Lisa Call

Structures #60    ©2006    33"x89"

Honorable Mention

Last thursday or friday I intended to write a blog post about the Denver Modernism Show. A few years back one of my readers recommended that I enter my work into the juried portion of this show. This year I finally took their advice and did so.

I had a textile painting accepted, Structures #60, and in fact won honorable mention in the show. They accepted 45 out of 135 pieces submitted to jury. I believe my piece was the only fiber piece in the show but I’m not certain.

It’s a short weekend event that came and went this past weekend (blogging after the fact is maybe not my best marketing effort). I didn’t manage to find time to attend as I was busy being interviewed by Spike for her upcoming new book, celebrating my son’s 16th birthday, and getting kids ready for school, which started today.

Next year I plan to enter, to win best of show, and go see the show. And, of course, sell the work I have in the show. Best to go for the gold.

As I don’t have a TV I can’t watch the olympics, fortunately a friend dvr’d some womens’ gymnastics and I was able to watch it this weekend. It’s amazing what those girls can do. When I was in high school my junior varsity gymnastics skills weren’t quite the same thing.

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.

Structures #47    ©2007    61"x76"

Contemporary Crafts Exhibition

The 29th Annual Contemporary Crafts Exhibition opens this friday in Mesa, Arizona. This is one of the juried shows I entered last fall. Structures #47 will be part of the show.

They do a wonderful job hanging the show, which is curated by Michael Monroe, and the building and grounds are beautiful. A few images from last years show are now on smugmug here.

They’ve created an online invite shown below (click for larger image).

 
In case the image is difficult to read:

29th Annual Contemporary Crafts
January 25 – March 9, 2008
For hours, location and more info: www.mesaartscenter.com

My Solo Show at Macky

Yesterday I scheduled the opening reception for my solo show opening next month in Boulder Colorado. It will be Saturday, February 23 from 2-4pm with an artist talk at 3pm. I have 1 month to get everything ready for this show. So time to stop uploading images to smugmug and get to my studio.

Tomorrow I’ll photograph artwork and create a postcard invitation and write the statement for the show for the press release. If you’d like to receive a post card you please email me your name and address and I will add you to my mailing list.

You can also sign up for my email newsletter. The first one will be mailed out in the next few months.

Structures #55    ©2006    33" x 74"

Stuck

I’ve talked about them before. On and on. Saying I won’t enter them, or limiting how many I enter. All the drawbacks, etc.

Then I went and entered a bunch last fall in the midst of me feeling like I wasn’t getting anything done in my life and I was feeling pretty down. Given that my dad was sick and passed away in October and my boyfriend of 2+ years broke up with me a few weeks before the funeral, I am going to say in hindsight I was probably WAS being way too hard on myself.

But enter the shows I did, and as usual, I got accepted, which is, of course, why I entered. I knew I’d get in, I knew it would boost my ego and I’d feel better.

So I ask myself – If I knew I would get in – why was I entering these shows? It sure sounds like the behavior of someone that is stuck in an easy comfortable place and not challenging herself.

I know, I’ve said it before. This time I’m going to listen. A few weeks ago I was ready to swear off every juried show out there and declare that I would never again enter any juried show ever.

I decided to let these thoughts sit for a while and see how it feels.

Selling Art

I came to the conclusion that there are a couple of juried shows that might still be worth the expense. There is something that seems so wrong about the artist paying to exhibit their art, but if the benefits out way the costs it can be worth it.

Today, for me, that means the show needs to sell a lot of work, and more specifically my work. If I believe the show can do that, then I will enter it. Right now there are 2 shows that I have this faith in – one is Quilt National and the other is Art Quilts Elements. And I’m open to the shows I entered this last fall giving me the same faith by selling my work during the show.

The above piece is currently traveling with Quilt National 2007. It didn’t sell at the opening but I’m ready for it to sell now. I think this is one of my really excellent pieces so I believe it will find an owner that will love it enough to purchase it.

I love being an artist but I am done paying to be an artist. My art is going to sell, and I am going to get unstuck and move my art career forward.

Other Thoughts on Juried Shows

I’ve been planning on this post for a few weeks, waiting for my thoughts to gel. Then today Alyson’s newsletter and blog post over on art biz blog were on this exact topic. Some of the very questions I was asking myself about juried shows. A highly recommended read.

[The newsletter link will only be current until Jan 21, 2008 - read it quick because it's a really excellent list of questions to think about when entering juried shows. Her weekly newsletters are an excellent source of art business advice - worth much more than the price - free! You can sign up through the newsletter link above.]

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.

Markings #3    ©2006    74"x66"

 
I’ve entered the annual juried show Materials Hard & Soft at the center for visual arts in Denton Texas 4 times. A few years back when I got my 3rd rejection I decided that three strikes was time to call it quits figuring my work didn’t fit their vision.

Until a few months back, when I decided to enter some juried shows to jump start my art business. I entered this show again expecting a similar result but this year’s juror, Georgia Gough, reversed the trend. Apparently 4th time for this show. Markings #3, above, will be included in the 21st annual national contemporary craft competition and exhibition.

The show opens January 26, 2008 and will run through March 20.

I’m happy to finally have made it into this show. Although I suspect this will be the last time I enter this show, and most juried shows. Even so, it is always a nice boost to receive the acceptance letters from these shows: "Oh yay! Somone liked my work". And that is why I entered this year. So thank you Ms. Gough for the acceptance.

 
My work laptop is calling from across the room saying "if you don’t get busy now you will be up until midnight again". Sigh. So much for no more overtime. Tonight I have to recreate most of the requirements that were lost when the server crashed – a painful exercise at best. I definitely need this acceptance letter today – perfect timing.