Lisa Call

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

New Art

This weekend I was determined to get at least a few minutes in the studio and get some artwork finished. And I succeeded – yay! Lines #22 is fresh off the needle and ready for purchase.

It’s a bit more bright fuchsia in real life than what I can get on my monitor.

I started a group of small 3″ square pieces using the bright colors from Structures #106 and intend on completing all of them this month.

A No-Excuses Art-Marketing Seminar

Long time readers know that I highly recommend Alyson, from artbizcoach.com, for her wonderful seminars, blog and book (I’d Rather Be In the Studio) on art marketing.

She’s holding a workshop in Estes Park, CO on online promotion titled How to Use Email, Websites, and Blogs EFFECTIVELY to Promote Your Art, see her website here for more details.

The two-day workshop will be held in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado–the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park and I’m very happy to announce I will be in attendance as one of her helpers (signing people in, enjoying the views, etc).

Workshop Details:

May 2-3, 2009
Just $165 until April 1 ($195 after that)

You’ll learn:

* How to decide which online formats are best for you
* Five email secrets that produce results
* How to use an email newsletter to cultivate collectors
* How to expand your mailing list
* The Dos and Don’ts of artist Web sites
* Where to splurge and where to save
* Why you need a blog right now
* How to start your blog
* What to write on your blog
* How to increase traffic to your blog (and website)
* What to put in your website media room
* Why you can’t afford to ignore social networking sites

Please join us in Estes Park for what is sure to be an awesome weekend!

To celebrate the coming of the new year I want to first honor my accomplishments for 2008.

1. Selected Courage for my year to guide me through a year of big changes.
2. I smiled more in 2008 than I did in 2007.
3. I sold my house of 12 years in a single day for over my asking price.
4. I bought a new home in Denver saying goodbye to the suburbs.
5. I hired an awesome contractor to build my dream studio on the back of my new house.
6. I have enjoyed the first 3 months of construction of my new studio.
7. I spent 446 hours in my studio making art (that an average of just under 8 hours a week. I had a few months during my house sale and move when I made no art)
8. I spent at least 700 hours marketing my art. I didn’t track it as closely as studio time but it was the lions share of my art career in 2008 as it was something I could do while the studio was inaccessible during the moves.
9. I created 4 new textile paintings in the Markings series.
10. I created 13 new textile patings in the Structures series.
11. I started new series inspired by my new house, called Home, and created 8 textile paintings – .
12. I started a new series of small works mounted on painted stretched canvas and created 21 textile paintings in the series – Lines.
13. I created 27 new ACEOs.
14. The result: I created 73 new pieces of art this year.
15. I set a goal of writing and sending 4 studio newsletters in 2008 – I met that goal by sending the 4th newsletter on New Year’s Eve.
16. I ended the year with 431 newsletter subscribers, exceeding my goal of 400.
17. I wrote 174 blog posts.
18. I joined twitter.
19. I wrote 1588 tweets (in about 4 months).
20. I ended the year with 400+ follows on twitter meeting my goal of 400.
21. I became more active on facebook.
22. I ended the year with 201 friends on facebook meeting my goal of 200.
23. I had a solo show of my Markings series in Boulder, CO in February.
24. I had a solo show of a few of my Structures textile paintings in Lincoln, NE in April.
25. I curated a group show at the Lux Center for Arts in Lincoln, NE in April.
26. I gave an artist talk at my February show – and love it.
27. I exhibited 6 large textile paintings at the Butler Museum of Art in Ohio.
28. I attended the opening of the Butler Museum show.
29. I was juried into Form Not Function for 2009.
30. I was asked to exhibit art at the Danforth Art Museum in 2009.
31. I exhibited Structures #60 at Art Quilt Elements (AQE).
32. I sold 2 small textile paintings in the gift shop during AQE.
33. Structures #60 was mentioned in the review of AQE in the SAQA journal.
34. I participated in the Artist Breakthrough program with Alyson Stanfield
35. I did a podcast interview with Alyson for her online book tour – my first podcast.
36. I was quoted in Alyson’s new book: I’d Rather Be in the Studio.
37. I enjoyed Alyson’s series of artist interviews this fall.
38. I attended my second retreat with Christine Kane in November
39. I had a nice family vacation in Montana in July.
40. I signed up to go on a tour of Africa in 2009 with Nancy Crow.
41. I turned profit in my art business for the first time ever.
42. I sold 2 textile paintings to the Cleveland University Hospital collection.
43. I sold many textile paintings to supporters and collectors.
44. I received dozens of supportive and loving comments from fans.
45. I dyed a couple hundred yards of fabric in my backyard under a crab apple tree in my new house since I had no where else to do it. I didn’t just give it up for the year.
46. I set up a temporary studio in a small bedroom after leaving a 600 sq ft studio to continue making art while my new studio is being built.
47. I create a project and wrote a chapter for a crafters how to book to be published in 2009.
48. I participated in several online interviews.
49. I sold enough PDF fabric to others to keep my account open with Kaufman.
50. I created a webpage to sell my artwork directly to collectors.
51. My direct sales of art were better than I imagined.
52. I did yoga almost every morning for 3 months in a row. I am still following a 3-4 times a month routine (most of the time).
53. I journaled in the morning on a consistent basis.
54. I wrote a gratitude entry in my journal 5 or 6 times a week.
55. I went on some beautiful hikes.
56. I experienced the magic of an aspen grove near it’s peak fall color.
57. I had a wonderful relationship with Jim for a few months.
58. I recovered from the end of the relationship by focusing on Joy in December.
59. I visited the Denver Art Museum numerous time through the year.
60. I visited the Contemporary Art
61. I taught myself how to mount my textile paintings on canvas.
62. I bought a new laptop for my art business.
63. I enjoyed several wonderful meals and outings with my artist friends.
64. I started a rewrite of my website with a design I really love.
65. I defined what success means to me as an artist.
66. I applied agile software management techniques to manage my art business.
67. I sold work in the artfulhome.com studio sale in the spring.
68. I sold work in the artfulhome.com studio sale in December.
69. Structures #39 appeared in the artful home holiday catalog.
70. Three textile paintings were selected as covers for Myers Briggs Booklets.
71. I received good compensation for the use of my images on the book covers.
72. Participated in Christine Kane’s Great Big Dreams E-Seminar – twice.
73. Made an investment in myself and signed up for Christine’s Platinum coaching circle for 2009.
74. Participated in small art showcase.
75. Listed in Fine Art Department.
76. Wrote guest post on Christine’s blog about my choice of the word Courage for 2008.
77. Received innumerable wonderful, supportive and informative comments on my blog.
78. Maintained a daily photo journal of the progress of my new home and studio construction.
79. Donated and gifted 10% of my gross art income.
80. Became comfortable and defined my career to include selling affordable art in addition to having museum shows with my Big Art.
81. Worked a fulltime job as a software engineer.
82. Thoroughly enjoyed being a mom to my 12 and 16 year old kids.
83. Wrote a series of blog posts about energy, and why I get so much done.
84. Survived my Quilt National 2009 rejection (the first rejection from QN in 4 shows)
85. Ordered new business cards.
86. Spent a weekend in silence.
87. Completed one ink drawing – Lines #4
88. Purchased 3+ beautiful new works of original art by artists I admire.
89. Baked an amazing cake for Christmas dinner.
90. Gave away a good percent (30%? 40%?) of my belongings to move from a 4000 sq ft home to a 900 sq ft home.
91. Was interviewed for inclusion in a book about art quilters to be published in 2009 or 2010.
92. Spent time with some wonderful old friends.
93. Spent time with some new amazing friends.
94. Let go of some friendships that were no longer serving me.
95. Through the use of acupuncture, yoga and intention, quit taking advil and aleave ending a 20+ year dependence on the drugs for pain relief.
96. Bought myself a big box of See’s candy’s in an act of serious self care.
97. Gave street people money and didn’t worry about what they might or might not do with it.
98. Tried out some new bright colors in my smaller textile paintings.
99. Used a purple christmas tree for the topping off of my construction.
100. Dressed my cats up for the holidays with no serious repercussions.

When I first thought of this list I knew my studio time (~8 hours a week) would see so small compared to my prefvious years goals of 20 hours per week. And then I look at everything else I have accomplished and I wonder where I found those 8 hours plus the 12-13 hours a week for marketing my work.

Gratitude for all I have done this year feels like the perfect way to end the year.

Tomorrow – my words for 2009 – Expansion and Integrity.

Happy New Year everyone.

Joy

I didn’t blog last night because I didn’t feel like writing about non-art stuff, and that was all I had to say. Spent my evening enjoying my son’s high school elective showcase (where else in the world can one watch a light saber yoga performance, complete with star wars music, than at an expeditionary learning school?) and my daughter’s gymnastics class – she’s getting closer to a back handspring – yay!

Today was a more challenging day on the Joy front. I haven’t been feeling 100% lately so went to the dr and got some antibiotics and hope that improves things and I get some sleep cause being tired is not super conducive to celebrating joy.

Fortunately the day turned around after I got home from work and ran some errands with my daughter. While waiting around walgreens for my prescription she decided to buy presents for her friends from the 90% off aisle. We had much fun looking through the stuff for $.50. Twelve year olds can be quite entertaining when they want to be.

Art (Business) Related Content

I’m headed to the studio soon and hope to wrap up Lines #10 and #11 tonight so will post them tomorrow. In the meantime I recently read an interesting article by Seth Godin I wanted to pass along: The Internet is Almost Full

Ten years ago, you had a shot of at least being aware of everything that mattered. Five years ago, you had to be really selective about what you took in, but at least it was possible to know what you didn’t know. Today, it’s impossible. Today, you can’t even read every article on a thin slice of a thin topic.

You can’t keep up with the status of your friends on the social networks. No way. You can’t read every important blog… you can’t even read all the blogs that tell you what the important blogs are saying.

I absolutely agree. There are more art blogs out there that I want to read than I can possibly ever have time to read.

So the question is – what do I do about it?

Blogs

My solution was to decrease the number of blogs I wanted to keep up with. This frees up a bit of time so I’ve been checking out the blogs of my readers on occasion. I miss many of the blogs I’ve dropped but I don’t miss feeling like I was behind.

So increasing both depth and breadth and just letting it be than thinking I need to know everything everyone says every minute of the day. I’m enjoying this more relaxed approach to reading blogs quite a bit.

Keep Email Effective

My inbox is hovering around 80 unreplied to messages right now. I had it down to 10 not long ago. Sigh. I have yet to figure out how to keep up with it. For those of you awaiting an answer – sorry – and hopefully soon I will catch up.

I’ve decided to start scheduling email answering time because it is important and it takes a bunch of time. No more pretending I can just fit it in here and there.

Last year I reduced the amount of email I get by filtering anything not art related or personal related to another email address. I then diverted all art related newsletters to another email address. I almost never check the junk email address and occasionally will check the other.

There are a couple of exceptions to this – the top one being Alyson Stanfield. Her newsletter is the best and I look forward to it every monday morning right in my main email inbox. Tis a rare monday I don’t read it.

If you don’t already have it, check out Alyson’s book I’d Rather Be in The Studio, it’s awesome (and not just cause there is a quote from me int there). If I didn’t already have it, this book would be on my christmas list.

Another thing I’ve done to reduce interuptions is to turn off all email notifications from twitter and facebook. I can catch up with those things when I go to the sites. I don’t need inbox filled with friend requests when I get a notification on facebook also.

Thank You

As a blog writer, I appreciate that you have way more choices for reading than about art than ever before and I want to, again, thank all of you for choosing to spend a bit of that time reading my blog, tweets and status updates on facebook.

How do you keep up (or not) with the internet?

Home #4
©2008
4" x 3"
Sold

Plan to Have Energy

My daily schedule:

• 5:30: Wake up
• 6:00: Yoga
• 6:30: Prepare for day
• 7:00: Work in Studio
• 7:30: Breakfast and get kids out the door to school
• 8:00: More Studio
• 8:30: Leave for work
• 5:00: Home from work
• 5:00: Dinner & family time
• 7:00: Studio
• 8:00: Art business/Office Work
• 9:00: Write Blog Post
• 9:30: Read 1/2 hour then sleep

My life isn’t always exactly like this but in general this is what I get done each day. My kids live with their dad every other week in which case family time is replaced with more studio and art business time.

When I first started working the day job I didn’t do anything when I got home other than watch netflix movies. After 6 months to a year of this rather sluggish behavior I decided I’d had enough laziness and I got rid of my TV.

Then I told myself I was not exhausted and that I had plenty of energy to make art. So that is exactly what I did. I’d get home from work and head to my studio and work for hours.

Now I do this daily. On my drive home I visualize myself working in my studio. I tell myself I have a ton of energy and I focus on the positive. I don’t participate in conversations where people complain about being too busy or tired to do anything as I feel it has a negative impact on me.

Having a positive attitude about what I can get done has been a big help in have all the energy I need to do anything I want.

Art For Sale

I stitched Home #4 along with Home #3, posted yesterday, with the thought it would be an ACEO to offer for sale via my studio newsletter in December. But apparently I can not measure and it turned out too big. I haven’t yet mastered the diagonals of these little houses so I do a lot more resewing and recutting than with my Structures and Markings series and they still don’t always turn out as I expect.

So now this little single house textile painting gets to be called Home #4 and is for sale for $35. Please send me email if you are interested in purchasing it. Shipping is $1 in the US and $2 elsewhere. I accept payment via paypal or checks in US dollars.

I was going to point out the stitched doors in the houses yesterday but forgot so check them out on this little piece. Maybe windows will be next as I had a discussion about windows with my builder today. We also talked about all sorts of other things, like bathrooms and keys. We’re getting closer to starting!

Insights

This evening is interview #2 in the Insights Artist Interview series with Alyson Stanfield. I love getting a chance to hear what these artist have to say about their careers. Success stories are wonderful motivation to keep on going.

Structures #72 detail

In The Studio

A few weeks ago I included an image of Structures #99 in my studio newsletter (you can see it here: Lisa Call’s October Studio Newsletter). Completing this textile painting was fun – only 1 more and I’ll be at 100. Woohoo. That feels like a big deal.

I haven’t figured out what I want to do for #100 yet. I had an idea it needed to be special in some way and with that kind of pressure, yikes, I can’t come up with anything special that feels right.

So instead I’ve decided to make this a full 100 completed pieces of art. Structures #72 and Structures #73 aren’t actually finished. They are both basted and waiting for me to add the surface stitching.

Both are very large pieces so I originally was going to wait to finish them until the new studio was built. Then this week I changed my mind and brought out #72 (detail above) and am working on it. I had started it during my move preparations earlier this year so I only have about 1/3 left to go. My goal: the stitching is finished by the end of the week.

Home Remodel

Speaking of my new studio, I got some excellent news today. My house (with addition) appraised for an excellent price so the bank approved my construction loan and I got a great interest rate to boot.

I close on the loan on the 24th and will start building hopefully the 27th. We should have the permit from the city some time next week. Everything came together nicely.

Yay!!! I’m getting closer.

Pretty much it worked out way better than I might have expected, which is so often the case.

Resources

A few artist resource I want to recommend. First are some artist interviews that Alyson Stanfield is presenting. I signed up for all 5 of them. I’ve found listening to artist talk about their business and their choices is a huge benefit to me so I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say. I missed the first one but the great deal on these is you can download the mp3 to listen to over and over again at any time. If you are interested here’s a link: Insights – Artist Interviews with Alyson Stanfield.

In addition, Alyson is taking applications for another artist breakthrough program that starts in November. I participated in one this spring and it was excellent. I am thinking I might do it again later next year after my studio is finished also as it really great to have some group energy to keep a project going. Here’s a link for that: Artist Breakthrough Program

For truth in advertising, these are both affiliate links, which means I get money if you sign up through one of these links, which is nice, but it’s not why I’m recommending them. I’ve recommended Alyson’s stuff long before this program was in place because I believe in it very strongly.

I’ve known Alyson for years and have taken several workshops and classes with her. I can honestly say if it weren’t for her I’m not sure I’d be very far along on the art business path. She’s makes it all so clear and obvious. She’s the best so I’m always happy to send business her way.

 
Another post in my series on Scrum and My Art Business.

My last post I talked about User Stories. I was going to write about managing tasks in this post but realized I needed to cover some more basics first.

The Team

In a previous post I introduced the product owner as one of 3 roles in scrum. The other 2 roles are Scrum Master and Team Member.

Each scrum team typically has these members:

• 1 Product Owner – who writes the user stories, brings the vision for the product to the team and prioritizes the work to be done
• 1 Scrum Master – who gets rid of impediments that are stopping the team from getting their work done (more on this role later)
• 5-9 Team Members – who do the work. From design and architecture to coding and testing.

In my art business there is only 1 person to play all roles. The past month it’s been interesting to think about the difference between each of them. I find I excel at the product owner stuff of bringing vision and thinking up things to do. I’m less effective at actually doing it, not because I can’t, but because I get distracted. So I think I could be a better scrum master and keep myself on track better.

This weekend I unplugged my computer and removed it from my studio/bedroom – the result was 16 hours spent making art. Score one for the scrum master on that decision.

Iterate

One of the key features of scrum, and most agile software development processes, is that the work is divided up into iterations. A group of work is selected to be done for each of those iterations. In scrum those iterations are called sprints (because they had to come up with new words for everything).

Scrum is a series of sprints, typically anywhere from 2-4 weeks in length, that follow this structure

1. Planning Meeting – The teams select a set of stories to complete in the sprint.
2. The Sprint – The team works on those stories during the sprint.
3. Sprint Review – At the end of the sprint the team demonstrate the complete work to the product owner for approval.
4. Sprint Retrospective – The team holds a meeting to evaluate how the sprint went so they can adapt and do better next round.

Repeat these 4 steps over and over and over without end. Every once in a while the software is released to customers and developers move onto the next release with new functionality in the next sprint.

Planning

At the beginning of a sprint the team sits down and decides how much work they can do during that sprint. The stories are prioritized by the product owner, so the team selects the highest priority stories. Each story is also estimated in size. So the team picks the amount of work, based on the size of the stories, that they feel they can complete in the sprint.

Prioritization and Estimation are black arts in the world of software development and maybe not so different for an artist so I’ll touch on these topics again in future posts.

By doing the planning at the beginning of each sprint, instead of all of it up front at the beginning of the project, it is possible to make better informed decisions about planning as the project matures. It’s a fallacy to think the scope of a software project can be determined up front and locked into place. Scrum allows for a more natural way of planning and prioritizing the work.

I think this fits the needs for an art career well. As new opportunities arise and details of existing ones are made more clear, replanning each month allows an artist to reprioritize the importance of each of the goals.

I’m trying out some of these ideas and have decided on doing sprints of 1 calendar month. At the beginning of September I selected some user stories to work on for the month by looking through all of the work I wanted to do.

Sprinting

During the sprint the team members do the work to complete the user stories. They hold a daily meeting in which each member answers these questions:

1. What did I do today
2. What am I going to do tomorrow
3. What (if anything) is blocking me from doing my work

It is through these meetings, and the amazing power of peer pressure, that the team functions without an authoritarian model. If you had to stand up at work each day and be held accountable to your teammates for pulling your own weight, the theory is you will actually do your work, vs surf the internet and buy stuff from amazon and ebay.

I’ve mentioned before that I have an artist mastermind group that I email every night answering exactly these 3 questions. While we are not a team, in that we are working towards a common group vision, having to say to other people "err – didn’t do a darn thing – again" is huge motivation to keep on track.

I highly recommend this type of group activity. I found my mastermind partners during the Artist Breakthrough Program” I took with Alyson Stanfield last spring. We’ve been emailing almost daily for months now and I know for me personally it is huge.

The Review – And Done

At the end of the sprint the team demonstrates the software they completed. Only user stories that fit the definition of done are demonstrated (see my previous post on this topic of what done means.) Almost done or close to done don’t count.

The product owner looks at what the software does and decides yes or no if it is acceptable. How do they decide? It’s based on the acceptance criteria for the user story (see the section on testing in this post about users stories for details on acceptance criteria.) If the product owner either accepts or rejects the work.

Any story that is rejected or that does not fit the definition of done is moved back to the list of incomplete user stories and is placed in a future sprint during a planning meeting.

I’m about 1/3 of the way through my first art sprint so I can’t report on how this might look but I’m hoping I don’t reject too much of my own work as not good enough.

I’ve been doing planning in iterations for my art career for a while now, and again I use my mastermind group to keep me on track. I’ve tried weekly goals and 2 week goals and monthly goals. Again emailing to the other artists what I hope to do for the month and how that month went. So I’ll continue doing that as a part of my sprint reviews.

The Retrospective

The adaptive nature of scrum is a very important piece of the process so I’ll devote more time to this later also. If you aren’t thinking about how things went and changing behavior based on those observations you aren’t doing scrum. And really, you aren’t being very smart about life.

We’ve all heard the saying: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It’s really rather obvious, but it’s also not so easy to implement.

The Rock

The photo at the top of this post has nothing to do with scrum but I like it so there it is. Another photo from hiking in Colorado. The water looks golden because of the pebbles underneath.

Click on the image for a larger picture and more rock details (I love rocks). It looks totally cool with my LED fancy screen on my laptop, which hasn’t yet been color calibrated so who knows what colors you might be seeing.

Purple Water ©2008 Tina Mammoser
2 1/2" x 3 1/2"

 
Not enough brain power tonight to write about scrum. I tried, I got distracted and have now spent 45 minutes typing with no satisfactory results.

So on to other miscellaneous short topics I’ve wanted to mention recently (mostly links out to the blog world):

1. Above is an ACEO I bought from the Cycling Artist – Tina Mammoser. I love her seascapes. Gorgeous. When my house is done and I have room for art again I hope to purchase a larger piece, but couldn’t resist this little purple one the other day.
2. Seth Apter over at The Altered Page has started up another round of The Pulse, a compilation of artist interviews.
   
   At the moment, he’s posting answers to the question about collecting stuff. My bowl of rocks is in this post: Show and Tell Part 1. This is all a huge amount of work on Seth’s parth – so thank you Seth. It’ll be a fun few weeks as the answers to the 5 questions are posted.
3. Came across a new artist blog, which I can already tell I’m going to love, by Diane McGregor. Definitely check out her blog Working Space for some interesting reading. Every post is packed full of great content.
4. This weekend I went gallery hopping with Alyson Stanfield, of artbizcoach.com, and a handful of other artists. We had a really good time and saw some of the preview art for Dialog: City, an arts and cultural event in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention, happening right now in our wonderful city. I can’t decide if I’ll head downtown tomorrow to see some of these events with the crowds or not. Looks fun, but also looks like a potential zoo.

Alyson took many pictures (if you subscribe to her newsletter you would have seen me this morning in the intro, well, except I haven’t been able to get it to load yet today – I think the server is having problems).

Here’s a photo she took of just me. Behind me is the Pepsi Center (the red building in the far back) – where much of the political action is. We’re standing on the top of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

I currently have 2 full priced offers for my house, both from well qualified buyers, both received about 24 hours after my house went on the market, in what is supposedly is a very depressed buyers market.

Many people are amazed I pulled this off. How can I have people bidding up the price of my house in this economic climate? Here’s how I did it (and how I plan on achieving the dream of becoming a self supporting artist).

1. Listen to the Experts

I told my real estate agent what I wanted – to sell my house quickly and for a fair price although money was not as important as this being an effortless process. I told her my house was to sell in 2 weeks or less after it went on the market. Her advice was to fix everything, stage the house and to price it low (but not too low).

I pre-inspected my house and fixed everything, basically if it seemed worn or broken I made it like new again. Then I staged the house. Although I didn’t do it her way – I fired her stager, who wanted to turn my house into something it isn’t. It didn’t fit my vision or values. So I staged it my way – I’ve never staged a house before but how hard is it to toss out half my stuff and hang a few curtains? I then priced the house at the low end of what houses similar to mine were selling.

Her advice was absolutely accurate. Experts are experts for a reason. They are good to listen to but it’s never worth sacrificing ones values to do what they say. I was able to follow my agent’s advice and still feel good about my choices.

As I’ve been working on setting up my art business I’ve been looking to the experts, like Alyson Stanfield, to find out how to go about making this dream a reality. These types of people have a lot of good advice that is worth listening to.

2. Start with Quality

My house is an amazing house. It’s in one of the best neighborhoods in Parker because it’s not a cookie cutter neighborhood. We have large lots (I’m on a cul-de-sac). Plus my house is just fabulously beautiful with a perfect floor plan. I knew all those things when I bought the house, which is partly why I bought it, so it would be easier to sell later.

I know my textile paintings are extremely high quality. I’ve spent years perfecting my technique and my artistic vision. I know what I’m selling is superior quality, which makes it much easier to sell. I truly believe in the value of my art.

3. Visualize Success

Every day I said my house would sell in 2 weeks or less. I journaled about it. I constantly told my agent this would happen. I joked about it. I thought about it. I became very very clear as to exactly what I wanted and I visualized what that might look and feel like.

I am doing the same for my art business. I’m getting very clear as to what I want and I am thinking about how that feels and what it looks like. I talk about it often and journal about it. I keep the dream alive every day.

4. Take Action

All the thinking in the world wasn’t going to get my house on the market. I held a picture in my mind of what my house would look like when it sold quickly and I took action on making my house look exactly like my vision every single day for 2 months.

It was a huge amount of work but with my Getting Things Done lists and focused concentrated effort I was able to pull it all together. I coordinated dozens of contractors giving me estimates and 7 or 8 coming and doing the work in addition to doing a lot of the work myself. It made my head spin some days but I kept the vision of my house clear in my mind and just kept on working.

I know this is exactly the type of effort I need to get my art business off the ground. It’s hard work, fortunately it’s all work I enjoy (way more than having my hardwood floors refinished) so I’m really looking forward to it. I have a clear vision in my mind what my life will be like after I quit the day job and I’m doing everything I can to make it reality.

Doing things gets things done.

Moving Sale Update

I’ve been intending to create a list of all of my available artwork so I can post what’s part of my moving sale so you don’t have to guess in case you are interested in a piece. My plan is to do this on friday. Tomorrow I am going to go find a house to buy so I have somewhere to live after I sell this one.

Shaded Walk    ©2007 Stephen Carl
Reprinted with permission from the artist

Artist Breakthrough Program

The last 4 weeks I’ve been participating in the Alyson Stanfield’s online Artist Breakthrough Program.

Today is the last day, the last phone call. Time to evaluate how things went.

So to start here are the goals I stated for the month:

1. I work 5 or more hours a week in my studio making art.
2. I complete the rewrite of my website and blog and go live with them by May 12, 2008.
3. I update my resume to include jurors for all juried shows.
4. I create a complete resume for my personal use with every show in my career listed. This list also includes a list of which pieces were included in each of these shows.
5. I design a portfolio package to send to galleries (the package does not have to be complete but I identify all the parts and the format of the package)
6. I start a list of potential galleries to contact for representation. The list has 30 or more galleries listed.

In addition to the above, I was also working on getting my house ready to put on the market. Cleaning, packing, hiring contractors, yard work, etc.

How Did I do?

1. I worked in my studio 19 hours over the 4 weeks – very close to the my original goal.
2. Nope – the website is coming along nicely but it needs more work.
3. Didn’t even start
4. Didn’t even start
5. Didn’t even start
6. I have between 15-20 galleries on my list with contact info.

In addition I got a lot done on prepping my house. This weekend I completed the last of the decluttering, and have done a bunch of packing, cleaning and yardwork. I’m almost done getting contractors lined up to do the big stuff (paint, carpet, refinish hardwood, etc). This was a larger job than anticipated, getting estimates, rescheduling, etc, etc. I’m certainly learning a lot about how to deal with these guys (number one tip – don’t have expectations about getting anything done soon).

How Do I Feel About It?

I’m super happy with how things went. I probably stayed focused about 70-80% of the time I had available to "do stuff", which is a lot more than normal. Although I didn’t complete everything on my original list I didn’t really think I’d get it all done so that’s fine (more on this later).

I knew I’d be super busy, not just because of all I had going but also because my kids were with me almost the entire month since I didn’t get to see while they were in Europe for 3 months. Not every weekend was as crazy as the one I outlined in this post, but we were still busy. Staying this focused for a sustained period of time, with my kids at home, was probably a first so I’m very happy about that.

I got some really great ideas from other participants in the program for my website so I have more work to do than originally planned. I’m writing a custom plugin for wordpress to display my artwork images, as I couldn’t find anything out there that did what I wanted. I haven’t written code in a while so I’m excited.

What Did I Learn?

I set my goals higher than was realistic. I did this to keep myself motivated. But what I found as the weeks went on is that I wasn’t taking the goals quite seriously enough. I’d list 6 or 7 things to do in a day and only have time for 4 or maybe 5. So I set myself up from the start to not finish everything.

I think this is how I normally operate. It’s safe – because I know I never get everything done I fall back on that as the excuse every time to not do stuff. Eventually I start to think I don’t really need to finish things.

This month has shown me this is maybe not the most optimal way of doing stuff. I love my Getting Things Done project and tasks lists (from David Allen’s Book) as they are great at capturing the big picture. Yet this month I’ve found I need to get more specific, and more realistic, about what I am doing TODAY.

So in addition to my big lists, each morning I started to pick at most 3 things todo. The super most important things that absolutely have to get done. And I put my focus on getting those things done. At the end of the day it’s awesome to say I’ve completed them all.

Learning this new way of approaching my work was the best thing I got out of this class. Taking the time to think about how I get things done and to try some different approaches.

Where Does Blogging Fit In?

Obviously I stopped blogging about 1/2 way through the program. I’d find myself with an hour of time to work on my website or to write a blog post and more often than not I’d blog. So I decided to drop the goal to write and spent my free computer time on my website.

I don’t intend on making this a habit. Living my life at a pace where I don’t have time to blog is not okay with me. I love writing and I find it a great way to process information about my art and myself. So something else is going to have to give because I’m going to continue to blog 2 or 3 times a week throughout the process of selling my house.

One fun thing about this class was watching other artists work on their goals. Steve Carl (photographer – the above image is his work) had a goal of starting a blog and it’s been fun watching him and remembering back to when I started mine 3 years ago. I think he’s off to a great start. You can check it out here: Works by Steve Carl

What’s Next?

The other important thing I feel I learned is that trying to do 3 things at once (make art, build a website and get a house ready to put on the market) is too much. I think if I would have focused on just 1 thing at a time in the end I would have gotten more done.

Time to focus on the house and get it on the market. I’ll have a few moments here and there to do some art/art business work but at least 2 of the 3 must do items on my list each day are going to be house related. While I’m not excited about losing momentum on the website I think in the end this is the best choice. I’ve been feeling a bit too scattered the last few days not really making huge headway on any one thing.

Priorities

In my series of posts on holding intent I’ve talked about some of the quotes I have on my studio wall. Here’s another related to priorities:

My Take on the Parts

What: I need to identify the specific tasks, or at the minimum the next task, that will get me to my goal. Without this breakdown of the parts it’s hard to identify the next action I should take to achieve a goal. Priorities imply that there are things to choose from, I need to identify those things.

I: There is only 1 person that is in charge of me reaching my goals – and it’s me. Taking responsibility for all of my choices and actions is a huge help in reaching my goals. It is not the internet’s fault that I waste time reading email and blogs, it was my choice. If I don’t like that choice and I can change it.

Doing: If I just sit around it’s unlikely my goals will be met.

Right Now: Worrying about the future or stressing out about the past isn’t going to move me forward. It’s when I stay in the present moment I make progress.

Closer: This is a process (and not a quick one), not a destination. Doing things gets me closer to my goals but I need to be patient and enjoy the journey, because without that the goal is rather empty. For me it’s about a life time commitment to living life one day at a time with the intention to be the person I want to be and living the life I want to have each day giving my situation in that exact moment.

Ultimate Goal: If I don’t know what I want and who I want to be, it’s kind of hard to make progress in that direction.

The Universe

On Alyson Standfield’s recommendation in January I signed up to get Notes from the Universe. I love these emails each morning as they make me smile and remind me that my thoughts do become my reality. Today’s was particularly relevant to my topic:

Where are you spending your time?