Lisa Call

Lines #30
Textile Painting – Mounted on stretched canvas
©2009
3" x 3"
$75
Purchase Here

A Slight Change in Prices

In January I raised prices on my artwork as part of my year of Expansion and Integrity.

Not long after that I stopped making new work due to the remodel of my house and building of my new studio. Now that things have settled down I’ve been reflecting on my pricing changes.

For the most part I’m happy with them and know this is the right direction to go although am making a few adjustments, which feels right. I was a bit jumpy about the new prices before, now it’s good.

Quick Recap on Price Increase

First, a quick review of why I increased my prices. Last fall I defined what being a successful artist meant to me and it included this point:

My work is valued by buyers and collectors, who are willing to pay a good price for my artwork.

The new prices put me more into alignment with this idea. Although not stated in that line, I think the idea that I value the artwork to price it reasonably is also important.

In addition to having prices that reflect the value of my artwork, the increases brought them in alignment with a sustainable art practice.

This part of my definition of success:

I quit my day job and live comfortably from the proceeds of my creative talents.

was not going to happen making $10 an hour or less selling my art.

The original article about raising my prices is here for those that missed it.

Gallery Commissions

The majority of my income from my artwork comes through sales of artwork through art consultants or galleries, who take a pretty healthy commission, with 50% being the most common. My previous prices were okayish if I assumed no commission.

I would cringe every time a piece was sold through these avenues. Not good.

Not good to cringe. Galleries work hard to market the artwork, art consultants need to be paid. I don’t resent paying them for their work and it is my responsibility to make sure my art is priced so that the commission is built in.

So my pricing now reflects the expected 50% commission to be paid to the gallery. It should have always included this, and it used to, somewhere along the way the value of my art outpaced my prices (looking at my records I hadn’t done a price increase in many many years – oops!)

Consistency

It’s important for prices to be consistent across all venues. Undercutting the gallery pricing isn’t a good business practice. But ignoring that, creating the artwork is half the value of art marketing it and finding a buyer is the other half.

Anyone out there selling art knows this, marketing is a big job. Doesn’t matter if it’s a gallery, art consultant or me doing that marketing piece, we need to be compensated for that effort.

This means that artwork sold via my website, where no commission is paid, is the same price as artwork sold in a gallery (artfulhome is the gallery that sells most of my art to date). So what does the commission pay for when I get to keep it? Here’s a partial list:

• Paypal fees (I’ll be adding a shopping cart soon also – that has fees).
• Shipping supplies (these are usually not covered in the shipping expenses) and time to ship. A trip to the post office is at least 1/2 an hour of time. Packing up the art to sell is non-negligible also.
• The time it takes me to list the artwork for sale on my website, again a fairly big chunk of time.
• My marketing time. I write a ton of informative articles on my blog that build my readership, which in turn builds my fans, which eventually results in art sales. At least that is what I consider to be my marketing effort – to just be me – to write about being an artist. To help people out that ask questions (although I’m behind on blog comments – oops!)

Affordable Art

All of this is what I was thinking when I raised my prices and I kinda ignored this line from my definition of being a successful artist:

I create an affordable line of work for those that can not afford my larger pieces.

This is important to me. I buy a lot of these lower priced artworks from other artists and really appreciate them offering smaller works I can afford. With my lowest prices at $120 for my 3"x3" pieces technically I did have lower priced art but it was a stretch for many.

So I’ve rethought some of my pricing on my smallest work and have decided I will not sell my ACEOs or 3"x3" textile paintings through galleries.

They will only be available on my website so I’ve lowered the prices on these. Not back down to where they were, because that isn’t sustainable, but a compromise between working for $10 and covering a full marketing commission.

The new prices for ACEOs will be $40 and the 3"x3" will be $75.

Lines #31
Textile Painting – Mounted on stretched canvas
©2009
3" x 3"
$75
Purchase Here

Smaller Work Pricing

I adjusted the prices of the work under 12" square to make more sense – what the heck was $490. That’s just weird. So I’m a little OCD - I like round numbers.

For total transparency (and because I find it really helpful when other artists share their pricing policies) here are my prices for 2009:

ACEO (2.5"x3.5") – $40
Calling Cards (2.5"x3.5" mounted on canvas) – $60
3"x3" (mounted on canvas) – $75
4"x4" (mounted on canvas) – $125
6"x6" (mounted on canvas) – $275
8"x8" (mounted on canvas) – $450
6"x12" (mounted on canvas) – $500
8"x10" (mounted on canvas) – $600
12"x12" (mounted on canvas) – $750

Going forward I will only be creating artwork in these sizes (other than the ACEOs) mounted on stretched canvas. I have a few older quilts in this range that are hung directly on the wall, these pieces are all priced $50 less than above.

Larger Work Pricing

The pricing of work larger than 12"x12" hasn’t changed much since my increase but since I’m writing about pricing I thought I’d include the info on how I do this pricing also.

I first do a calculation of the price of the work based on size using the following values (this is all done automagically in excel when I enter the size of the artwork into my spreadsheet):

$750 per sq ft for work < 10 sq ft
$700 per sq ft for work < 15 sq ft
$650 per sq ft for work < 20 sq ft
$625 per sq ft for work < 30 sq ft
$600 per sq ft for work > 30 sq ft

I look at the number and then round it up or down to a nice happy even number. The rounding up or down is based on how good I think the piece is, the age of the piece and any other factor I think influences the value of the work.

Because my work is all such irregular sizes (the advantage of not using premade canvases but creating art to any size I please) this helps to group pieces roughly the same size to roughly the same price.

Never Lower Your Prices

The rule in the artworld is that you can never lower your prices, you can only raise them. I guess I’m ignore that and lowering the price on a few sizes.

Sometimes one must just ignore all the rules and do what is right.

Lines #33
Textile Painting – Mounted on stretched canvas
©2009
3" x 3"
$75
Purchase Here

 
 
PS After all of that, check out all 12 of the new 3"x3" textile painting on my affordable art for sale page.

I took all the sold work off there so you can just see what’s available.

It was a big house cleaning day – of prices and webpages.

"Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it."

- Alan Perlis

This quote is from a computer guy but I find the statement is also true about my art.

 
(short post tonight – I’m exhausted and going to bed early – what a luxury)

Structures #73 – In Progress
Textile Painting
©2009 Lisa Call
Detail

Holiday Weekend

This 3 day weekend I work in my studio 16 hours. It was the first weekend it felt like home again. I’ve loved having the space but hadn’t really felt it was broken in yet. Now it does.

I’m most thankful it rained all weekend, so I relieved myself of all responsibility for pulling the nearly 2 foot tall weeds in the landscape free yard. The day will come when I’ll have to deal with that issue, but with the rain I was free to just make art.

I’m nearly finished putting the surface stitching (quilting) on Structures #73 and started some new ACEOs. The first ones of the year.

I also made big progress on Structures #100. I decided to make it the first new larger piece I designed in my new studio and it went together well. The composition is done so now I need to get it basted so I can start quilting it also.

Planning

It feels great to be motivated to make art again. Seems like it’s been a long time.

After my post a few days about about adding some more structure to my studio time, I decided to set some specific goals for the year to keep me motivated.

For 2009 my studio goals:

- 550 or more hours of studio time (~10 hrs a week)
- 256 or more days making art (70% of the days in the year)

As of today I’ve put in 126 hours in the studio and made art 68 days this year. To make my goals I’m going to have to make art pretty much every day for the rest of the year and put in at least 15 hours a week.

I’m be in South Africa for nearly a month later this summer, so I’ve factored in that time away from the studio also.

As a point of reference, in 2007 I put in 870 hours in my studio. The year I had a very clearly defined goal of 20 hours a week in my studio.

In 2008 it was 446 hours in the studio. A year with the laid back “let’s not set specific goals” plan. I also sold my house, moved into a house with no studio and started a major construction project – so to be fair I was a bit busier also.

Next up is going to be doing some planning and setting specific goals for the business side of art. I’ve been very reluctant to do that in the past and I think it’s time to get more serious about tracking the hours I spend on the business and keeping a better schedule.

I have big ideas of things I’d like to accomplish – specific goals will help me get there.

Lines #22
Textile Painting
©2009 Lisa Call
3" x 3"
$75
Purchase Here

Photography Lesson

This morning I took a 3 hour private photography/photoshop class. For years I’ve been saying I needed to figure out photoshop better and how my camera worked better. I finally did it.

Some of the best money I have spent in a long time. While I’m still not an expert I know a lot more and don’t feel quite as confused about the entire process. Amazing how investing in my career and gaining some skills can feel so empowering.

Lines #22

Above is Lines #22 processed today just after the lesson. It’s a bright magenta and lime green textile painting.

Below is what it looked like in my studio newsletter that I sent out a few weeks back:

Not so good on my screen. In fact – horrible.

Color Profile

The major different between these 2 images is the color management. I had used the Spyder 3 to calibrate my laptop monitor. Basically is was really really far off. So we removed the profile and things look a heck of a lot better now. All the images that were processed prior to getting my laptop are looking right again.

My big to-do after this lesson is to buy a flat screen monitor because my laptop monitor is not the best choice for doing color work. I also need to buy the xrite color management stuff instead of using spyder. It kinda worked on my old desktop monitor but it pretty useless for my laptop.

What I learned

A lot of folks on facebook asked me to pass on what I learned today. I said that was kinda hard because I filled in gaps in my understanding by taking a private lesson vs. doing a group class.

I’ve done a lot of reading about digital photogarphy/photoshop stuff and used to hang out with a bunch of photography geeks at work (we had a weekly photo geek lunch hour where we talked photoshop and shared photos by projecting them in one of our conference rooms). So I had a basic understanding about how all this goes together.

So the general list of things we covered today:

- Color management on windows – how it works – what the profiles are doing (translating the colors between between color spaces – this is a huge topic and tons of much more qualified people than I have written about it. Here’s an article by the guy I took a class with: Color Profiles).
- How to take an okay photo in my studio – it’s not a perfect setup but it’s what I have. I might invest in a few lights to get more even light coverage. The big thing I learned here are some tricks on how to get the image squared up – use a grid – probably obvious but I hadn’t thought of it.
- Some default settings for photoshop and camera raw in photoshop for better images. (use perceptual intent if you care mostly about color relationships, use relative if you care more about tonal relationships – I’m mostly thinking I’ll use relative)
- Some processing/default settings for camera raw – I think photographers don’t use adobe camera raw so much any more but it’s good enough for my purposes.
- How to sharpen images using the filter sharpen->unsharpen mask.
- We looked at some very specific images of mine I’m having problems with. Really saturated colors are definitely the most difficult.
- How to read the histograms.

I’ll be hiring him to do a second lesson that will focus on printing my images and getting them as good as possible in photoshop.

I’m not sure of what help that might be to anyone but wanted to summarize it for those that asked.

For anyone in the Denver area looking to hire someone for similar lessons the guy I hired was Nat Colalson. He does beautiful photography and also does a lot of teaching.

Quick post tonight as I cook dinner and head out the door to an artist lecture at the Denver Art Museum by Sandy Skoglund.

One of the things I love about twitter are the quotes people post on occasion. Here are a few that resonated with me today:

Failure

“People fail in direct proportion to their willingness to accept socially acceptable excuses for failure.”

Tweeted by Sandra Martini

This is so relevant to what I wrote about yesterday about not making goals because I wanted to be the free-spirited artist type. It’s socially acceptable to not get stuff done cause I’m an artist and schedules are stifling.

Well – forget that – I’m not going to fail and my art career is not going to fail cause it’s cool to just float about unrestrained by structure.

Preparation

“The will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare.” – Thane Yost

Tweeted by Jane Button

I read this and immediately equated ‘prepare’ with ’setting goals’. Some other day I might have read it differently but today it dove tails nicely with my intent to get back to structure.

Bathing

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” ~ Zig Ziglar

Tweeted byValery Satterwhite

Love this. I journal every morning and most mornings I set and intent for the day. When I can’t think of something specific it is often something along the lines of ‘live the day focused on the tasks I want to get done.’ Staying in the moment helps me stay motivated for the current task.

Bumper Sticker

My tweet for the day:

"Want to get new bumper stickers for my car – anyone have some good art ones? Any pointers to sources for art related bumper stickers?"

Didn’t get any pointers. So how about you blog readers? Do you have any art related bumper stickers on your car? What do they say?

If you don’t have one but wanted one – what might you put on it? Anyone have resources for some funny pre-made ones?

Page From My Sketchbook Used to Track Studio Time (click to see larger image)

Tracking Studio Time

I wasn’t planning on writing tonight but I want to write this down while I still remember the thoughts I had today thinking about the post I wrote last night and some of the comments that were left.

I mentioned several times on my blog that I track my studio time. The posts I wrote early in 2008 ( This One and Another One ) are very interesting reads.

These posts indicate a change I made in tracking studio time. I went from being very systematic about it, to taking a more laid back approach. It was all part of the search for who I wanted to be.

I’ve since decided that is a bunch of crap-ola. Yep – I’m going back to a definite plan for how much work I want to get down in my studio.

It Didn’t Work

I discovered that trying to take the "Oh, It doesn’t matter, I’m more floaty and creative if I don’t put rules around it" approach to studio time resulted in my getting significantly less done.

In Jan-Mar of 2008, right after I devised that crazy scheme, I did basically nothing in my studio. My kids were in Europe – I was home alone – there were no excuses or distractions. It was simply me being less systematic. As a result I would often say "I’m tired" or "I don’t feel like it" and stuff like "I’ll do it tomorrow".

None of that stuff really results in things getting done. Instead it’s a good way to get nothing done but have a lot of lofty reasons for why I didn’t.

Like "self care is just so much more important than making art". Hm – NOT! Making art is the #1 thing I say I want to spend my time doing. Not avoid doing.

Why Does A System Work?

So I’ve thought a lot about why my old way of doing things, with rules and precise tracking, worked and I think the answer is it is basically the same thing as setting a timer.

There has been tons written about boosting productivity by using a timers (check out these google results). I think my old plan was essentially that. I timed myself.

When I walked into the studio I trained myself to look and the clock. That was it – timer was running. I didn’t stop working until the time was a even increment of 15 minutes. And then I wrote it down.

Because the timer was running I wasn’t tempted to run off and do other stuff, like check email or do my laundry.

When I left my studio the timer was off – I wasn’t racking up minutes. So I’d hurry back to get the timer going again.

I know this sounds kinda crazy but after seeing it in action and reading all the timer and productivity stuff (my favorite person that write about this is Christine Kane) I’m convinced – it really works. And not just for studio stuff. I now use a timer for my writing and planning art business stuff now also.

I have been spending 15 minutes each morning entering addresses into my snail mail mailing list. Fifteen minutes isn’t a lot but over time it adds up and with no big drama effort, I’m going to have the last 18 months of avoiding this task whipped into shape.

Going with No Goals

In my attempt to be more floaty I also gave up setting goals for how many hours I would spend in my studio each week. I decided to just let it happen. As I mentioned – it didn’t.

What happened is the emotional side of me got all excited and it had a field day. Woohoo – we get to run the show and stop her from doing what she wants.

I only made art when I felt like it. Or when I magically had time.

Okay – really – I work full time as a software engineer. I’m a single mom every other week with 2 teenagers constantly wanting stuff. I own my home, have to pay the bills and do all those house things that need done. There is the yard (okay there was the yard – it’s now dirt). Family, friends, quack quack quack.

I don’t have time to put in 20 hours a week in my studio so of course if I give myself an out I’m going to take it. There weren’t any goals so it didn’t matter. No disappointment so why bother doing it.

Thumbs Up To Goals

So forget that no goals thing. I’m now setting my goal to 15 hours a week. I’m making it lower than before because I also plan on doing a lot more art business stuff than I used to.

By setting goals I have something to aim for. I may not always make that goal but by identifying it and writing it down I have a much better chance of making my goal than without writing it down.

By setting goals I am no longer giving the emotional side of me free reign to do what I want. I get scared or worried or anything about what I’m working on. Great – recognize the feelings – but I’m not going to let it stop me from pushing forward.

Eventually those feelings realize they aren’t in control and they get a little less loud.

By setting goals and being systematic I’m significantly more creative and make much more art than when I’m all new-agey. Trying to be like those non-driven people I sometimes think I should be like, who always seem more creative and spontaneous and fun, didn’t work for me at all.

I need structure and systems for my creativity to work.

The Past

I used to put in 20 hours a week in my studio. Always. Every single week I’d prioritize the creation of art and I would make sure I found the time to make art.

Then I decided I needed to change my life. I wasn’t happy, things weren’t working. I was letting things into my life that I didn’t absolutely love. I wasn’t making choices, I was just letting life happen.

So I took some time to discover what I really wanted. The first step in this process was to eliminate things from my life that weren’t working. The boyfriend, the clutter in the house and eventually the house.

This lead to the remodel project, which I’ve been writing about weekly since last August. Wow. I contacted the contractor in July – we started the design in August. That is 10 months of construction on my brain.

The house has been 99% done since the end of March but I needed April and May to settle in, get the punch list finished and write about the process.

The Present

So now – here I am – where am I? I certainly have changed my life. I love living in Denver vs. the suburbs. I love living my life with intention. I love my new home and new studio.

The turmoil is over and when I look back it’s been 2 1/2 years since I’ve been at this place (the year prior to my move my father was ill and passed away, as did 3 other close family members) with no big things to distract me.

This is a very exciting and scary place to be. I know myself. I know this is the time when historically I am very likely to create yet another diversion to keep me from having to answer that scary question:

"What Do I Want?"

It’s good to know this – to have the awareness. Because this time, I’m not going to do it. No boyfriends, no more moving, no more building. This is it. Just me and my dreams. Time to create them.

The Plan

I’ve been working on answering that question last 4 months. Thinking about what I love doing. Writing, reading, thinking big.

I’ve made tons of notes on scraps of paper it’s been fun to hint around at the answer to the question. Wonderful fun ideas coming up daily.

This dreaming part, which is wonderful and fun and vitally important, is now ready to take a more definite shape. I have a good idea of what I want, now time to make it concrete.

I’m ready to move from dream to plan so for that to happen I am putting the following task on my todo list daily:

- Planning – 30 minutes or more

I’m taking all those wonderful ideas and pulling them together into a cohesive plan that I can take action on. Priorities and systems and schedules.

And all of this is very fun, but it’s also pretty scary. Cause it’s a lot of work. Because all the big dreams that my right brain came up with, my left brain is saying "You are going to do WHAT? Do you know how much work that is? Do you even know how to do that? "

So I think those thoughts and still I move ahead, cause in addition to distractions I’m not letting fear stop me either. I just think about the next 30 minute planning session and I am making steady progress forward – turning the dream into reality.

And, because first and foremost I’m an artist and love creating art, the other thing on my daily todo list is:

- Create Art – 1 hour or more

I am committing to returning to 15 hours (or more) of studio time every week. I debated going back to 20 but decided I’m doing more art business work so I’ll stick with 15 for now.

I’ll let you all know how things progress.

Studio Posts

I’m not quite done with my posts on building a studio. Next up will be a post on my studio storage.

Tomorrow I plan to catch up on all the blog comments I’ve failed to respond to the last few weeks and see if there are other studio topics I need to cover based on the questions.

Once that is done I’ll need to think up another theme for my blog posts for June. Hm. Somewhere I had a list…

Laundry Room as Dye Studio

I did not include a separate room for my dye studio in this house. I considered it but since I don’t dye fabric very often it seemed like a waste of space. My plan this time around was to either dye fabric outside or in the garage or maybe laundry room.

I did preplan a utility sink and some counter space in the laundry next to the washing machine to facilitate the rinsing and washing of the fabric and for dyeing small batches of fabric.

 
As it turns out, the laundry room ended up much larger than planned (clearly the universe telling me I deserved a nice space to dye fabric) so I will able to set up a table and do all of my dyeing in there. In my old house the dye studio was in the basement and I had to carry the tubs of dye/fabric upstairs to my laundry room. Now it’s all going to be conveniently co-located.

Flooring

 
While it was easy to pick flooring for the studio, it was a bit more work to pick out the perfect flooring for the laundry room/dye studio.

It goes without saying I would be spilling dye on the floor, so tile was out. The dye is a fiber reactive dye the chemically bonds to natural fibers, so it won’t bond to other surfaces and can be wiped up without leaving color.

The problem with tile is the grout lines – too hard to clean and keep the dye from soaking in where it can’t be wiped up. With the new grout sealers it might have been okay but that is too high maintenance for me. Plus I’m really not a big fan of tile. Too hard and cold for my tastes.

The woman that helped me with all of my flooring, suggested some very cool and durable vinyl tiles that are used in many industrial sites. They ones I picked were designed to look like painted concrete and are very smooth. The manufacturer was Burke and I’d link to their website but it seems to not work.

I painted the walls a color to compliment the flooring. Since I don’t do very precise color matching when I dye I didn’t worry about how this might effect the results. Although it will be interesting to see if my palette shifts from by unfinished basement dyeing days to peachy colored laundry room dyeing.

Lighting

 
I knew I would be able to do my fabric dyeing in the laundry room when it was time to pick out lighting so I went with a nice fluorescent fixture that took 4 T-8 bulbs. I have daylight neutral bulbs (generic ones from Lowes – not fancy expensive ones this time).

It’s a bit of overkill for the family doing their laundry but with the window in the door to the outside the light isn’t used all that often. It will come in very handy for dyeing fabric.

Storage

 
Dyeing fabric takes a lot of supplies: plastic bins, measuring stuff, dye, etc etc. So instead of a big coat closet (for very few coats) I repurposed the laundry room closet into a dye supply (and misc art supply) closet.

Everything I need to dye fabric is in this closet except the fabric, which I keep in my studio storage because I have to cut it into 1 yard lengths before I dye. It’ll all be very convenient and easy to do a batch of dyeing and then clean up.

I’m planning to do my first batch of dyeing in the new setup over memorial day weekend and am really looking forward to it.

Quilt National 2009

Memorial day weekend is the opening of Quilt National 2009, the fabulous biennial show of some of the best contemporary textile/quilt art always has some interesting artwork to enjoy.

I thought I might be bummed around the opening since my work was not accepted this time around but I’m so busy with my own projects it’s not an issue. I do want to extend a big congratulations to everyone that does have work in the show.

I won’t be going to the opening but I’ll definitely be purchasing the catalog, which is now available on amazon: Quilt National 2009 Catalog. If you are going to the opening – enjoy.

Why Carpet

The decision on flooring was very easy for me. I knew I wanted carpet.

I baste my textile paintings (aka quilts) on the floor and the carpet is a key element in getting that to turn out correctly for me. I wrote a long how-to article on how I baste that you can read here: Basting a Quilt (that post also explains what basting is for those that aren’t quilters and are curious).

I also do a lot of sitting on the floor. Not just in the studio but in my entire house. Having concrete and chip board floors covered in drywall muck during the construction was one of the biggest challenge for me – who wants to sit on that!

I do have hardwood in the kitchen/living room but bedrooms have to be carpet in my house. My real estate agent says for resell carpet is the best for offices because anything else tends to echo too much (at least that is what she told me when I recarpeted my old house to sell it). I end up sitting on the floor to sort papers often so it’s definitely my choice also.

I have a thought in the future I’ll do more painting and the carpet is definitely not the ideal floor surface for such work, but I’m sure I’ll find a solution. Like a drop cloth.

I considered doing a section of the studio floor in something more paint friendly but decided it wasn’t worth the effort to figure out. I think those thoughts were near the end of the 6 months of construction.

Which Carpet

I knew exactly what kind of carpet I needed in my studio because of how I baste the quilts on it. Low cut pile carpet that is dense and very flat and smooth.

I also wanted it to be soft so I bought a stainmaster carpet with tactesse. Amazing stuff – really soft. The style was called Boston Bay at my store but I can’t find a link to it online.

The color is call pasta and is on the warmer/yellowish side of white since the walls were so pure white white. It is a nice contrast and balance.

The carpet in the rest of my house is also a stainmaster carpet with tactesse but it is darker and shaggier and has flecks. I had builders grade carpet throughout my last house so this stuff is a treat – really dense and thick and very nice.

The only draw back with this great carpet is my cat thinks I have put a scratching post on the floor for her. She wasn’t a fan of builders grade but this tactese – she’s all in favor of soft.

Collectible Small Art

Lines #22
Lisa Call
Textile Painting – Mounted on stretched canvas
©2009
3" x 3"
$75
Purchase Here

 
I emailed my studio newsletter out yesterday morning as planned (you can read it here if you aren’t a subscriber – this is probably the last issue that will be available online for non-subscribers as I’m changing the format of my newsletters a bit – subscribe here) and asked people what they thought about using the term Collectible Small Art.

I’ve gotten some really great answers back:

- Calling Card (I love this for my ACEOs – definitely going to use it – or a variation of some sort maybe written Call-ing Card)
- Petite Art
- Intimate Art

The article in the newsletter is about Chamber music and how it relates to small artwork. I’d love to call the small pieces Chamber Art but that really just sounds like Chamber Pot to me so, well, no. Ha.

I’d love to hear your thoughts also.

Evaluating Electrical Needs

Instead of going with standard code for my electrical outlets, putting them every 12 feet (or something like that) I spent some time evaluating exactly what I wanted and needed in my studio. So I made a list of the stuff that I need to plug in:

• Sewing machines (2)
• Iron
• Swing arm lamps (maybe – but planning for them)
• Stereo
• Vacuum Cleaner

Not a lot of stuff – no coffee maker or tv. Only the iron was the big deal – they take a lot of power. So I selected the locations for the outlets based on where I wanted my tables and they put in two 20-amp circuits for everything but the irons.

The Iron Solution

Irons require a dedicated 15 amp circuit if they are going to be powered up properly. Putting 2 or more irons on a single circuit is a good way to trip the breaker, and since I have arc fault circuit breakers throughout the entire house (required by code in Denver) things trip if you just look at them funny. They are safer, just a bit annoying with how easily they are tripped.

[As a side note, since I'm talking about electricity, I also have child safety plugs for all my plugs. No need for those plastic covers on these plugs - its built into the plug - which makes plugging things in much harder. Took me a while to figure out how to get them to work - the plug has to go in exactly straight or it won't work. The GFCI child safety plugs in the kitchen are the most difficult - I swear the reason they are safe is cause it's impossible to plug anything in - ha.]

So, back to irons. In addition to my need of using an iron in different places throughout the studio, I also want to use my studio to teach classes someday. So we’ll need multiple irons going at once when that happens.

I decided to have them also put in six 15-amp circuits for irons. I selected 6 of the outlets in the studio and the bottom plug for that outlet is a dedicated circuit for an iron. It’s pretty convenient to be able to plug an iron in all around the studio and always have it get as hot as possible.

More Safety

I didn’t want to worry if I really turned my iron off or not (it’s easy to forget). And when teaching I really didn’t want to have to worry if everyone turned off their irons when we left the studio for the evening.

Solution – I put all of the dedicated circuits on a single switch. So I can turn all the iron circuits off and on at a flip of a light switch. On my way out of the studio I hit the switch and know all irons are off. This assumes irons are only plugged into the correct switches, which I’m going to just go ahead and assume.

To make this work they had to wire these all into some contact switch kind of thing – when I hit the switch it makes a big thunking sound. It’s pretty clever (although it makes the cats jump – and the kids find it amusing so they play with it a bit too much).

A big thanks to the person on quiltart that suggested this to me (sorry – can’t remember who it was). Great idea.

The result is I have 8 switches to run the studio: 4 for the indirect fluorescent lights, 2 for track lights, 1 for my irons and the 8th is for the lights in the stairway.

Structures #83
Lisa Call
Textile Painting
©2007
12"x12"

Getting Unstuck

Almost a month ago I said I’d be sending out my studio newsletter soon. Then I got stuck. The photos I took of some new artwork aren’t working.

Lime green and fuschia have given me a lot of problems. I messed with the images for a while (the problem is an annoying color shift when I save for web – even though I have the sRGB color profile attached). Got frustrated.

Then I realized I’ve been saying for years I needed to really learn how to use photoshop and my camera properly and it was time to do that and stop getting stuck over photography. I hunted around for photoshop classes in Denver and didn’t find anything that fit my exact needs.

Then I started thinking I didn’t want to sit around in class for hours in hopes they might cover what I wanted to learn. I’ve been using photoshop for 4 years and know some stuff. Plus I want to learn photography also, not just photoshop. The group classes thing was suddenly not sounding so good.

Then I stumbled upon someone that taught both photoshop and photography and also taught private classes. Perfect. So I’ve signed up for private lessons later this month and am looking forward to moving past this issue that has blocked me more than I’d like to admit.

Newsletter Is a Go

In the meantime my photos are still not working and I’ve decided to circumvent the problem and get my newsletter sent out anyway and skip those photos for now. No more delays.

Tonight at 7pm (MDT) I’ll be drawing the name for the winner of Structures #83 from the list of all current newsletter subscribers and tomorrow morning I’ll mail out the newsletter. So tonight will be an evening of writing (hence the morning blog post so I didn’t use blogging as an excuse for not doing the newsletter also).

So if you aren’t yet a subscriber and would like to be – sign up here: Lisa’s Studio Newsletter. If you are already a subscriber you are automatically included in the drawing.