Sign up for my arts marketing class- registration now open!

"Creative Marketing for Artists and Crafters" class at Adult School of Montclair

Tuesday nights starting October 12, ending November 30 (8 weeks)

Tuition: $95 

Location: Montclair High School

100 Chestnut St. Montclair, NJ 07042

This is a fun and creative class to apply your creative skills and sensibilities to the business side of art. Artists and crafters will discover how to market their wares creatively and innovatively using practical tools that get work recognized and sold. Learn through in-class exercises how to create a viable business plan, set up a website for promotions, develop pricing techniques, and cultivate gallery and niche contacts to expand exposure and income.

Register now!

Doing it your way

I am still working on my Behance.net portfolio, so stay tuned for progress reports!... In the meantime, here is a tasty tidbit for you:

My friend, Rene Syler ("Good Enough Mother," broadcast journalist, author, blogger and all-around media maven), has just posted an article about the process of reinventing herself after some very difficult personal and professional struggles… and how she set her own rules in the process. 

Rene has been a constant source of inspiration to me as a kindred being who is making her way through the ups and downs of the creative life. In her post she talks specifically about the role of blogging in her personal transformation.

She has a lot of other cool stuff on her website, too!

I will soon be posting a guest blog article on the Good Enough Mother website: Five Things You Can Do to Foster Creativity in Your Child.

Free online portfolios for creative professionals

I read about Behance, an online community for creative professionals, in a LinkedIn group "Visual Artists and Their Associates." (If you are on LinkedIn but haven't explored LinkedIn Groups, I highly recommend it!) Behance allows you to post multiple portfolios (images, audio and video) for free! You can also post your experience/resume, and get feedback from other artists about your portfolio. You also have the ability to download an ad-free PDF version of your portfolio to send to clients. The website isn't limited to visual arts, there are portfolios for writers, exhibition designers, even ice sculptors. You can also choose your own favorites and "follow" other artists in the network.

One of the most attractive features about Behance is that allows you to link your portfolio directly to your LinkedIn page, making your images directly accessible in that platform.

I decided to give it a try. The first section is a series of questions designed to identify and characterize your work by style, medium and segment, plus personal information including your website, email address and twitter account. The second section allows you to make multiple portfolios (called "projects"), so you can organize your work any way you like. 

I am in the process of putting my portfolios up, and will keep you posted about my progress. The interface is very clean and easy to use, and you have the option to use their very clean templates or upload a pdf page if you want to create your own layout. Photos need to be RGB and under 1megabyte and I am sure videos would have parameters too, so you may need to resize your images before you can upload. The layouts seem to prefer horizontal images but there may be a way to work around that. I have used it with both Safari and Firefox browsers without issue.

I really like the fact that it is designed with creative pros in mind, unlike many of the template-based web solutions that offer few options for artists. The connectivity with LinkedIn is a major plus.

I will let you know when my page is launched! Let me know if you try it, too, and please post your comments about Behance here.

Angel or devil?

Today a colleague and I were working on her website. She told me she had seen a button that said "Get in your studio and MAKE SOMETHING!" 

As artists, we sometimes have two little beasties sitting on our shoulders. The one on the right shoulder says "Get in the studio and MAKE SOMETHING!" The one on the left shoulder says "Get out of your studio and SELL SOMETHING!" While both can cause us to wake from a deep sleep in a cold sweat in the middle of the night (that reminds me, I have been procrastinating about a couple of invoices and a couple contracts I need to print out, sign and mail ASAP!) what was I talking about? Oh yeah, cold sweats!

What if we stopped fighting those little voices and actually surrendered to them? What if I stopped what I was doing when the creative "angel" said "MAKE SOMETHING!"? Or surrendered when the marketing devil said "SELL SOMETHING!"? and did what I needed to do to get those monkeys off my back? Maybe I would make more, and sell more! What do you think? How do you balance creative time with business/marketing time? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Casting the Net Wider - guest blog by Richard Wilde

Richard Wilde is founder of Artybuzz.com, an online artists community that allows anyone to exhibit, sell and buy great artwork.

Artists are very creative people, and in tough economic times it is worth thinking a little bit more creatively about where your work is sold, and how else it can be sold.

When times are hard and sales are down, it would be silly to just sit around and hope for the best, so why not think about casting the net wider, and trying to sell your art in different ways and different places.

There are many ways to make money from your art, including licensing it for sale on other products. I personally set up a murals wallpaper company recently at www.muralswallpaper.co.uk,  that allows artists and photographers to sell their work as huge wall murals. I licence the work from artists for reproduction, and pay them £5 per sq metre of the sold, which means some good money can be earned on large jobs.
Another great way of licensing you work is to have it reproduced on products and have either an image you have created or a pattern/collage of your work which forms and cool and quirky unique product. This can be done on a large scale but also a small scale as well. It’s also a fantastic way to improve your brand as an artist and get your work noticed in circles that may not normally find you.

So think about other sales avenues and how you can get your artwork noticed in other areas, and this will help you get through these tough times and will also improve your brand, scope and popularity as an artist!
– Richard Wilde

Artist and illustrator Mary Engelbreit graciously offers advice on her website to artists who are interested in licensing their work to other parties. Click here to see her tips for artists.

Have you had success licensing your work? I would love to hear about it!

Montclair Arts Day

"They came. They smiled. They were photographed. More than 100 artists from many disciplines gathered at the Montclair High School amphitheater on Wednesday, May 19 for a special photograph in celebration of Arts Day in Montclair. The Township Council declared May 19, 2010 as Arts Day to recognize “the many contributions that Montclair artists and those employed in the creative economy have made to the world and to Montclair in particular.” It was a great day -- for the arts -- in Montclair." Read More on the DestinationMontclair website

Here is the photo of all the artists who could make it at 4pm on a weekday. It was great to meet so many other artists, writers and musicians, and it was great to be at the inaugural event:

Photo by Andy Foster at Gallery 51

Creative projects for preserving photos and other keepsakes

I am giving a presentation at the Montclair Public Library with book artist Elaine Gongora about creative ways to preserve memories and mark special events (June 2 at 1:30 pm). I have posted some resources and ideas for making creative keepsakes here.