Lisa Call

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.

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.

Home #3
©2008
10.5" x 8"
$550
Purchase Here

TUT

Today’s Notes from The Universe:

No one ever regrets raising the bar, Lisa, ever, ever, ever.

Scare yourself,
The Universe

I love these daily emails – they make me smile – and think, good thoughts.

Fear and my Purple Paint

I thought about my choices for the paint in my bedroom when I first read the email this morning. I was choosing the lighter purples because everyone always says to pick lighter colors for paint and etc etc. So I was following rules but when I did, it so was not what I wanted.

I want a really deep dark royal purple – so scare myself I did by daring to go with the darkest purple I could find. I’m sure I’m going to love the room. Sometimes I have to ignore everyone else’s voice and just go for it to get the results I want.

Raising the Bar

When I first starting writing about my studio addition I wrote about adding on a small studio and living small. Somewhere along the way I raised that bar and went for the studio I really wanted.

Sure there have been a few scary moments along the way (mostly when I get hooked by the fear around the stock market) but it is quickly put at bay because I know this is exactly what I need and want. Absolutely no regrets here.

Same story on raising my art prices. I finally owned my success (to copy a phrase from Christine Kane’s latest teleconference) and it feels great!

 
Where do you need to raise the bar in your life?

The Achiever

I am a type 3 on the enneagram, The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type:Adaptable, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious. So I come by my energy partly to fulfill all of that success-oriented drive that I have. Definitely that is the upside of being a three, but just like all of the types, there are plenty of downsides.

All the image oriented stuff. Ugh – yeah – at times that can be me. And the "never ever admit you might have a flaw" stuff. Yep – me also.

Threes are excellent at getting things done. I have a ton of energy and am always up for doing stuff. The flip side is I’m less adept and relaxing. This year I made creating space a priority and in addition to my (near) daily yoga practice I look for ways to slow down and relax. Finding a boyfriend that lives in the mountains has been a big help in that direction.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

The photo at the top of this post is of 3 new catalog covers that feature images of my artwork (Structures #14, Structures #11 and Structures #46). The catalogs are teaching resources for a company that does a lot of Myers-Briggs training and testing.

I love this personality type stuff so was thrilled with they asked for images earlier this year. I just got the completed catalog covers in the mail this week.

I’m an INTJ the Myers-Briggs world. Which explains all of my planning and list making skills. And my geek side. My natural preference is to be organized and efficient which amplifies my energy as I rarely waste much of it:

INTJs are ambitious, self-confident, deliberate, long-range thinkers. They dislike messiness and inefficiency, and anything that is muddled or unclear. They value clarity and efficiency, and will put enormous amounts of energy and time into consolidating their insights into structured patterns.
…
INTJs have a tremendous amount of ability to accomplish great things. They have insight into the Big Picture, and are driven to synthesize their concepts into solid plans of action.

Playing to Strengths

There are a lot of people that find these personality indicators to be a bunch of junk and admittedly there is no scientific proof they are accurate. But I believe they are useful in helping to identify patterns and preferences and when used to aid in personal growth they can be extremely valuable.

This information can be used to identify the positive parts of my natural inclinations. Knowing what I might be good at is helpful in taking those those strengths and expanding them.

Not an Excuse

Even more helpful is understanding my weaknesses so I have a reference point for how to move forward past those potential road blocks.

It’s easy to read personality type indicators like the enneagram or myers-briggs and use it as a way of staying stuck. Easy to think "Oh well I a _____, might as well accept this is the way I am" and just be that way.

While I don’t think I can change who I am fundamentally, I know I can change my thoughts and my attitude and the past year I’ve done a lot in that direction.

Using these tests as an excuse for bad behavior or using them to limit my choices or abilities is not acceptable.

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.

This morning Natalya Aikens emailed a link to an article in the New York Times titled Late Bloomers by Malcolm Gladwell and I second her recommendation.

Wow. I think I might have found myself.

The article starts by chronicling the writing career of Ben Fountain, an author who spent 18 years writing before getting his first big hit at the age of 48. The article goes on to postulate on 2 different approaches to creative work – conceptual vs experimental. Prodigies, like Picasso, tend to be conceptual, they are born to genius. Late bloomers take a more incremental and experimental approach to their work.

The biggest "wow" part of the article for me is an excerpt from an article by David Galenson which comments on late bloomers:

The imprecision of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded, and their careers are consequently often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective. These artists repeat themselves, painting the same subject many times, and gradually changing its treatment in an experimental process of trial and error. Each work leads to the next, and none is generally privileged over others, so experimental painters rarely make specific preparatory sketches or plans for a painting. They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.

Okay – wow – that is almost exactly how I feel about my work. I often say that I’m still in the student/learning part of my career, believing that my work is no where near where I think it should be. I’m okay with this, going along one piece at a time trying out a new idea to see what it will bring me. After 7 years I have 99 textile paintings in the Structures series and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. I’m searching for something that I know is there and seems rather illusive.

So now I have a whole theory about why I do what I do. I’m a late bloomer. Excellent – when I’m 60 my work will be selling for millions. Woohoo!

A Patron

The article makes an interesting point:

If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.

and goes on to discuss the patrons that Cezzanne (also a late bloomer) had in his life, such as Vollard and Pissaro.

The late blooming author, Ben, quit his job in his 20s and when I first read that I felt I was some how a slacker for not suffering the poor artist life and slogging through 18 years of hard work til I made it. Then around page 4 or 5 they reveal that Ben was able to quit because his wife was making a big chunk of money as a lawyer and he was a stay at home dad. Although his kids were in day care until the afternoon so he had large piece of uninterrupted time to work.

Aha – okay – so I no longer have such a patron, no wonder I’m going to work. I was a stay at home mom for 10 years and it was during this time I launched my art career in full. So I am quite grateful for that opportunity. My kids were never in daycare and I got a divorce as soon as my daughter went to kindergarten so I had naptimes to make art, but still, it was really great to not to have to work.

I’m now my own patron and this line from the article gave me pause:

This is the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others.

Hm. Is that true? I’m a pretty self sufficient person that rarely asks for help and am pretty determined that I can do this, even with the day job (for now). Maybe I need to go hunting for some patrons. Anyone want to provide me a nice stipend to make art til I’m brilliant?

Cherry Creek State Park, Denver, Colorado
 

Clarity

When I have clarity of intention I’m able to focus my actions on the things that will bring about my desires more quickly. I believe I am responsible for my own fate and focusing on what I want will result in it transpiring. So best to be very clear about what that is so I’m happy with the results. Hence my previous posts on my artistic success.

When I sit down with my todo list I think about each item and if it will lead to one of the goals on my list. If not I try to get the thing off my list – delegate it, don’t do it, or do it quickly. This is one reason why being clear is so helpful. It allows me to align my actions exactly to the outcomes I most want.

Another thing I meant to mention in my twitter for artists post, but it flittered out of my mind when writing, twitter fits into my long term success strategy. The marketing piece is probably there and it will help me sell art but more immediately I see it as a wonderful community of artists. I’ve meant dozens and dozens of new artists the last few weeks and am going to enjoy getting to know them better through their tweets. If you are trying to decided if twitter is right for you, one way to make that decision is to think about if it fits into your long term vision for your career.

Where Do You See Yourself?

Violette Severin has done a series of artist interviews on her blog and I was asked to participate. You can read my interview here: Interview with Lisa Call.

One of my favorite questions she asked was "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" I gave a fairly short answer on her blog as I wasn’t yet done working through my definition of success. The list of items from last weeks post, What Does Success Mean To Me, is the more clear answer to that question.

Some people might have a problem with defining success so another way to think about it is with this question. What do you envision yourself doing in the future?

Positive Day Dreaming

I’ve been trying out positive day dreaming and it seems most of the time it goes like this:

I wake up and get to spend the entire day in my studio making art. Then the next day I get to do the same. And the next and the next. I even toss in some marketing activities cause it’s fun now and of course eating good food, making the art in a beautiful studio and spending part of the time with the people I love.

Right now I can think of nothing I would like more than to spend an entire month making art and not going to work. Okay admittedly an entire life doing this would be better, but with the remodel I think I might be working for a few more years now. A tradeoff that will be well worth it.

Still – I think I’m going to figure out how to take a month off work and just make art the entire time. What a perfect use of my vacation time. It puts a huge smile on my face just thinking about it.

Studio Newsletter

It’s time again for my quarterly studio newsletter. I expect the September edition to be sent by end of the week if not sooner. As has become habit, I will have a few ACEOs for sale to my newsletter subscribers.

You can check out a sample here: Lisa Call Studio News.

You can sign up below for the newsletter:

 
And of course, I will never share or sell your email address and will only use it for the purpose stated above. All emails sent will include a link to unsubscribe should you decide you are no longer interested.

First – The Trees

(scroll down below the pictures if you just want to read about art and success)

 
As my long time readers know, I recently moved and am remodeling and putting an addition on my house to add a studio. So in addition to my normal art writing, this blog will, at times, resemble an episode of This Old House because I’m really excited about the work so I’m going to write about it.

The remodel will be starting very soon so first step was to get some trees out of the way.

In area #1 (as marked on the first photo) were 2 cedar trees much much too close to the foundation. They made a mess, not so sad to see them gone.

Area #2 is my beautiful crab apple tree in the backyard (pictured above) that I talk about often. It too had to go, as the new studio will be sitting smack dab on top of it. It took me over a month to admit this was a reality. My builder was patient with me as I finally came to terms with losing the tree. It was simply too close to the house and there was no way to keep the tree and still do an addition. They guys that cut it down said it needed to go even with no addition, so that made me feel a bit better. They also said it was one of the most beautiful crab apple trees they had seen.

Area #3 was another large crab apple wedged between my house and the neighbors. It was ruining my driveway with it’s roots. Again, much to close to the house, and it was already rotting and was dropping limbs when I cut it down.

The trees are now gone as seen above. My yard feels HUGE and full of possibility. It’s exciting. And much less sad than I anticipated. I can’t wait for the remodel to begin!

Lesson learned – those cute little trees that we all plant in our yards. They eventually end up as really big trees. So best not to put them very close to the house or the next home owner will have to pay big $ to have them chopped down.

Success – A State of Being

In my last two blog posts I wrote about
- why I want to know my definition of success
and
- what being a successful artist meant to me.

In both of these posts I wrote about success as a destination. Success defined as a set of goals to be achieved. I’m a big believer in planning out the future and working on the those goals so I stand by that definition of success. It helps to define what actions I should take.

But success is more than that. When I wrote the first post about why I wanted to know my definition for success, I was thinking about putting in "so I will know when I have made it" as one of the reasons. But it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t find any words to say this that didn’t rub me the wrong way.

That is because I consider myself a successful artist today, even without reaching those goals. I’m so ecstatically thrilled every day I wake up and think "I get to make art today". No amount of external recognition or achievement is better than this feeling.

I’m so fortunate to have found something in my life I am so passionate about and love doing so much. Even the marketing stuff is really growing on me and I get excited about it.

The process of being an artist is the best part of being an artist. Even if I never reach the goals I set out in the last post, I will always consider myself a successful artist by the sheer fact that I am one.

Although honestly, I’m pretty sure I will reach all of those goals, and it will be a fairly effortless process because I find all of this to be pure fun. I don’t feel I’m grasping or desperate, it’s just total joy each day to wake up and think about what I can do to move my career forward.

For me, success is both a destination and a journey and I wouldn’t want to give up either.