which requires ascending a very large number of ladders to get to it. Or at least I recall it being a large number as I was terrified of heights and of those ladders. Every time we did this hike I’d be stressed about the ladders. So part of the appeal of doing ladder motifs is about courage and doing things anyway, in face of the fear.

Ascending – expanding – courage. That’s what the ladder series will be about.

The Studio is Painted

And speaking of going up – look at my studio! The paint went up today. I’m am dancing with joy over this.

They are scheduled to finish the electrical in there this week (well maybe not lights, they aren’t here yet) and I can move in (without carpet) by the weekend! Yay!! It’ll be another month before I bring in all my studio furniture and really set up but this is the first huge exciting step.

I’m going to do a series of post about building a new studio, I think in the month of march, so I’ll talk about paint colors and all that in more detail later. Everything is white except the stairway wall, which is a pinky/purpley light brown color, which ties the studio into the rest of the house as it’s all open.

It is absolutely beautiful!

Habits in a Construction Zone

Last week I was very disciplined, got a ton of stuff done. This week I’m just going with the flow.

My post about starting the habit of walking, well, out the window that went. It’s 9 degrees here in Denver. Who am I kidding, I’m not starting a new habit in 9 degrees.

I’m still thinking about habits I want to put in place, but when your kitchen moves around your house every month or so, it’s hard to have any sort of habit.

As you can see my latest construction photos – the kitchen is now in the entry way – which used to be my son’s bedroom until 2 days ago. New front door, many walls are gone and the place looks awesome (although maybe not finished): January 27 Construction Photos.

Four Days Remaining

I have been absolutely thrilled with the positive response to my announcement that my prices are going up on February 1st. Thank you to all of you for the positive comments, thoughts and a big huge thank you to those buying my art this month.

There are only a handful of pieces left on my small artworks for sale page. Thank you – it’s so exciting to sell my artwork.

I plan on focusing my effort in the smaller works to pieces mounted on stretched canvas and am not sure I’ll be making these little ACEO’s anymore. I like the look of the little textile pieces mounted on canvas so I might phase these guys out for a consistent look in the smaller sizes.

I still have a few available if you’re interested in owning one of these. [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.]

Available ACEOs [Update - they've all been sold] (I’m going for the world’s longest blog post here it feels like):

ACEO #28
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #19
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #21
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #23
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #24
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #25
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

Lines #7
©2008
4" x 4" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Exercise and Art

Sitting in front of a sewing machine for 22 hours in 2 days (like I did 2 weekends ago) is pretty taxing on a body, or at least it is on a body that is in it’s 40s. Without exercise I couldn’t pull off marathon weekends like that.

Yoga and walking are my current favored ways of moving my body and keeping my blood flowing. Walking clears my head, adds images to my idea store for future art no matter where I walk – in town or in the mountains. There’s always something to see to be inspired.

Yoga is truly magical and by far my most favorite way to exercise. Stretching, strength, mind body connection and relaxation all in one. Perfect way to prepare for a day of making art.

Daily Habit

These days I haven’t had done much of either of these. My floor is really gritty from the construction and many days there isn’t enough floor space and when the kids are home I wake them up if I do yoga early, or the construction works arrive and the saws aren’t very conducive.

So basically I just make a bunch of excuses and have fallen out of the habit of doing yoga daily. A year ago I went 3 months without missing a single day of yoga, now I’m lucky if I get in a few minutes once a week.

I’m craving the type of life where yoga is again a part of my routine. A perfect morning to me would be to get up at 5:30 for a half hour of yoga then a shower, some journaling, time in the studio, breakfast with the kids and then work (and since we’re talking about perfect that work would not be the software job – it would be the art career). Soon – yes soon.

I know it will be easy to reestablish the yoga routine the minute the builders are out the door. The walking is a bit harder. Sometimes I walk during lunch at work (my favorite is to walk to the nearest playground and swing on the swings). Sometimes I hike on the weekends. Sometimes I walk around my neighborhood and feel a huge appreciation for being able to live exactly where I want to live.

But nothing is habit and I quickly forget and then I stop. There is nothing preventing me from establishing this routine now so starting tomorrow I’m going to make it a higher priority to get out and walk at least 20 minutes, 5 days a week.

By end of february I’ll check in and see if I’ve got a habit forming. Time to add walk to my joes goals profile.

Why Exercise?

In addition to the obvious reasons – the physical ones – I find exercising to be almost vital for my mental health. I’m significantly happier if I’ve been exercising. Yoga and walking aren’t as strenuous as what I used to do but given everything else I’m interested in, it’s enough for now.

After my divorce in 2002 one of the first things I did was lose about 15-20 pounds via the divorce diet, which is really quite miraculous although I don’t recommend it, and by working out at the gym.

Then I started running, and that I believe, is what got me through all the mental stuff of the divorce and the first relationship breakup 1 year later. The negative voices ran circles around my head as I hit the pavement every morning training.

In 2003 I ran a half marathon and around the same time I found a lot of internal peace having worked out all of the crap out there on the sidewalk.

I ran for a while after that but not long, my knees objected and I didn’t have as much time as the art career had really started taking off and the need to get the voices out of my head diminished.

I would love to find the time to start running again, on a much gentler pace, as I think it’s an incredible way to keep myself in balance and happy. It’s such an excellent way to expend any negative energy on something positive.

We’ll see if that happens after the construction is over. It’s not a super high priority but I’ve got it on my list of habits to form if I can find the time.

 
What are you exercise habits? How do you think they affect your art?

Lines #7

Today I finally rephotographed Lines #7 with my better lens. It’s just amazing to me how different the color quality is between the 2. I suppose this might be obvious to a photographer but I’ve got 0 training in that area.

A big thank you to those of you that bought art today as a great investment since my prices are going up on February 1st. I think I have the best blog readers in the world.

Home #8
©2008
6" x 6" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Pricing Art

Pricing always seems to be a difficult topic for artists. Are we charging too much, too little? Are we competitive? What about the economy? Etc.

Our artwork is personal and pricing it is very personal. Putting it out there to sell takes a leap of faith. Putting it out there and declaring it has $X value is really putting oneself on the line. Rejection is never fun.

Last year I finally jumped in and started selling my art, leveraging my word of the year courage.

This year I looked at my word expansion and did a bit of math. Selling art at the prices I was selling it ($30 for a small piece that take 3 hours to make, market and ship makes for an income of less than $10 an hour if I include overhead) and realized that my art would never be my career if I didn’t start taking ownership for its true value.

New Prices

The time has come to expand and get serious about the art career. On February 1st I will be increasing the prices on my textile paintings.

I’ve spent many hours working out the details and final pricing. Encouragement from my mentors, my coach, artist friends, folks on twitter, and the thoughts in this article: The Art and Science of Pricing helped me solidify my thoughts.

I’ve also spent much time wondering how to roll out this change. Quietly or with a big splash? What do I say? Do I have to justify myself?

I looked at my other word of the year, integrity and decided to go with authenticity. Simple words and a heads up for those that have expressed interest in the work.

The prices are going up, not a little like 10%, but a lot to reflect the real value of my art, which is unique, powerful, gorgeous and to boot – it’s extremely well made. To give you a feel for what to expect, the above piece will be $350 on February 1.

A Good Time to Buy

If there is a piece of art you are interested in now would be a great time to purchase. Not only do you have a beautiful new piece of original art to enjoy you will have an excellent investment as it will appreciate practically overnight when my prices go up.

If you are still saving for a specific textile painting let’s chat and I can set up a payment plan. I’d love for you to own the artwork you have your eye on. Please email me with any questions.

Here’s a link to my small artworks for sale website if you’d like to browse my currently available small works: Small Textile Paintings For Sale.

Structures #50
Textile Painting
©2007
45" x 44"

Form Not Function

I’ve been most remiss in not blogging about a juried show in which Structures #50 is on exhibit for the first time. The show opened on January 9th and closes on March 7th at the The Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany, Indiana.

For more information check out the exhibit website: Form Not Function

If you see the show in person I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Construction Update

The house is cruising along at high speed these days it seems. The last few weeks my head has been spinning picking stuff out for it – who knew all the things I’d have to decide. But it’s actually all pretty fun.

I get to build my house – not some cookie cutter thing that is made for resale. I can see the builders roll their eyes on occasion but that’s okay cause they are really quite nice and we’re having fun. Well, maybe I’m having more fun than they are since it’s their job, but they are great to work with.

Today they finished up the roof and most of the siding and I’ve got a porch and they’ve started trim work inside and yes there’s drywall and texture and even primer paint. Tons of changes since my last list of updates way back on January 3.

Instead of posting all the individual day links here’s one to all of the days: Construction Photos . Each of the days has a short summary so you can see what they are doing that day.

I might be moving into my new studio in just a few weeks – there won’t be flooring and some lights but everything else is scheduled to be done. I’m so so excited.

Although this doesn’t mean we’re done, it means they can then move into the existing part of the house and rip it up and put in my new kitchen and bathroom. So at least another month of saws and hammers around here.

Accountability

I’ve found that one of the most effective ways of keeping myself on track with my goals and habits is to publicly hold myself accountable for completing those goals. Telling everyone I’m going to do something and then not doing it is no fun.

So every night I email a couple of other artists my list of goals for the day and a checklist of how I did – yes or no – did I make my goal. Amazing what a huge motivation that is for me – I love the days I can email a big batch of YESes.

A friend (thanks Lester) sent me a link to an interest website that can be used to help you publicly form new habits. It’s called Joe’s Goals and it’s really quite simple. Create an account, list some goals, share them with people you want to share with, then start tracking.

Studio Time

One of the habits I am working on is to get back to 20 hours a week in my studio so I set up a Joe’s Goals account with one goal: Studio Hours. I’ll give a check for each hour I spend in the studio and you can see from this "badge" how much time I’m working in my studio for the week.

As of sunday evening I’m at 43 hours in the studio for the month (an average of about 16 hours a week) – not too bad given the construction.

The 30day average isn’t very accurate at the moment as I only entered data for the last 18 days. But the chart shows my studio hours for the last week.

I’ll put this in the sidebar in the next few days if it seems to have value. I’m not sure I’ll put my other goals in joe’s goals – but maybe. We’ll see how the studio hours go and if it looks useful I might expand.

Lime Green and Gray

The photo above is of a few of the fabrics I’m using in Structures #111 (another piece for the exhibit that has requested I not show the work publicly for a while). I’m loving lime green and gray together and am now thinking I’m going to paint the stair landing up to my studio and my home office in these colors. Need to get a few more paint chips but it could be pretty awesome.

I haven’t put the latest photos of construction up on smugmug yet but we’ve moved on to doing trim in the house and all the new walls have the primer on them. Next friday they’ll primer the trim and paint my studio white (I’m still in search of the perfect white for this project). Then I will paint the rooms colors. It means I’m getting very close to having a new studio! Two maybe three weeks if all goes as planned.

Lines #17
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

What is a Painting?

I’ve been using the term Textile Painting for quite a while now and have gotten several questions about what it exactly means and why I’m using it.

After reading a post on Jeanne Williamson’s blog the other day I thought maybe I’d tackle the subject. From her post Definition of a Painter :

Andrea Myers considers herself a painter. You might not know it wandering through her show at Steven Zevitas Gallery. You’ll see ripped stacks of paper and fabric collages on the wall, piles of fabric on the floor and on a pedestal, but nothing you might immediately think of as a painting. That’s Myers’s point. The Chicago artist intends to push at the edges of painting’s definition.

A lot of Andrea Myers’s work is very dimensional (see here for photos). My intention is not to push the word painting as is Myers. Instead I believe I’m just using textiles instead of paint to provide my color and am indeed making a painting as most people think of a painting – an art object to hang on the wall.

Looking at wikipedia’s page on painting it defines painting as:

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base). In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting.

Citing Merriam-Webster Online as the source of the definition.

Why Textile Painting?

That definition pretty much covers what I’m doing – applying color to a surface. I’m using textiles to provide the color and the surface are the back 2 layers of the quilt (batting & backing – see my definition of basting for what these layers look like).

With the smaller paintings I then attach the 3 layers to a canvas. Very much a painting – just a different medium provides the palette that is applied to the surface.

Why don’t I just call them quilts? Because that word is a loaded term and generally includes conjuring up images of grandma. I love traditional quilts but that is not what I make so if I say quilt I have to start qualifying it and it’s pretty hard to move off the bed with those that aren’t familiar with fiber art.

When I describe what I do I prefer to start with the word painting and expand that image as I find it much easier to describe what the artform is from this angle.

Both "quilt" and "painting" need a modifier to more accurately describe what I do – might as well pick the one that I think is closest to the intention of my artwork – a means of expressing myself resulting in a non functional 2 dimensional object that is hung on the wall.

Lines #15
©2008
3" x 3" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Email

I get a lot of email. I think we probably all get a lot of email. I’ve tried a zillion different ways of dealing with it, none of it really working out.

I tried the David Allen method of stuffing it all away in a folder to keep inbox at 0 – yay – that was great – inbox was at zero, folder was full of unanswered email. The illusion of having things under control is pretty useless. Several months back I tossed all those unanswered emails back into my inbox, I’ve still got 20-40 of them left to deal with (like putting off an art consultant that wants a portfolio – crazy – what was/am I thinking?).

I had a huge ah-ha moment the other day realizing that my major problem with email is that I don’t really think it should take anytime at all to deal with. Pretty simple really, I needed to accept email is important and it does take time. Then the answer is obvious – just take the time to deal with it properly and stop resenting it, it’s the life line of my art business.

When I schedule my days I never build in a chunk of time to properly answer my email. I set aside time to make art and run errands and do specific art business tasks like answer interview questions or mail out work that has sold.

Well – duh – email is important – it’s mostly how I communicate with the world – I need to schedule time to answer it. Checking email is not the same as sitting down and answering it.

I know, I’ve read all about scheduling time for email but for some reason the value of doing that never really sank in until about a week ago. I think because I sit at a computer 8 hours a day for my day job I’ve always thought email isn’t something that needed this type of focus. I’ve now changed my mind. The 145 unanswered emails in my inbox, most since the beginning of this year, also convinced me that I need to do something different.

Email Habit

Time to develop much more efficient and useful emails habits. My initial plan is to first clean out the email queue and get my inbox back to 0. I figure this will take most of January. After that my plan is to set aside 30 minutes each morning before to handle art business email and another 30 minutes after work.

I’ll try that out for a few weeks and if it doesn’t work I’ll tweak it and keep trying til I find something that works. Maybe I’ll need to set aside more time a few days a week to deal with the emails with larger requests or that take more time to process.

I’ll let everyone know how it goes.

And big apologies to anyone that sent me email the last 3 or 4 weeks and I’ve not yet answered you. My plan around the beginning of the year for email was to completely ignore it. Which explains the long inbox. Sorry!

Photography

I have recently rephotographed a few of my newer textile paintings as I came to brilliant observation that my 2 lenses are quite different in quality. While the zoom lens is great for taking construction photos the colors are less than impressive. So I must remember to put the nice 50mm lens on the camera before photographing my artwork.

The red in Lines #15 above is much better (although still not 100% accurate – it’s really a bit more towards candy apple red than this version of slightly more orange red). I’ve decided to do the cropping, etc of these little pieces one at a time over the next few days, which conveniently gives me some images for my posts the next few days.

My goals for today were:

1) 10 hours in studio
2) massage appointment at 3pm
3) blog
4) journal
5) yoga
6) walk
7) to bed by 9:30

How’d I do?

1) 9 1/2 hours in the studio – yay. With yesterday that makes for 22 hours in the studio for the weekend and around 25 for the week. That is the most I have worked in my studio since February of 2008 when I had a week where I put in 45 hours. That was the week before my solo show opened so I was crazily finishing 2 last textile paintings before the delivery day.

Since that day I’ve had only 1 other week for all of 2008 where my studio hours topped 20 hours. Wow -moving has definitely impacted my art making. This could be the last of art for a while depending on how construction goes this week so a nice way to bring closure to the bedroom studio.

2) massage was excellent (I think I kinda fell asleep for a bit – hope I wasn’t snoring)

3) if you are reading this – yes

4, 5, 6) I put yoga/walk/journal on my todo list every single day. Journal I almost always do, yoga maybe 1/2 the time (for the first 3 months of 2008 I did yoga every single morning – can’t wait to get back into that habit), walk has been a ‘no’ for a while so it felt good to get out yesterday and today and move.

7) Yes – so goodnight. I hope you all had wonderful weekends.