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.

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.

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

Ascending

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

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

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

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

Why Ladders?

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

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

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

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

This outdated term has a Navajo origin and can be roughly translated as "ancient enemies," thus the term is no longer used.

Hm – guess I missed that update.

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

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

The Studio is Painted

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

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

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

It is absolutely beautiful!

Habits in a Construction Zone

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

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

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

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

Four Days Remaining

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

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

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

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

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

ACEO #28
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #19
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #21
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #23
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #24
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #25
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

Structures #104
©2008
6"x 6" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

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
Home #6 – Sold
Home #7 – Sold

 

Lines #7
4" x 4" – mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

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"
Sold

 
 

Structures #45
©2005
28" x 28"
$4000

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
By Paula McCullough

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.

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"
$17,000

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.

ACEO #23
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

Because That’s What I Buy

It’s taken me several years to come around to the idea of making affordable art. My first love is to make big expansive artwork. Given the time and materials involved in that process I can’t afford to sell my large textile paintings for only a few hundred dollars, which prices me right out of most people’s budget, including my own.

I started seriously buying art a few years ago and find that most of the art I purchase is under $200. I see a lot of other people buying art in this price range also. While I have saved my money and bought a few pieces in the $500-$1000 range that it doesn’t happen very often yet.

When I made the decision this year to actively look to sell my artwork I decided that this was a market that I wanted to participate in. I know that I very much appreciate the artists that make work at price points that fit my budget and it feels right to be able to do this.

Small Art Showcase

The impetus for creating my small artwork for sale webpage was to participate in an online small art showcase my friend Jeanne Williamson organized. (Thank you Jeanne!)

The website is now live and in addition to my work you can find small art work by 11 other artists working in a variety of mediums. The work ranges from $25-$500. Check out the website Jeanne created and get some holiday shopping done: Small Art Showcase .

I here there might be more artists coming soon so check back often.

ACEOs

Until this month I was selling my ACEOs for $21 including shipping. They are now $26 with shipping as I realized I wasn’t making much of a profit on them, between paypal fees, postage, materials and my time (to both make the ACEO, then photograph iand list on my website). While I want to make small art that is affordable, I also want to make some money while doing it.

Each of my aceos is created the same way I create my larger artwork. Each piece is cut individually (I never strip piece – for those that know what this means). Each cut I make and each color change in the work was made with deliberately.

On a very rare occasion I will have scraps leftover from a piece and will use those to make my aceos (I think this has happened twice), otherwise the pieces are made with intention, just like my larger textile paintings. The result is these are rather time consuming and if I want to keep making them it needs to make financial sense.

ACEO #23, above, was inspired by Markings #3, as was my small piece Markings #25. It is available for purchasefor $25 on my small artwork for sale webpage (near the bottom of the page).

A Series of Posts

I have much to say on the topic of affordable art so I’ve decided to write a series of posts so look for more thought on the topic over the next week or so.

Construction Progress

No post these days is complete without some construction progress. I think tomorrow I’ll have studio walls. Today they got one built:

Construction Photos – Wednesday – November 19
Construction Photos – Thursday – November 20