Lisa Call

Structures #18    ©2003    8" x 9"

 
More thoughts on the design principles from my kids’ Expeditionary Learning school and how they relate to being an artist.

Design Principle #2: The Having of Wonderful Ideas

Teach so as to build on children’s curiosity about the world by creating learning situations that provide matter to think about, time to experiment, and time to make sense of what is observed. Foster a community where students’ and adults’ ideas are respected.

Who doesn’t want to have wonderful ideas? And even better having those ideas respected. Did I mention I love my kids’ school? The kids are treated with respect and the teachers listen to their ideas. What an excellent way to build self-esteem.

Wonderful Ideas and Art

That design principle touches on a lot of points that I think are vital to making art.

1. Matter to Think About: ie Ideas. Art is all about ideas. Without an idea I don’t think an artist can start making a piece of art. Artists need a stockpile of ideas to inspire their work. They need to constantly feed their imagination and keep inspired. I find that the more I create the more ideas I generate.
2. Time to Experiment: Not every idea is fully developed and ready to turn into a masterpiece. I find that I need some time playing around and trying out different variations to flesh out some of my ideas. Playing around with materials with no set purpose in mind is another way to generate great ideas.
3. Time to Make Sense of what is Observed: After creating artwork I spend a fairly good chunk of time sitting back and looking at it. Thinking about what works, what doesn’t, where I want to go next, what I can improve upon, what I can do more of, what I can do less of, etc. I take notes in my sketchbook to keep track of these ideas.
4. A Community where Ideas are Respected: Putting ones artwork out into the world can be a scary thing. It’s hard not to take it personally when our art, which is a reflection of our ideas, is not accepted. Having a safe community that an artist can share their work is powerful. I’ve been a member of artist communities, both in real life and online, for dozens of years. The support and friendship are invaluable to building ones confidence in ones art (and ideas).

Design Principle #3: The Responsibility for Learning

Learning is both a personal, individually specific process of discovery and a social activity. Each of us learns within and for ourselves and as a part of a group. Every aspect of a school must encourage children, young people, and adults to become increasingly responsible for directing their own personal and collective learning.

As artists there are many things we need to learn. From mastering our craft to marketing our art. There are uncountable sources for learning anything we want to learn. Taking responsibility for that learning is instrumental to our success. If I want to sell my art I have to learn to market my art. No one owes it to me to teach me these things or do these things for me. I need to go out there and learn how to do it. I spent years perfecting my craftsmanship and my art is impeccably made and I’m proud of it. It’s now time to take responsibility for my art business education also.

Structures #18 - Moving Sale

Structures #18 is one of the first pieces in the Structures series with thin lines. It’s also available as part of my moving sale. Originally priced at $150, it is $90 until June 15.

If you are interested in purchasing Structures #18, or any of my available artwork please email me.

Detail of Structures #18:

Structures #62    © 2007    33" x 19"

A Slow Reply

Eight or nine months ago Meagan asked me the following question on one of my posts:

Something a little off topic, but still related: How do you know when your art work is “good enough” to start marketing it? (Obviously this isn’t a problem for you, Lisa, since your art is amazing!) Previous commenters (Ed) have mentioned that in the beginning of their career, they sold stuff that really wasn’t very good. How do you know when your art work has reached that particular level?

I’ve had a draft of this question sitting around waiting for an answer ever since. As I wasn’t up to a dissection of my studio newsletter as promised, I decided to go back and deliver on an older unanswered query.

It’s about Growth

The article I wrote was about selling my artwork (click to read). My thoughts have changed over the years and today I will answer this differently than I might have 3 or 5 or 8 years ago when I was not looking to pursue an income generating career from my art.

Today my answer is: You are ready to start marketing your artwork when you are ready to take that bold step and put yourself out there. It’s a big leap as it comes with many risks but also many rewards.

Sure, five years from now you might look back and think "Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I tried to sell that junk." But that’s the future. What matters is right now, today, this moment. How do you feel about your artwork? Are you happy with it? Do you think it is good? Do you want to market it? Great - go for it.

And I don’t think that’s such a bad future, to be a bit embarrassed about your work from years back, because it means you are growing as an artist. This is a great thing. Maybe something to look forward to.

How Will You Handle Set Backs

Artists are often advised to ask others for opinions about their work. Is it good enough? Will it sell? While this isn’t bad advice I’m not sure I’d recommend that. I suggest just going with your intuition. If you have the desire and resources to market your artwork, then go for it!

What’s the worse thing that could happen? You might fail on first try. The question is, what will you do with that failure? Will you let it destroy your dream? If so maybe you aren’t ready. I think this is probably the single most important question to answer.

Sure you might never face rejection, but chances are good you’ll face more than a few "we aren’t interested" situations. As Christine Kane says:

SWSWSWSW: Some will. Some won’t. So what? Someone’s waiting!

[Read her excellent article about not taking things personally here]

Even if you do face failure you might learn something. You might get better and grow. You might find new ways to do things. You might meet people that want to help you over that hurdle.

When you are ready to fall down and get up and keep on going. That’s when you are ready.

I’m Finally Ready

I’ve been making art that I really love for the past 10 years. Yet I’ve never taken the leap to go after an solid income with my art. I always have an excuse:

• I need to build up cash reserves.
• The kids are only at home for a few short (18) years.
• This work isn’t quite good enough yet.
• No one buys art quilts.
• I could never replace my software engineering salary with an art income.

Well, no more. I’m doing whatever it takes to get rid of the day job and replace it with the art income.

First up on the list of to-dos is to sell the house that requires a really big income. If I wait until I have enough money from my art to pay this mortgage it could be a pretty long wait. So I’m short circuiting that problem and downsizing.

It’s a huge task and when I think of all that needs to be done to get this huge home on the market I freak out, which is the reason I’m still here. I thought about moving 6 years ago after my divorce and then again 3 years ago, but I didn’t have the courage to do it.

Now it’s the year of courage, which gives me the focus needed to work through all that needs done. I don’t think about the huge list of to-dos. I make short lists of easily doable tasks. Things I can accomplish in a few hours. I’m just focusing on each step, one and time, and steady progress is made every day.

In the meantime I’m not ignoring my art. I’m in the 7th day of Artist Breakthrough Program with Alyson Stanfield and it’s fabulous. I’ve made huge strides in getting my new website ready to go. Tomorrow I’ll blog about how I did with my goals this week and what’s up for next week.

And yes - at some point I’ll write about all I learned when doing my studio newsletter. Hopefully you will not have to wait 8-9 months for that answer.

The above image was the one I selected for this post 9 months ago, I can’t tell you why. It’s orange. Maybe that was it.

Square Dance #1    ©1999    14"x 14"

Miscellaneous Stuff in Random Order

• This week I received Alyson Stanfield’s new book in the mail - I’d Rather be in the studio! It’s beautifully designed and full of tons of useful promotion ideas and strategies for artists. I definitely recommend this book, and not just because I’m quoted. I helped Alyson by looking over the chapter about having an online presence and she turned one of my comments into a quote. Okay she had me write a quote in relationship to something I said about blogging. Check out page 112 for my brilliant comment.
• Super talented artist Deidre Adams has started a blog. She photographed some artwork for me and in exchange I showed her how easy wordpress is to use. So now we can all enjoy Deidre’s Blog.
• Today the last of my 450 postcards to promote my solo show Markings: Repetition and Pattern arrived. I order from Vistaprint - in several small orders (it’s the cheapest way) so they’ve been trickling in the last week. Tomorrow I’ll print out labels and stamp them and get them in the mail. I’m very happy we now have self adhesive stamps.

Making Room for the New

I’ve been listening to Cheryl Richardson on CD recently and she reinforces something that Christine Kane talks about in her retreats and eseminars. That of getting rid of things to make way for creativity and passion. I made a detailed list (what a surprise) of all the clutter in my house and I’m slowly tackling each corner, ruthlessly purging piles of stuff that I no longer need or want or that drains my energy.

One thing I’ve decided to do is sell most my older artwork. Much of it is hidden in a closet and serving no purpose. I’d love for it to find a home in this world if it speaks to someone. I hadn’t hit upon how to go about doing this but the other day when photographing artwork for some reason I grabbed this piece and added it in. I think the universe was telling me to just do it and stop thinking I had to have the perfect plan.

Beads

I love all of the work I’ve made in my path as an artist. I used to not feel this way, and hence it’s hiding in the closet. Sure some is better than others but all of it shows my growth,choices and progress. There is nothing to be ashamed of and there are some really cool pieces lurking in there.

I went through a phase where I was obsessed with beads. Bought tons of them. Thought I’d sew them on all my quilts. Instead I made just 2 or 3 embellished pieces. I then moved to the next thing in my development

[side note - the last year or so I got back into some beading work and when I finish the piece I’ll post it. I still love the beading - I just love the type of work I do now more. That’s a topic for another day - why I choose to narrowly define my focus with my artwork.]

The piece here, Square Dance #1, was started in a workshop with David Walker many years ago. I quilted it and added the beads later, completing the piece in 1999.

Detail of beading:

 
I’ve thought about listing these pieces on ebay or etsy but decided to list them on my website for now. As I work on the redesign to incorporate them I’ll list a few here on the blog.

This artwork is for sale and is $50 Sold. It’s signed Lisa Leutenegger on the front (as are all pieces made before 2001) and I’ve resigned it on the back with my birth name (Lisa Call).

Page From My Sketchbook (click to see larger image)

Tracking Studio Time

Sylvia asked me to talk about how I determine the hours when I posted that I spent 865 hours in the studio last year.

I started doing this when my accountant told me that he thought that it was very important to be able show that I was treating my art as a business should I ever be audited. He felt the number of hours spent engaged in the activity was important information to track.

I’ve tried different formats for tracking this information and the above image from my sketchbook is what I did last year. I like the hand drawn page better than doing it on the computer.

Incorporating it into my sketchbook keeps me connected to the sketchbook on a near daily basis. Good for both keeping the tracking current and for using my sketchbook as I intend for ideas and sketches. I keep the book accessible and open on a table in my studio at all times.

I write down the number of hours spent each day and a brief note about what I was doing.

A few years ago I decided that by setting specific goals for what work I wanted to complete was creating stress when I failed to meet the goal so I decided to switch to setting goals on the number of hours spent in the studio and not worry about what I specifically accomplished. I blogged about this in June of 2006.

For a while I found this to be the solution and it helped me balance my life but last year I found myself right back to the same place being stressed by that magic number of 20 hours in the studio.

No More Ego

In retrospect I realize I did not address the real problem. The real problem is my ego and my judgment of my performance. Last year there were also some additional issues of hiding behind my arbitrary goals to avoid situations I should have dealt with in a healthy manner insteadt of pretending they weren’t a problem.

For 2008 I will continue to track my studio time because not only does it provide useful records for the IRS I find it helps keep me accountable and in my studio. But this year I’m going to approach it in a healthier way. I am not going to set any specific goals for the number of hours to spend each week. Instead I will just write it down and total it up for the month.

I’ll place no judgment on how I did. No more "hurray I made the goal" or frowny faces if I don’t spend time in the studio. Those value calls are unnecessary. I don’t need to label it either good or bad. It is what it is.

I will not keep a running total from month to month and I won’t track the number of hours short or extra I have done. That’s just a recipe to make myself feel bad or boost my ego, which needs no encouragement.

My true desire is to work in my studio and I know that will happen, I trust my intent is enough for it to happen. I know when I spend that time that I am happy. Spending more hours spent does not make the happiness in some way better. It’s just my ego wanting to feel good about itself. I don’t need or want that.

At the end of the year I’ll total up all the hours and irregardless of the outcome I will be content knowing I put in the hours that were right for me.

Goals

All this doesn’t mean I’m not going to set goals for my studio. I will continue to do this in a healthy way of setting intent. It keeps me focused and focus is a great thing. Action is good. I’m not going to judge how things go - if I don’t make the goal I’ll just keep working on it. No ego - just pure joy.

The Quillows (a quilt with a pocket so it can be converted into a pillow)

 
My daughter’s middle school humanities class is studying capitalism and each of the kids (or group of kids) has secured a small business loan from the Micro Business Development Center in Denver to start their own business through their YouthWorks program. Her teacher is an amazing teacher and this is a wonderful opportunity for her to get a glimpse into my world as an artist hoping to make a living from their art.

At one point she told me she was stressed out because she had to start a business and that I had no idea what she was going through. When I told her I knew exactly what she was going through she countered with "yeah, but you aren’t 11". Hard to disagree.

The Pillows (my daughter’s original designs)

 
They are working on marketing this week. My daughter is going for the socially conscience save our environment approach.

A selection of "cornbags" - heating pads you microwave.

 
The kids are setting up shop this friday during the monthly First Friday Artwalk in the Santa Fe Art District here in Denver. If you are in Denver come check it out. I hear there will be some very cool products available that will make excellent holiday gifts.

December 7th from 5:30pm to 8:00pm

The stores will be upstairs in the Micro Business Development building located on at 700 Kalamath.

Ransom ©1999

Yesterday my plan for posting 1 new piece a day came to an end. Not a very long streak - just 3 pieces finished. After working all day I spent the evening at school with my kids learning what the high school kids had learned about HIV/AIDS and listened to them debate proposals for US foreign policy for aid to Sub Saharan Africa for the AIDS pandemic. Very interesting and it didn’t leave any time for the studio.

This evening I spent shopping for the kids’ christmas presents. I even braved the mall, a very rare event, for some overpriced bubble bath. I think I better test it out before gifting it to my daughter (the sacrifices we make for our kids). Maybe after that I’ll head to the studio for a bit.

 
In the mean time I thought I’d give a shameless plug for my cafepress shop as black friday quickly approaches, although technically I should probably wait until cyber monday to post this but I needed filler given my failure to meet my 1 piece a day goal.

I only have 1 design available for sale on cafepress, the above piece, which is aimed at the quilt maker crowd. Quilters are notorious for they love of their fabric, and chocolate. Magnets, notecards, tshirts, etc are available.

I made this Ransom piece during a workshop years ago. We were doing some design exercises cutting up magazines and I finished early and got a little silly, so when it came time to work with the fabric we painted this seemed the obvious choice. The instructor did shrine type work, this is mine.

 
Goal tomorrow - post 2 new pieces and rephotograph the ones taken with a flash. We should be getting off work early tomorrow and since I plan on working from home I’ll be set to jump right to the studio when the email arrives.

I had been hoping to ease back into life this week but then reality hit. Missing a week of work when I was already behind didn’t make for a relaxed return to the cubes the last few days. I really needed to work tonight to try to catch up but instead I had to package my work for the two blogger shows and print out my pages for the gallery book.

Normally this job would take 2-3 hours but since I decided to no longer use the word quilt as the noun to describe my work it took some time to reword my artist statement and bio. I did a quick job of this but I need to revisit both of these docs and update them as it’s been a few years and they feel a bit boring. My bio certainly puts me to sleep. I need to think of something interesting to say other than “Lisa was in some shows in some cool places”.

Then I decided to spend a couple of hours creating new thumbnail pages to include (my old ones were very out of date and had a different header than the rest of my materials). First I tried to do it in photoshop but I don’t really know how to use photoshop so that didn’t make for quick work so I switched to microsoft publisher. I used to edit a newsletter and vaguely recalled how to use publisher and after a few false starts I remembered enough to hack something together. Publisher does some funky things with the colors but it looks pretty good.

One of the advantages of making textiles is the ability to roll up the artwork and ship it off in a tube. In theory this saves the artist a lot of money in shipping costs but now days I don’t think it’s possible to ship anything cheaply.

It cost me $14 each way to ship a small 15" square 1.1 pound piece to New York in a very small tube. Not exactly a bargain. Although it is only $24 each way to ship a 48" x 64" piece to Pennsylvania. I suppose a painting of that size would be considerably more to ship so I shouldn’t complain. Although $80 in shipping for these 2 shows - ouch.

Everything is finally packed up and ready to send tomorrow and I should have headed to bed but decided I could just go to work tired tomorrow since all of my coworkers came to work tired and grumpy today after staying up late to watch the Rockies win the National League Championship last night. I guess this means the Rockies are off to the superbowl World Series. I didn’t even know they were playing last night - something I probably should not admit.

 
The above photo is another plant photo from my dad’s yard in Arizona this last spring.

In the comments of my last posting I raised an issue that has been occupying my mind quite a bit recently.

In regards to the SAQA auction and the low price much (40% in the first round) of the auction work is selling for ($50 for a 12″ square piece) and the fact that just about the only people buying the art are other quilt artists - I wrote the following:

What all of this makes me really wonder is - is there really even a market for art quilts? The only folks that seem to buy them are other art quilters and only then at prices that are not sustainable.

Are we all fooling ourselves? Could be saqa is just pointing out the obvious - that there is not an art market for quilts.

Maybe we should just pick up a paint brush instead.

A few weeks back Karen Jacobs took a mid year inventory of your art career. To date she had sold 27 paintings.

Are there any quilters out there selling this quantity of work?

The theme I hear over and over in the art quilt world is that you can not make a decent income selling art alone and that teaching is the best way to generate the cash needed to keep afloat. Many teachers report that most of their sales are to students (themselves art quilters).

If one doesn’t teach is there a market for art quilts?

I have no doubt there are a large number of painters that are unable to make a living from their art even though they are trying. Are the chances of success higher for a painter? There are painters making a living solely from their art work.

Are there quilt makers making a living solely from their art work?

Do you know of any?

 
These are some thoughts that have been running through my mind recently. My recent plans to attempt to generate income from the artwork has made me question if it is something I want to do or might even succeed in doing. As with any business a market analysis is a good idea. If you have information you are willing to share on this issue it would be most appreciated.

While I doubt I will stop making contemporary art quilts, given my love of the process, I do need to figure out what my big goals are for my art career. I used to think I knew but lately it seems the more I make decisions the less I’m sure of them.

Before getting to my topic I just had to show the above photo. My lilacs bloomed while I was at my workshop earlier this year. Last year we didn’t get any blooms and this year the plants are covered with blossoms and beautiful. As you can see I’ve never trimmed my bushes and they are about as tall as the house now which is pretty cool. I love spring!

 
I am occasionally asked if I am a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), an organization that promotes the art quilt. I’ve heard rumors that they claim they will eventually have every artist that is accepted into Quilt National as a member of their organization so the last 2 times I was accepted into the show I got a lovely letter from SAQA asking me to rejoin.

I find it interesting that they seem to have forgotten why I left the organization 3-4 years ago as they fail to address the issues I brought up when I left and I wonder why they think I would want to rejoin when I don’t feel anything has changed.

One of my major issues with this organization is that every 2 years when Quilt National has an opening they hold a conference in conjunction with the show. Fine I can see the synergy.

Problem is that SAQA seems to be perpetually short of funds and so they hold an auction of member’s artwork during this conference. I seriously object to this activity (and was very vocal about it) because Quilt National is one of the premier art quilt shows in the country and most of the art is priced at fair market prices and it sells very well. I find it very tacky not to mention completely unprofessional for an organization that purportedly supports art quilts as art to undercut the prices of the artwork. I fail to see how this promotes art quilts but I sure see how it hurts them. Sure it supports SAQA but should that be at the expense of the artist members?

Plus SAQA is only marketing this work to their membership, the conference attendees, plus the artists in the Quilt National show and a handful of other guests. Why, if their mission is to promote quilts as art to the public, are they not holding a public sale of the work. And selling it at comparable prices to what the artists themselves sell their own work?

I was told by a SAQA member, who was disgusted I dare to say something negative, that if I didn’t like the auction I could get up and leave the room after dinner and not watch and it wouldn’t effect me. The behavior of this organization effects all quilt makers because SAQA claims to be THE organization for art quilters. When they behave in this way and undercut the value of our art it hurts all of us. So it’s irrelevant if I watch or not - it still effects me and I’m going to say something.

The reason I bring this up is that SAQA is doing it again. They put out a call to their membership for them to donate 12″ square quilts to be auctioned off at the Quilt National opening dinner next week. Well lo and behold they ended up with over 130 quilts to be auctioned, you can see them on their website here. This is more quilts than there are people attending the conference.

So their initial thought is to put the quilts into lots and sell them off like discarded goods at a farm auction. I don’t think I even need to say what is so insulting about this idea. Okay maybe a little. Image how low the prices could go. The quality of the work they have to auction is very uneven and I shudder to think how the lots might be made (1 good, 2 bad). I believe a professional organization such as SAQA should never sell or exhibit any art that is unjuried and this grouping of work is a prime example of why not. Some of the stuff on that website is really not ready for prime time. That’s fine - we all have to start somewhere, but maybe the spotlight should be held off for some of these artists. Jurying isn’t bad, jurying is about quality and preserving the professional nature of an organization.

I hear the general membership isn’t too happy about the idea of selling in lots so hopefully this is not what will happen.

 
So why am I airing an organization’s dirty laundry in public when I’m not even part of that organization? Because I tried to work from within that organization and suggested that they behave in a more professional manner and it did no good. So I am hoping that by holding them publicly accountable for this debacle they will do the right thing next week and in the future put a lot more thought into what is and is not an appropriate professional and supportive way of fundraising for their organization.

I also have a lot of artist readers that are not quilters. I would love to hear what you think about this situation. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just blowing it all out of proportion. Or do think this is rather tacky and unprofessional also?

As a comparison, Surface Design Association, another fiber related professional organization, seems to really have their act together. They hold a very professional and well regarded conference each year and publish a beautiful quarterly magazine. I don’t see them begging for money or donations from their membership (yes I am a member as I find value in belonging).

 
Well that ought to generate a pile of hate mail for me. Quilters can be a nasty lot at times and I’ve been at the receiving end of it before because I speak my mind. At the Quilt National opening in 2005 someone came over and asked what I did to the president of SAQA because the woman was giving me nasty looks all night. I never saw it and I’ve never spoken to the woman but clearly I am not on the good side of the powers that be over there already so I don’t think I have much too lose.

I think we all need to think about our actions when we donate art. Is it really in our best interest to do so? If we can buy cheap art at auction all the time why bother ever paying full price? I also think organizations need to find other ways to raise money other than by exploiting artists. But that all is another topic for another time. One that is much much bigger than the quilt world and much discussed in art circles.

Stones #4   28" x 19"

 
After my posting at the end of March showing all the artwork I completed for the year I had to admit to myself that while I’ve been busy in my studio I really hadn’t done as much on the business side of things as I had hoped. So the last few weeks I’ve worked to try to catch up on this stuff. While not nearly as interesting as making art the business stuff isn’t as bad as it seems to be when the tasks are lurking unfinished on my todo list.

I still have a lot to do to feel I’m on track but I’ve got a few big things crossed off my list so I feel I’m on a roll.

This past week I added several more items into my etsy shop.

Most notably I’ve added the 6 pieces from my Stones series work to this shop. I made these quilts not long after returning from a 5 month trip in New Zealand. I found myself near water during most of the drive around the islands and I found I was fascinated with the smooth rocks that are found in such places. Here in Colorado our rocks are rather jagged so every where I went I picked up stones.

Although I do have the above small pile of rocks from a river in New Zealand, I was sad I couldn’t bring them all home with me as the suitcases were bulging. So I made a series of quilts to capture the essence of these wonderful smooth stones.

One of my favorites is shown at the top of this post but check out my etsy shop for the others. For some reason I even made a purple version.

You might notice Stones #3 and #5 are missing from the list. This is because #3 was never finished (maybe someday) and I sold #5 at the gift shop at Quilt National one year. I’ve always wondered who bought the quilt as it seems people either really like these quilts or they say "They look like a bunch of cookies - what’s with that?".

In addition to the small works I’ve also listed a few of the postcards I have left after the Postcards on the Edge show from last year and a couple tshirts that I dyed the last few days.

I wear tiedye tshirts at least 50% of the time as I love making the shirts. I’ve never read how to make the traditional swirl and other well known patterns when making shirts and prefer to just play around.

I’m not looking to get into production tshirt dyeing but I thought I’d do 1 or 2 shirts every time I do a batch of fabric and see how it goes.