Lisa Call

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.

Structures #43    ©2005    21" x 22"

 
Post #3 on my thoughts on the design principles from my kids’ Expeditionary Learning school and how they relate to being an artist. [All my posts on design principles.]

Design Principle #4: Empathy and Caring

Learning is fostered best in small groups where there is trust, sustained caring and mutual respect among all members of the learning community. Keep schools and learning groups small. Be sure there is a caring adult looking after the progress of each child. Arrange for the older students to mentor the younger ones.

As this principle states my kids school is very small with only ~300 kids in grades K-12. All of them in a single building, high schoolers with first graders. The classrooms are paired up, older with younger grades, and once a week they get together for a "crew buddy" activity. It’s a wonderful experience for both the younger and the older kids.

Mentoring

I was fortunate to have some supportive mentors when I first started out making art. Having someone to ask questions, bounce ideas off of, and give suggestions is helpful in developing as an artist. Now I have a desire to share that with others to help them in a similar way I was helped. One of the goals of my blog is to do exactly that. I share my experiences and hope that others can gain from it.

The past year I’ve wanted to do something more tangible and specific along these lines. So I’ve started thinking about developing a mentoring program of some type. It’s something I want to do sometime this year, after I move and after I finish my website and after I get my book done. So I’m thinking end of fall or early winter having it in place. I have a bunch of ideas floating around in my head as to what this might look like, so watch this space in a few months as things become more concrete and I announce my plans.

Design Principle #5: Success and Failure

All students must be assured a fair measure of success in learning in order to nurture the confidence and capacity to take risks and rise to increasingly difficult challenges. But it is also important to experience failure, to overcome negative inclinations, to prevail against adversity and to learn to turn disabilities into opportunities.

I have had some really wonderful successes in my art career and I’ve had some set backs. While it’s easy to proceed in the face of resounding success it’s a lot harder to keep going when rejected or things don’t pane out as planned. I believe that successful people are those that respond well to failure. They learn to just keep on going as they have a strong belief in themselves and in what they want to do. They know they will eventually succeed and so they just keep moving forward, changing direction when one avenue fails and trying a different approach.

In fact I think this is the notable difference between those we view as very accomplished and those that never get far. Very few people never meet with failure or rejection, really probably no one. The questions is – what do you do when things don’t go well? Do you give up or do you continue to pursue your dream?

Moving Update

Yesterday was the last day of contractors in the house. It’s almost finished! Although I had hoped today would be a studio day I’ll be putting back the last of my furniture, washing windows, touching up a bit of paint, doing a bit of yard work, hanging the last few curtains. And of course putting some of my art back on the walls.

At 9am tomorrow morning I’ll have my first showing even though the house doesn’t officially go on the market until Tuesday. If you want to buy a gorgeous house in Parker Colorado let me know. It has an awesome studio.

Structures #43 – Moving Sale

I made Structures #43 a few years ago as a color study. This is the first of the thin line pieces that uses a different color family for the lines than for the ground. As I was just playing around I wasn’t getting too caught up in perfection. As a result I love the free flowing feeling of this piece that sometimes I fail to capture in my work if I get too analytical. I can tell when I into that right brain grove of making art as everything flows and it’s effortless. This piece is also available as part of my moving sale. Originally priced at $750, it is $450 until June 15.

If you are interested in purchasing Structures #43, or any of my available artwork please email me.

Detail of Structures #43:

A few people mentioned juried shows in their comments on the last post and Robin asked if I’d explain more my thoughts on them.

I wrote about this a while back in my post How to Become a Successful Artist – the usecase.

Looking at the usecase I wrote for success one of the preconditions I wrote was:

Artist has a definition for their idea of success

In my mind this is very important. Years ago my definition of success was getting into certain juried shows. I didn’t know much about the art world and it was the thing to do, so that’s what I did. Now that I’ve spent time being an artist I realize that those juried shows don’t have much future in them so they are no longer in my definition for success.

While I started my art career with juried shows I certainly don’t think it is required. There are many avenues into the art world. These days I’m more interested in solo shows and gallery representation and I suspect most places I’d want to include my work don’t care very much about my resume so I’m not sure the juried shows really helped all that much. And now that I should be looking for gallery representation and solo shows I find the juried shows to be a distraction to those goals.

I don’t think juried shows are all bad. Providing a line on a resume, self esteem, baby steps into the artworld. These can be important things. But I think it’s easy to stuck at this level, just entering the shows over and over again and not taking the next step. It’s easy. It’s deceptively rewarding.

Some people are happy leaving their career at this level and that’s fine for them, but it’s not for me. There are a couple juried shows that I will probably continue to enter because they do provide clear benefits beyond a line on the resume. Quilt National is one of them, the book they publish every year is a valuable piece of quilt art history and I like having my work included in that history.

One thing I do feel is a problem with juried shows is that many artists (myself included several years back) put all of their work into juried shows. Everything they ever made that was any good has appeared in a juried show. So if they did get a solo show it would a show full work that is not new and fresh. The word from Edward Winkleman on this topic is overexposure. You can read his very interesting thoughts about juried shows in this old post of his: The Jury’s Still Out on Open Submission Exhibitions, don’t skip the comments.