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.

Structures #38
Textile Painting
©2005
43" x 42"

How It Began

Four years ago on February 22 I made my first blog post. I had been thinking about blogging for a while but without a digital camera it didn’t seem like an art blog was going to get very far.

I think we got bonuses at work or some other money fairy visited in mid-February 2005 so I walked into a camera store and bought a Nikon D-70 without doing any research on digital cameras, 15 minutes tops and I was out of the store with my new toy. I had a N-70 and knew the lens were interchangeable and that seemed like a good reason to buy another Nikon.

With my new studio I’m going to have to buy another lens. I can’t take photographs of my largest pieces with my 50mm lens (room isn’t big enough) and my zoom lens has crappy color (in comparison to my very nice 50mm, which I use for all my art photography). So I’m thinking positive thoughts for the money fairy to come visit again.

We All Love Stats

According to wordpress I’ve made 600 posts (the first few months were on blogger – once I got serious about blogging I quickly moved to my own install of wordpress.org).

There are currently 3,940 comments and akismet has blocked 19,741 spam comments from appearing. The spammers have the real people seriously out numbered. Ya’ll need to get busy.

According to my website stat counter I had 104,821 page views and 26,713 unique visitors in January and my traffic seems to grow fairly steadily over the year. I had a pretty big drop last may-july during my move as I had nothing to say.

Construction

With my construction I suspect I’ve increased traffic by doing a daily photo log of the action even though the art content has slowed a bit over the last 4 months. The next three weeks I’m not likely to have much access to my studio as they are doing drywall/texturing/painting in the existing part of the house, meaning my kids bedrooms will be my studio for a week.

Then the hardwood floor will be refinished and I’ll install carpet – all of which requires a large amount of furniture shuffling.

The timing is interesting because the deadline for submitting photos for the large pieces I’ve been working on the last few months is March 1. I have about 2-3 more hours of sewing and then it’s photography time. My goal is to do that on tuesday – so guess I need to buy that new lens tomorrow.

Hm… Anyone want to buy some art?

Not much still for sale on that page, I think near top priority once the studio is done is to make some more small art.

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

ACEO #12
3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″
sold

 
A few unrelated topics…
 

Twitter

A series of articles I’ve read related to social media:

1) In a recent post, titled A Spectacular Way to Avoid Doing What Really Matters, Clint Watson definitively states:

Unfortunately, I keep seeing artists who seem to think that Twitter is some sort of revolutionary marketing tool that will help them sell art. It won’t.
…
Why ANY artist would think that sending a “Twit” is a better use of their time than creating art is totally beyond me.

 
2) A recent post by Seth Godin titled The small-minded vision of the technology elite:

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
—Ken Olsen, ceo of DEC,

Only 31 years ago. DEC was one of the leading computer companies of the day, but not for long.

Take a look at the geek discussion boards and you’ll see an endless list of sharp-tongued critics, each angling to shoot down one idea or another.
…
PS the marketing elite have precisely the same problem.

 
3) An interesting point of view by Bill Weaver is presented in an article on his new blog The Artists Center: What’s up with social media.

I recommend the entire article and here’s a small bit:

So last year when I found out about Twitter I joined but really didn’t get it until the last few months. Coupled with my Facebook toolbar for Firefox I now get regular little blurbs that pop up on the bottom of my screen whenever one of the people I am connected with has something to say. That very action has allowed me to get to know what used to be pretty close to complete strangers. As a result, I have several potential partners for workshops or seminars each having a strong skill I am lacking in. I hinted above about communities, again this is one of the things social scientists have found occuring more and more as a result of staying connected with each other.

 
4) My twitter profile: twitter.com/lisacall (guess that makes it clear where I fall in the conversation).
 

PFD Fabric For Sale

As I’ve mentioned before I purchase the PFD (Prepared For Dye) fabric directly from Kaufman. I love this tight weave, high quality, 100% cotton pimatex fabric. It’s very dense and in my opinion some of the best fabric out there for making quilts (definitely a matter of opinion). I wrote a post about this fabric here: Kaufman PFD Pimatex Fabric

Kaufman has changed their rules for keeping my account active and I need to purchase more fabric than I can use each year. Would anyone be interested in purchasing some of this fabric from me? The cost would be around $5 a yard (including shipping). Unfortunately I don’t have the time to investigate shipping out of the US so currently this offer is for US residents only.

If you’d be interested in purchasing some fabric please send me email and I’ll see if there is enough interest to pursue this. I sure hope so cause I LOVE this fabric and don’t want to lose my account.

ACEO #12

Last night I didn’t get to my studio until about 9:00pm. I finished construction of Structures #99 before work so the next step was to piece the back and baste the quilt. I was in no mood for that so instead I decided to make an ACEO. This artist trading card is a combination of the bright colors from Structures #98 and the more somber dark gray/browns from Structures #99 as they were jumbled together on my cutting table.

If you are interested in purchasing ACEO #12 please send me email. It is $21 US and includes shipping to anywhere (I accept payment via paypal or check). It’s sold.

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.

Backside:

Fall in Colorado

The weather is Colorado is beautiful this time of year. Warm days, cool clear nights (well except for the recent rain). It’s beautiful. This is the view from Jim’s deck up in the mountains. Visiting my boyfriend is better than going on vacation. I love living in this state (I know I said this same thing just the other day – I’m very grateful for my life!).

The Studio

My hardwood floors are done and after 8 hours of wiping up dust off of everything I’m ready to head back to my studio. At least until I can get the inside painting started.

I’ve been working on adding the surface stitching to Structures #72, which is bunched up under the back sewing machine.

In January I added a second large work table to my studio. My sewing machine, a pfaff 1475, nestles down into the these tables and gives me a large 4 foot by 8 foot surface to work on. It’s a wonderful setup that helps facilitate creating my textile paintings with ease.

I wanted a second table so I could use 1 table for surface stitching and the other table for constructing the compositions. These two activities require different creative thinking on my part and different sewing machine set up. Having 2 machines and 2 tables would allow me to switch between activities quicker and with less interuption.

Open Space

As soon as I got the new table set up my productivity in the studio crashed. I kept trying to tell myself I loved having the 2 tables but it wasn’t working. My studio felt cramped and crowded. I’m used to having lots of open space. It’s interesting how much the energy shifted by adding more furniture.

I’ve used the second table only for a few hours, always going back to my original table to do sewing. A few months after completing the new table, I decided to move into a smaller house, where there will be no way the second table will fit.

My original thought was to store the new table until I can move into my dream studio (slated for 6 years from now when my kids have all left home and I will move again). I still think having 2 tables is an excellent idea. I just need more space to do it.

For Sale

Then I got real and recognized I won’t have room to store the table top and all the bookshelves in my new smaller home. So the second table is for sale. I obviously can’t ship it but if you live in the denver area and are interested let me know. I’m asking $200 for the table (I paid $180 for the bookshelves and table top and $175 for the labor to build the shelf that holds the sewing machine).

It is custom fit for a pfaff1475 but can be modified to fit many other machines. Recognizing that I probably don’t need all 3 of my pfaff1475s for the next few year, I will sell one of my pfaffs for $700 to the purchaser of the table if desired. I’m selling the one I bought last year for $740 then paid $100+ to have it serviced. I’ve used it very little since purchasing it so it’s in excellent shape.

If you are interested please send me an email or leave a comment below. The table top is not fastened to the bookshelves so it is (relatively) easy to move. It’s definitely heavy.

I’m going to list it on craigslist in a few days if none of my readers are interested.