Lisa Call

Structures #100
©2009 Lisa Call
Textile Painting (Hand dyed fabric, batting, thread)
22″ x 50″

WooHoo!!

Structures #100 is finished and I’ve reached a huge milestone: 100 textile paintings completed in my first major series!

Detail

Structures #100
 
 

A comparison to the first piece in the series:

Structures #1
©2005 Lisa Call
Textile Painting (Hand dyed and commercial fabric, batting, thread)
74" x 38"

[Post updated 7/29]

Structures #59
©2006 Lisa Call
70" x 56"
Textile Painting
 

The Brain

I’m currently reading A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink and am finding it quite interesting.

I’m not too far into it yet but being a software engineer I can definitely relate to the outsourcing of the left brain software jobs. The people remaining in the US doing software tend to be more right brain software architect types. And managers.

There was a discussion in the book about chess and why computers do it better than humans and it made me think of my textile painting Structures #59 above (a definite right brain association). This quilt has always looked like a chess board to me. In a rather abstract kind of way.

Busy

With the new position as scrum master at work (ie project manager kinda) and the 160 hours slated for my studio work over the next month, and driving kids about town I’ve had really busy. Little time for chatting or focusing on the art business.

I figure that’s okay as it’s all an ebb and flow. I’ll come around to super busy art business stuff again here soon.

Tonight was the final lecture at the Denver Art Museum in this series of the Logan lecture series. Beverly Semmes gave an interesting talk about her work. The big purple robes in Denver were her first sale to a museum, and in fact her first sale of any kind of her art. What an awesome piece of news that must have been to receive.

Structures #57
©2006 Lisa Call
33" x 66"
Textile Painting (hand dyed fabric, batting, thread)

Art For Dad

Today I took my son (a teenager – but really any age will work) to the Denver Art Student’s League annual Summer Art Fair. We had 2 purposes – first was to
enjoy the art and the second was to buy his dad a father’s day present. My daughter had previous pool party plans so was excused from the outing.

All around it was a successful event and we had a great time, saw a bunch of art and my son picked a nice abstract painting for his dad. At first he just wanted to go home but once he got into it he wanted to walk by all the booths to make sure he saw all his options first. Very cool he got into it eventually.

I bought a little ceramic house to add to my collection of houses. It’s now a collection because this is the second one I’ve bought.

Collectors in the Making

My goal, besides spending time with my son and seeing art, is to create a future art collector. As an artist I have a vested interest in there being a lot of these out there.

In addition to taking the kids to museums, art shows, galleries and other art events I also occasionally buy them art for their rooms. And of course we make art together.

I’ve now added in the element of having them buy art. Unless wildly inappropriate, I believe we will focus on purchasing art for all our future gift giving needs this year.

Support an artist – buy art for your friends and family!

Hm. That just might be a bumper sticker I need.

Progress

In addition to the art fair, I also had my second photo lesson today. The above image is another attempt at photographing Structures #57. This version is too dark because it’s now too dark in my house to process photos appropriately. But I’m on the right track as think it looks better than this version: Previous post with Structures #57.

Ironically that post is also about progress in my art career and it’s great advice based on a blog post by Seth Godin. I really recommend you click that link above and read my old post if you feel like you are never making forward progress. Seth is a smart guy.

Here’s one of his quotes from my article:

Add up enough urgencies and you don’t get a fire, you get a career. A career putting out fires never leads to the goal you had in mind all along.

It’s about making sure the things we are doing move us forward.

Today I put out a slow smoldering fire that has been blocking me for at least 6 months. I turned the website work I have done over to my builder and can now refocus on my career.

To that end look for the very first bit of content to come from makebigart.com later this week. I’m excited. Moving forward!

 
PS – If you are looking for some art to buy as a gift, I group together small pieces here: Affordable Art for Sale.

Structures #73 – In Progress
Textile Painting
©2009 Lisa Call
Detail

Holiday Weekend

This 3 day weekend I work in my studio 16 hours. It was the first weekend it felt like home again. I’ve loved having the space but hadn’t really felt it was broken in yet. Now it does.

I’m most thankful it rained all weekend, so I relieved myself of all responsibility for pulling the nearly 2 foot tall weeds in the landscape free yard. The day will come when I’ll have to deal with that issue, but with the rain I was free to just make art.

I’m nearly finished putting the surface stitching (quilting) on Structures #73 and started some new ACEOs. The first ones of the year.

I also made big progress on Structures #100. I decided to make it the first new larger piece I designed in my new studio and it went together well. The composition is done so now I need to get it basted so I can start quilting it also.

Planning

It feels great to be motivated to make art again. Seems like it’s been a long time.

After my post a few days about about adding some more structure to my studio time, I decided to set some specific goals for the year to keep me motivated.

For 2009 my studio goals:

- 550 or more hours of studio time (~10 hrs a week)
- 256 or more days making art (70% of the days in the year)

As of today I’ve put in 126 hours in the studio and made art 68 days this year. To make my goals I’m going to have to make art pretty much every day for the rest of the year and put in at least 15 hours a week.

I’m be in South Africa for nearly a month later this summer, so I’ve factored in that time away from the studio also.

As a point of reference, in 2007 I put in 870 hours in my studio. The year I had a very clearly defined goal of 20 hours a week in my studio.

In 2008 it was 446 hours in the studio. A year with the laid back “let’s not set specific goals” plan. I also sold my house, moved into a house with no studio and started a major construction project – so to be fair I was a bit busier also.

Next up is going to be doing some planning and setting specific goals for the business side of art. I’ve been very reluctant to do that in the past and I think it’s time to get more serious about tracking the hours I spend on the business and keeping a better schedule.

I have big ideas of things I’d like to accomplish – specific goals will help me get there.

Structures #109 – In Progress
Lisa Call
Textile Painting
©2009
~80" x 80" (unfinished)

More Art Made During Construction

Structures #109 is another textile painting that I designed and constructed in my temporary 10′x12′ bedroom/studio while my house was under construction.

I love working with brown. It’s always the first color of fabric I run out of during the winter when I don’t do any fabric dyeing.

My fence motif got a bit more chopped up in this piece as I was playing around with the square shapes that resulted from some doodling I was doing.

Studio Lighting

My posts on studio lighting will return tomorrow. I spent my weekend up in Estes Park helping Alyson Stanfield with her Art Marketing online class.

Between that and getting sick last week my plan for the week pretty much went out the window, but I’m back on track this week and ready to make lots of forward progress.

Structures #1
Textile Painting
74" x 38"
©2005 Lisa Call
$12,000

Snow and Building

I was going to write a blog post about social media last night, and then today, but I decided nope, time to take a bit of a break from doing stuff. So that will have to wait. I need to spend some time chilling out as the construction comes to a close. Basically I’m tired. Need to get my energy back.

Only 1 more week and I think it’ll be done – or done enough that I will be moved in and just have minor things here and there to fix. The major stuff will be done. Tomorrow and Saturday carpet and maybe my studio closet then next week paint. I need some studio furniture built, put up some design walls and then I’m in business.

The weather did it’s best to put the brakes on the project but it didn’t win. They finished moving my studio closet door to a more discrete location then did the drywalling and texturing just as the storm was at it’s peak. Then the blizzard kinda gave up and it’s just regular kinda snowing out there now – no more blowing horizontally – which is always interesting.

The First

I’m uploading images of my artwork to facebook so thought I’d share what I wrote over there here also:

Structures #1 is the first textile painting/quilt I made in the Structures series. I started the painting in 2000 in a workshop in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.

When starting a new series the first thing I do is make sketches and since I work in fabric my sketches are also constructed with fabric, usually black and white. So after that I was ready to jump into a lot of color. I love the richness of my handdyed fabrics.

This artwork, along with all of my textile paintings, is heavily textured with stitched lines less than 1/4″ apart across the entire surface. The tactile nature of this type of detail makes them nearly irresistible to touch.

Detail:

Structures #41
Textile Painting
©2004
44" x 31"
Private Collection

Create Denver Expo

Yesterday was an excellent day at the Create Denver Expo. I attended some interesting workshops, got my portfolio reviewed and my presentation on social media went well.

After the event many of the artists attended a city sponsored happy hour at a local bar where I connected with some fun and interesting artists. Its such an awesome thing to connect with other artists and talk about life and art.

It reminds me that on the deepest level my Structures series is more about connections than boundaries. We all put up our barriers to protect ourselves but what most all of us really crave is a real connection with others. We have to knock down the walls first but when we take the risk and really connect, it’s very rewarding.

Yesterday was one of those perfect days where all went well and I am very excited about my art and the direction my career is going.

Studio Lights and Closet Door

Which is all great because I got home to discover the studio lights that were supposed to be hung while I was gone, were not. Due to a mixup there was no way for them to get into the house (it’s a mystery where the lock box key has gone off to).

So try #3 and still no studio lights. Amazing – but really just funny. They are going to try again tomorrow.

By friday the house passed all inspections (electrical/plumbing/mechanical) and they did a pre-inspection for the final building inspection on friday and everything got a thumbs up. Yay! This doesn’t mean the house is done but it means we are very very close.

I was a bit bummed the crazy door high up on the wall over the stairs for my studio closet passed inspection cause I don’t really like where it is. I was hoping the city would force us to move it. They didn’t.

So now I’m going to move it anyway. It’s going around the corner so it can’t be seen from the rest of the house. It will make the closet easier to get into, be much safer, and the house will look much much better. Not sure what it will cost me but it’s the right thing to do.

Too bad I didn’t think of this plan before they did the drywall. But no big deal – I can fix it now and a year from now I will be very very happy I didn’t settle from something that isn’t what I want.

This means I’ve pushed the carpet back to friday/saturday of this week. The house should be done by then. I am most most excited. Just imagine – I’ll get to make art again – in a real studio! Woohoo!

Social Media

If you’d like a copy of the handout from my social media talk you can find it here: Social Media: Marketing Miracle or Waste of Time?. To jump to the punch line – it’s neither (although it has the potential to be a waste of time if you let it).

I’m thinking about expanding the outline and include all the content from the presentation in the write up and create an ebook on social media for artists. Other things are a higher priority but it’s a thought. Would you be interested in reading something like that?

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.

Structures #11
Textile Painting
©2002
47" x 72"

Intuition

The last few days I was reading descriptions of some online art classes and it really struck me that I have no formal training in art. I rarely think about this but for some reason last night it really stood out.

This post is a rambling brain dump of some of my thoughts on the subject. Not a value judgment in any direction. Just thinking.

I tend the think it doesn’t really matter in the long run but there are certainly times I wonder if I’m missing something totally obvious. I just make stuff I like and seems to work out. There isn’t a formal art thought driving my artistic decisions. I just do what feels intuitively right.

So I wonder if those with a formal education make decisions based on color theory or thinking about some mysterious art theory I know nothing about. Or does all that training just become ingrained and these artists are just going with their gut also? Are you a formallly trained artist? What’s your take on this?

I don’t have any desire to get an art education, beyond my desire to go back to school just because it would be fun. I don’t think I need to know this stuff, I just sometimes wonder what it is I don’t know.

Harder or Easier or The Same

Would making art be easier or harder with a formal art education? Or maybe it’s the same.

Part of wonders if it would be easier because I’d have this secret artist knowledge that would make decision making obvious.

And part of me wonders if it would be harder because I’d know a bunch of rules and be afraid to break them. I have no idea if my art breaks rules I don’t know. Could be, but would it matter? Probably not.

Or maybe it’s all the same because in the end as artists we are just interpreting our world and no matter how many classes one has taken this is just a kick ass fun thing to do and all the rules don’t really matter.

Structures #11

I figured on a post about my pondering about lack of formal education I’d illustrate it with one of my most popular textile paintings. Clearly I’m doing plenty right – ha!

Crazy Logs
©2009 Cherie Bagadiong
33" x44 "

Beauty from Scraps

For a while Cherie would leave comments on my blog asking to buy my hand dyed fabric scraps and I’d tell her "Oh yeah, some day". When I sold my house last year that day arrived as I was getting rid of anything that didn’t seem essential. We came to an agreement on the price and off the fabric went.

She’s been telling me for a while that the first piece (of many as I hear this barely made a dent in the pile) was nearly done. Today I finally got to see, and now you all do also.

Wow! Is that cool. To think those are all my scraps and actually a bit of my piecing as Cherie says: "The line with orange and white and a few others are the pieces that you sewed originally for your pieces." I think the white with red lines is from Structures #18, from 2003.

Cherie I’m honored with the lovely quilt you’ve made with my scraps.

Beautiful Stitching

Check out the great stitching she’s put on the piece also – she does this with a home sewing machine (with the feeddogs for you sewing types out there – it’s not free motion or with an industrial machine).

Great job!

Less Art

Today was a day with less art than yesterday (I painted the edges of canvases for Ascending #1 and Home #8 – so at least something). Instead more admin stuff that keeps our lives busy. Like calling insurance people, and ordering tile, and checking on where my studio lights might be and paying the mortgage. And working the day job.

And tonight I got another email from the folks that write my mailing list software (phplist) with a security update. It’s been a year and half since I upgraded so decided I should. And ran into a little technical problem that had my mailing list down for about an hour.

In the process of fixing that I accidentally deleted an important configuration file for my website (.htaccess for you geeks). Oops, no back up (er oops again) – so I had to recreate it. So if something is broken on my website please let me know – I probably broke it myself.

I did discover I needed to add my .ico file into my hotlink protection list so in the end it was a good thing.

Wonderful Response

And wow, in less than 20 hours I sold all of the ACEO’s I had left (I suppose an impending large price increase doesn’t hurt for selling work today). Thanks everyone that purchased one.

Today I also set up an art trade with Nichole Hyde for Markings #11. I very excited about this exchange as I love her work and I’m going to get a beautiful orange and gray piece that will look fabulous on my new purple bedroom walls.

This means there is almost nothing left for sale on the small arts for sale website. The last couple of months I’ve been so focused on the large textile paintings, which I can’t show until next year, that I’ve been remiss and making new smaller pieces.

Here are the 6" or larger pieces that are left:

Home #3
©2008
10.5" x 8"
Purchase Here

Structures #102
©2008
6"x 6"
Purchase Here

Structures #25
©2003
8"x 8"
Purchase Here

Structures #6
©2001
20"x 26"
Purchase Here

 
 
For those curious the new prices on these textile paintings will be as follows on February 1st if they don’t sell in the next 3 days:

Home #3: $640
Structures #102: $350
Structures #25: $350
Structures #6: $3000 (it’s currently priced at 60% of it’s old price as it was on sale at artfulhome.com)

Artful Home Changes

Speaking of Artful Home, there are changes afoot at the well known and successful online art website. Yesterday they announced a $25 a month fee for artists to be listed online.

It’s an interesting move to charge artists a fee for the privilege to be represented by a gallery. I suspect the video format of the announcement is an indication of some really great ideas to come from artfulhome even in our current economic climate, so I’m quite optimistic about the change and will definitely sign up.

The first wonderful change is that the artists will be able to edit their own information and control their retail prices and upload their own images. Yay! That will be nice (currently we have to ask to get things listed or changed and while I’ve had good turn around times it’s not as immediate as I would always like).

As long as they continue to do an amazing job jurying the artists, which I believe they will as quality is key to their brand, I suspect we have some really good things to come from this website. Will it be worth $300 a year? Their reputation is worth the investment to find out.

Change is exciting. Gotta think big and expand!