Today was gray and cloudy and bitter cold. It was the first day it really felt like winter this year. Driving to work in the snow, not seeing the sun all day. Too cold to be outside.

It was fabulous! I loved it. Winter is a time to take stock in where we are and rest. To sit for a while and just let things be with needing to go muck with them. It’s such a great time to get quiet and enjoy a bit of stillness. Nothing ever seems as silent as watching the snow fall.

The short days, the cold cold nights, the sunless colorless sky - to me these are all signs of really amazing things to come. Without this quietness the brightness of spring wouldn’t feel so wonderful.

I found great joy in being in the stillness today and am reminded of the growth that will come as a result of this rest.

Happy Winter everyone!

Home #6
©2008
4" x 4" - Mounted on stretched canvas

Home #7
©2008
4" x 4" - Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

 

Home #7 and Home #6 - On Canvas
Purchase Here

The Joy of Friends

Today I made plans to visit with several of friends, both new and old, throughout December. When I get all wrapped up in getting things done, it’s sometimes hard to stop and honor the amazing women in my life. That will not happen this month. I’m taking the time to let them know how much I value their friendship.

Not much beats a good laugh with a good friend over some really yummy food. What a perfect month for such things.

Courage

Short post today because tonight I’m determine to get my article done for Christine Kane’s word of the year guest posts. Look for my post about a year of couragecourage over on Christine’s blog sometime this month.

Topping Out

For the pure fun of doing something silly I decided to top out my home construction project today. Definitely in the joy category as it marks an exciting milestone in the construction project - that of the structure reaching it’s highest point.

Had I done the topping out correctly I would have done it last wednesday when they put the trusses on the roof and attached an evergreen tree to the last truss raised. Then it’s time for a little ceremony to mark that the framing has reached the top level.

It’s supposed to bring luck to the project but when I talked to the construction guys about it, to them it just meant they were supposed to get a beer. I gave them cookies.

So apparently I don’t know the rules, especially since I didn’t have a real tree, so instead it was a sparkly purple fake tree.

It will still bring good luck to the project, cause already it’s going really well. And it was pretty entertaining. I guess I owe the guys a beer sometime.

Latest construction photos are here: December 2 .

Artful Home

 
Structures #39 was selected to be included in this year’s Artful Home holiday catalog (pictured above). Today I had the first nibble of someone interested in buying it. Hurray! That is definitely joy. They changed their mind but I’m sure the right buyers will come along soon.

Being in the catalog, which is mailed to 200,000 homes, is delightful in and of itself. Here’s the page with my textile painting:

 
I think they did a fabulous job photographing the work. I need to tweak mine a bit:

 

Structures #39 ©2006    43"x29"

December Studio Newsletter

It’s nearing time for my 4th quarterly newsletter for 2008. I’m thinking I’ll have it in the mail in the next couple weeks.

I’ve decided to select one of my subscribers to receive one of my textile paintings as it seems like a festive joyful thing to share my work this way. I think it will be Structures #83 but I haven’t decided final details. I might decided to give away a couple ACEOs also. So if you’d like a chance to win a piece of my artwork please sign up below.

You can check out a sample Studio Newsletter here: Lisa Call Studio News if you’d like an idea of what you are signing up for.

Sign up here:

 
And of course, I will never share or sell your email address and will only use it for the purpose stated above. All emails sent will include a link to unsubscribe should you decide you are no longer interested.

Preparing for the New Year

I’m not sure how it got here so quickly, but it’s December. I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to approach this month for a while and have decided to dedicate it to Joy. Absolute wonderful peace and delight in things that make me happy.

A snippet from my journal this morning:

Hello December, I’m happy to see you. This month is all about joy, peace, happiness. I’m going to have 31 days of delight. Each day my intent and focus will be to appreciate and do joyful things, have joyful thoughts and experiences and be a joyful person.

As I was writing my cat came over and silently sat next to me, her sign for "pick me up and put me in your lap so I can purr". My first moment of joy after declaring my intention for the month.

I will share my experiences with intending joy each day in our typically busy holiday season throughout this month of blogging and hope to hear from my readers about their joyful days also.

Pencil Holders

Driving home watching the beautiful sunset I was excited to see a package by my front door upon my return home. Aha - total delight - my pencil holders from Paula have arrived. I love them - look at the 9 new holders all in a row in the photo. I love it. I love repetition.

Paula - thanks for sharing your art and spreading happiness to this corner of the planet.

Thank You

And next a huge thank you to all of my readers as the pageviews for my blog topped 100,000 for the month for the first time ever. I’d been holding pretty steady around 75K-80K for a while and finally something pushed it over the top. Maybe spammers. Who knows, even if I cut that number in half to account for the noise, I have a lot of readers. Unique visitors are over 22,000 per month and average around 1300-1500 per day. Thanks everyone!

Thank you all for reading and commenting. I love what I learn about myself and my art when writing my blog and then I get more from all of your comments, rethinking my ideas. I fall behind occasionally on comments and I suspect there are questions I said I would answer that I forget about. Sorry about that - if it’s important, just ask again. Just wanted to let you all know every comment is greatly appreciated and my goal is to respond to them all.

New Beginnings

So what’s behind all the joy crap? Well a couple of things. The first is I have signed up for a year of coaching with Christine Kane and I suspect she might have been a baker in a previous life because most of us are are really getting a bonus 13 months, which means it started today.

I plan to get the most out of the upcoming year and I know that change comes from within, not from Christine, she’s just really good at holding me to the things I said I would do and calling out my bullshit. It felt right to dedicate the first month of the coaching to shear delight.

The other motivator is that my relationship with Jim has come to an end. It was time and while I’m sad I’m not surprised. I’ve gotten very clear about what I need and want over the last year and things weren’t working out for either of us. I wish Jim well and trust he will have a joyful life moving forward.

Clearing Out

Over the past few days, inspired by Colin’s rss cleanout, I’ve removed a large number of blogs from my feed reader. I think I was up to 150 or something around there. I was always behind and reading blogs wasn’t an activity it was a diversion.

I’ve got the list down to less than 70 and will probably weed out more as I find the ones I don’t really read. Now reading blogs is an activity - 10-15 minutes a day and I should be caught up. Feels great - it’s decluttering! I’m hoping this leaves me more time to respond to blog comments and look over the blogs my readers are writing.

It felt great to dump all the "you should read this if you are a real artist" type of blogs, like Tyler Green. I tried really really hard to care. I just couldn’t. It always just sounded like gossip and complaining, or it was just boring. Reminder - I am defining my art career, the only MUST DO things are the things I define.

I dumped most of the inspiration type blogs and the marketing type blogs as they started to sound repetitive. I’m really tired of blog posts with lists: 7 ways to have more energy, less hair, more clothes, less time, etc. That format has lost it’s charm on me.

Also, anyone that didn’t publish a full blog post in their feed got removed. Okay - 2 exceptions - but I still prefer you publish full posts. Katherine and I already had this conversation and agreed to disagree, darn. Colin, please, give us the full feed - save us from carpal tunnel having to click to read your thoughts.

Sea Foam Green

Two of the new pieces of art I made over the weekend were sea foam green in nature. Looking at Paula’s pencil holders I can see what inspired me. Not to mention the same color on the mugs I bought from Cynthia. Hm.

Here’s my green:

Lines #7
©2008
4" x 4" - Mounted on stretched canvas
$45

Lines #7 - On Canvas

ACEO #29
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

Available for purchase here, along with art that is not green in case that isn’t your thing. I think I had those old pink and green bathroom in my mind when I made these. Or maybe there was never a time when people had pink and green bathrooms. But it sounds good.

My daughter wants a neon orange bathtub. Do they make those?

 
Happy Monday everyone!

Confession

Time for a confession. When I listed the textile paintings for sale on my small art for sale webpage a few weeks ago I said 6 of the pieces (Lines #1-#5 and Structures #104) were mounted on painted canvas. Truth was I had painted the canvases and I was pretty sure I could figure out how to attach them, but I didn’t think they would sell right away and I was going to take them with me to North Carolina to figure it out.

Er - nope - Lines #1, #3, #4 and #5 sold via twitter within a few minutes of tweeting about it. I hadn’t even announced the sale on my blog. I was leaving town in a couple days and had to figure out how to do this asap so I could get the work in the mail.

Turns out the little 3" square textile paintings are easy as the stretcher bars are small and I can stitch from the backside of the canvas and it went fairly quickly. And looked really nice. Like this:

Lines #2
3" x 3" - mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

I had a few minutes before leaving on my trip to tackle Structures #104 and wasn’t quite as successful. The stretcher bars are much larger on these larger 6" canvases and stitching next to them is not an option. The stitching has to go under the bars to hold the textile painting correctly and I was having a really really hard time figuring out how to do it. Oops!

Success

I ran out of the 3" canvases and wanted to make some more work this week so I decided to go for the 4" canvases and I bought and made a few new textile paintings in that size: Home #6, Home #7 and Lines #7.

Today was the day to tackle attaching these things on to canvases with 1 1/2" wide stretchers. Turned out that it isn’t all that hard. It’s not exactly easy but other than the one I got on upside down (never sign the back of the canvas before getting the textile painting in place) it went pretty smoothly. The trick is to sew from the front - in between textile painting and canvas. It’s a bit funky but works out great.

Here are my results:

Home #7 and #6
4" x 4" each - mounted on stretched canvas
$45 each

 

Lines #7
4" x 4" - mounted on stretched canvas
$45

Even Bigger

That accomplished I went back to Structures #104 and it’s 6" canvas, shown at the top of the post and mastered it. It’s just more stitching than the 4" canvases but same size stretcher bars.

Structures #104 and Structures #103 (not on canvas but also a small work for sale) were informed by Structures #45. I had it on the wall in my studio because it recently came back from an art consultant so it became the object of inspiration.

Here’s a quick look at these (it’s picture day on the blog tonight):

Structures #103
©2008
6"x 17.5"
$190

 
 

Structures #45
©2005
28" x 28"
$1200

For Sale

Yes - I know - as I talk about affordable art the subject of sales seems to be brought up a lot. Probably because that is the point. I’ll finish this up soon and be back to my normal posts, but I have a few more things to say.

I’m working on a post for Christine Kane’s blog about my word of the year, courage. Talking about my artwork being for sale on my blog requires courage. Art and money are a bit weird sometimes and commerce on a blog is also a bit touchy, but forge ahead I am, knowing that my art does add much value to the world and unless I make it clear it is for sale it tends to just hang out at my place with me.

So, all the pieces in this post are available for sale on the Small Art for Sale webpage, except Lines #2, which sold in the middle of preparing for this post.

Most of these shown today are new so I did a bit of clean up and moved the sold pieces off that page and onto a sold page. In addition to the work shown here there are a few other new Lines piece (#6 and #8) and a couple of new ACEOs (#28 and #29).

I also did this because rumor has it a blogger with a huge readership is going to mention the 2 group artists websites I’m a part of so we might be getting a lot of traffic tomorrow. That would be great! (A reminder they are Fine Art Department and Small Art Showcase - I will get these into my sidebar soon so I don’t mention them so much in the blog).

And one last photo of all these guys on canvas at more of an angle so you can see how cool they look on there. I ordered some 2.5" x 3.5" canvases and will be putting some of my ACEOs on them cause I’m loving how this looks.

Home #5
©2008
10.5" x 8"
Sold

The Paradox

I read an interesting article the other day:

In a survey of attitudes toward artists in the US a vast majority of Americans, 96%, said they were greatly inspired by various kinds of art and highly value art in their lives and communities. But the data suggests a strange paradox.

While Americans value art, the end product, they do not value what artists do. Only 27% of respondents believe that artists contribute “a lot” to the good of society.

Further interview data from the study reflects a strong sentiment in the cultural community that society does not value art making as legitimate work worthy of compensation. Many perceive the making of art as a frivolous or recreational pursuit.

That doesn’t sound very promising does it. Making art is not worthy of compensation? So which came first - artists/curators/etc thinking that art is for art and not commerce? Or society thinking artists don’t deserve to be paid for what they do? I have no answers - just interesting things to think about.

The entire (and short) article is on the United States Artists website: An American Paradox.

Part of the Solution?

The mission of this organization, United States Artists, is to invest in America’s finest artists and illuminate the value of artists to society. Closing the gap between perceived value of art and artists will take work on many fronts.

In my mind, the making of smaller accessible art for everyone has a place in that effort. I think many Americans feel they can not afford art and so they never think about buying it so the idea that one might want to pay someone for it doesn’t really sink in.

If they could own the art themselves and see it each day in their home, the value of the artist’s creative effort might become more obvious. Or at least that’s my current theory.

What do you think?

Home #5

The newest of my textile paintings inspired by the building of the new studio. I was working on this piece as they were putting on the roof last Wednesday and finished it yesterday (along with several other small pieces that still need to be photographed). As with all the new small art, it’s available for purchase on my Update: It’s sold - but there is more small artwork available here: small art for sale webpage.

This piece is not mounted on canvas as it’s very hard for me to predict how large the houses are going to turn out. I haven’t mastered the diagonals quite enough for that. So it came out to be a bit too large for the 6″ canvases. So this piece is designed to be hung directly on the wall and comes ready to hang with a board in the back for hanging it on the wall with 2 small nails.

I’ll be doing a post about how to hang textile art sometime in the next few weeks with photos, as I think it’s probably not so obvious unless you’ve seen it before.

Pencil Holders

One of my goals when I decluttered my house earlier this year was to only keep things that I loved. I believe things definitely have an energy and keeping things about that drain that energy is not something I want to do anymore.

I am working on this down to the smallest detail. I used to keep my pencils in old coffee mugs that I never really liked but someone gave them to me. They were functional but ugly. Definitely not things I wanted to keep around but my pencils needed to go somewhere.

So along came Paula McCullough thinking she also should make some smaller affordable art and she made pencil holders from an old piece of gutter (details here). I immediately fell in love with them and bought two. I smile every time I see them sitting on my desk.

Yesterday I decided I wanted more so I bought the remaining 9 in the limited edition to use in my house and maybe give as gifts (if I can bare to part with them).

My original plan was to blog about them so others could share in their beauty and buy one also - er - oops. Guess you will have to purchase one of her amazing clocks instead since these are sold out. Check them out at Paula’s Etsy Store. Some day I’ll own some of these also because the white plastic cheap things from Target aren’t the energy I want in my house.

Pint Sized Mugs
By Cynthia Guajardo

Mugs

So I just mentioned the ugly coffee mugs. They had to get out of the kitchen also. I don’t drink coffee but I do drink peppermint tea and it tastes much better out of my brand new mugs by Cynthia. I stopped by her potters guild sale a few weeks back and bought these and a few other items that are currently packed away until the builders are out.

I keep one at the office and one at home and when my house is complete Cynthia and I are going to work out a trade so I can get more in exchange for one of my small textile paintings. Yay!

Cynthia also has an etsy store and I hear she will soon be stocking it with new work. Cynthia’s Etsy Store.

More Affordable Art

Art doesn’t have to be large to make a home beautiful. I think small details like these pieces of functional art can have a big impact on the energy of a home.

I also buy small art that has no purpose than to make my house beautiful, such as the ACEO I bought from Tina Mammoser a while back. It’s currently sitting in front of my modems on my desk top and adds touch of color to my world. She also sells her work online: Tina’s Etsy Store.

I’ve got a small but growing collection of this small art (most of it in storage awaiting the house to be completed) and am looking forward to adding to it. Buying art is always my favorite purchase.

Black Friday

Here in the US it’s Black Friday, the day everyone heads to the stores to start their christmas shopping. If you are like me and don’t feel like fighting the crowds you buy art as gifts online instead. Check out these artists that came together to provide you with a variety of art to choose from:

Small Art Showcase
Fine Art Department

And, of course, you are always welcome to purchase some of my artwork - see my page of small art for sale.

Structures #46
©2005
45" x 61"
Sold

Thank You

It’s the day for giving thanks here in the US as we all celebrate Thanksgiving (generally by eating too much). I am so fortunate to be surounded by many wonderful people and am grateful for all of your support and love. Thanks to all of them for being a part of my life

A few in particular I want to mention:

• My Collectors: Thank you to each of you that have purchased my art this year. It was a big leap for me to decided to start selling my textile paintings seriously and I am thrilled with the response. Each of you has my profound gratitude
• The Builders: Jim, Carl, Eric, Colin and all the guys that have worked on my new studio and home. You’ve all been wonderful and I couldn’t be more happy with the project. Thank you!
• My Blog Readers: I mostly write my blog to work out my own thoughts about my art, yet it’s wonderful to have such a supportive community out there listening and participating. You all are awesome - extra pumpkin pie to everyone.
• My kids: You are the best. I love you both!

This has been an amazing year for me. So many wonderful things have happened I sometimes find it amazing how perfect it all turns out. Then I realize much of this is about my attitude change as things have generally gone well for me. Each night before I go to bed I write a list 5 things I’m grateful for and it seems there is a never ending supply of wonderment to appreciate.

Giving Back

Earlier this fall I sold 2 additional large textile paintings to the University Hospitals in Cleveland (previously they purchased Structures #35). They purchased Structures #46 and #36, both pictured in this post.

As I mentioned before, I donate and gift 10% of my art income to causes and people that I learn from, are inspired by or who I feel are doing amazing things for the world. Borrowing a term from Christine Kane, I call this expansive giving

Although I write checks each month, this sale gave me the opportunity to write some nice checks to some organizations I support. FINCA, an organization that provides financial services to the world’s lowest-income entrepreneurs, was again top of my list. In addition I sent checks to the American Cancer Society, Volunteers of America (they do meals on wheels), World Wild Life Fund and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

You can read more about what I consider expansive giving on my previous blog post on the subject: Expansive Giving.

Now that I do this giving as a matter of course, I didn’t have any qualms with sending this money out into the universe, even as I am spending more than planned on a new studio and watching my investments shrink. It simply feels right.

What I find fascinating is that as this money was headed out the door to help others someone purchased almost the same $ amount of art from my Small Art For Sale webpage. Now I can give back more in December.
 

Construction Update

Huge progress on my studio! The roof sheathing is done. The space is now well defined and I’m absolutely thrilled. This weeks photos:

Construction Photos - November 24 and 25
Construction Photos - November 26

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
 

 
Structures #36
©2005
69" x 50"
Sold

Markings #20
©2008
14"x 14"
Sold

New Paradigms

It seems an unwritten rule of the art world is that if you want to be taken seriously you do not sell your work cheaply and you certainly don’t worry about affordable art. I used to buy into this story, thinking that if I wanted to show my work in museums I needed to only make large, serious artwork.

I think the art world is changing with the advent of the internet and old patterns of thinking are no longer necessarily valid. And even if they are, I’ve decided they don’t apply to me.

I’ve decided to take full responsibility for my art career and in doing so have decided I get to come up with my own rules, if I ever feel a need for rules.

Who says I can not make ACEOs and sell them for $25 while at the same time having 6 large pieces in a museum show and also sell my larger work for thousands of dollars? Apparently no one because I’m doing just that.

Quality

I do not think my $3000-$10,000 artwork is devalued by making smaller textile paintings. The main reason for this belief is the quality. I know that I put extreme care into every aspect of my art, from the largest pieces down to the smallest. I also believe my art is really, well, good.

I’m consistently told by collectors that they are impressed with the level of detail and precision in all of my artwork. Every color, each line, each shape is created with care. Even in my small work I am pushing myself to make the best art I possibly can by trying new things and pushing limits on what I think might work.

All of my art is priced about the same amount per square foot. Actually the smaller pieces end up being more per square foot because it takes longer to work on such a scale. My line of affordable art is not a lower quality, but is instead simply smaller so it takes less time and materials to create, so it can be sold at a lower price point.

I’ve considered doing larger affordable pieces but haven’t yet worked out the details. I’d have to do some type of limited edition where I could create the work quicker in quantity, but still with the same quality.

By keeping my quality consistently high I believe the value of the work, no matter the size, will always be evident.

Art for Sale

Markings #20 is another small piece inspired by Markings #19, one of my favorite of the Markings series. I know coming up with $350 to purchase a piece of art is not always possible. I’ve sold a few of my larger pieces in a series of payments and it worked out well for everyone involved so if you are interested in any of my artwork, no matter the cost, and would like to work out a payment plan please contact me and we can figure out something that will work for both of us.

Markings #19
copy;2008
56" x 58"
$5500

Multiple Income Streams

If you do any reading about small businesses one of the top pieces of advice out there is about multiple streams of income. Not putting ones eggs all into 1 basket. I’m very serious about supporting myself through my artwork and quitting my day time job. I feel this is advice worth listening to. The smaller affordable art is just one of many ways for me to make a living.

I love making the larger pieces and while I am not yet selling a substantial number of them each year, they also provide part of my income. I do believe they will always make up the largest percent of my income but I don’t want to rely on this income exclusively.

I don’t make nearly the profit on these smaller textile paintings as I do on my larger work. They are quite labor and time intensive for the size and price. I figure I make about $5-$15 an hour on the pieces under $100. Not horrible but certainly not in line with what I make as a software engineer.

While I could probably scrape by selling only work under $500, if I really focused on this segment of the market, that is not my intention. I view this as one of many ways of sharing my art and passion with the world. When combined with my other streams of income I believe I can make this work.

Fine Art Department

Tracy Helgeson, one of my favorite oil painters, wrote a blog post about her art selling experiences and talked about why fine art makes for a really great gift this year.

To that end she started a new blog showcasing artist that are selling their art directly to the public called Fine Art Department. It’s a really wonderful looking group of artist so again, if you are thinking about buying art this is another possible avenue to find just the right gift this year.

I find it interesting, and maybe a sign of the times that 2 artists have started this type of online collection recently (yesterday’s mention of small art showcase is the other example). Seems like many of us are feeling that selling our work directly to the public is a good option right now.

Construction Update

As you can see in the photo above the excitement today is about the walls for my new studio. Woohoo - I’m absolutely thrilled with how the studio is looking. Ten foot high walls - a high ceiling. I’ve wanted this in a studio for years and now I’m just a few months away from having it.

Construction photos - Nov 21. Studio walls and a few new windows.

I got my house cleaned up and put back together after all of this work and am ready to head to the studio this morning. I might have a few interruptions while they move electrical lines but I’m excited to get to work on some new pieces. I’ve already selected the fabrics and and going to work on a new piece in the Home series this morning.