Developing an Art Market, Part 2

Okay, so we have the concept of why hype works (the radio station model) and that sometimes things have to grow on people before they get it or decide whether they like it or not.   Let’s explore some ways to do that with art.

In my post a couple of days ago, I mentioned using telephone poles to staple a series of art to so it would get seen.  This isn’t a bad idea actually.  Guerilla tactics command attention and demand awareness.  Imagine painting a bold series of 4 paintings on unstretched canvas and taking the canvasses and tacking them around 4 telephone poles in a row on a busy street, near a bus stop.  Say your website is across the bottom of each canvas.  Watch the numbers of visits to your website for the next two weeks and see how they differ from the previous two weeks prior to posting those paintings.

What about making a bookmark out of a slice of your art with your website on it.  Make 40 of those on a color copier (ten to a page and cut them apart), then leave them lying around in four different libraries.

I once had a plan to do this in a methodical way.  I would pick 4 libraries in one region and seed my bookmarks there over a period of a few months and then switch to 4 different libraries in another area and so on.  By rotating venues, I am expanding the exposure area.  What about doing this in the cafe of a book store?   You never know who will see one of those bookmarks, like what they see, visit your website and suddenly someone wants to display your work or maybe own a piece or something.

This is how you develop an art market: MAKE people notice your work.

Developing an Art Market, Part 1

Check out what sorts of venues there are that you would think would be good for your work to be in.  Make sure these are viable places to get your work seen.  In other words, yeah, we all would like to have our work in a museum or some other place we deem has cache but what about places where it will really be seen?

Remember in the old days of radio how they would play a new song to death?  Maybe the first 4 times we heard it we didn’t actually care for it but after the 5th or 8th time we heard, we found that this was good music.  What is that?  It’s developing a market.  Yes, really.   People are funny about new things when it comes to the arts.  They like to see the same ballet or play every year (think Nutcracker or Hair).   It takes awhile for people to see a thing, register it into their awareness and then make it part of their world.

If you had the interiors  of your home completely re-done by a professional while you were out of town and came back, it would be so different that you wouldn’t know whether you liked it or not.  That’s what happens when people are subjected to art.  It’s completely new to them and they don’t quite know what to do with it.   Now that you’ve got this concept, tomorrow we’ll explore some ways to grow your market.

 

Subterranean Art Fears

What is subterranean fear?   You know:  ‘I can’t seem to get into the studio’, ‘I can’t find what I need to do something’, etc.  This is all self sabotage and part of subterranean fear.  It’s so down deep that you don’t know it’s even there but it comes out in ways that don’t make sense.  Once you know that this is going on it’s a little easier to resolve.

When I found I couldn’t seem to get into the studio, I fooled myself into it.  If I planned to work on polymer clay the next day, I would go into the studio and prep my clay for the next day.  I would always leave it out on the table with the area ready so that the next day I could just walk in and go to work.  Hey it works!  I would look into the doorway of the studio, see all those colors ready to go and viola, I’m sitting down and doing something with it.

It’s one of those times that you have to go through the motions even if you don’t feel like it.  If you go through the motions, you find yourself doing the deed.   It ’s like getting past the thoughts of beating yourself up because you didn’t paint today, didn’t take that walk today or whatever.   Over thinking a thing is a sign of fear.  Relax.  It will all work out.  I tell myself this all the time and it really does all work out.

 

Get Past Your Art Fears

If no one knows about your work how do they know they want it?  So this is really the nut, isn’t it?  So how do you get it out in front of those that would want to buy it?  Either we make it too hard or we don’t go for it because of fear.  I have been known to tell my students that everything you’ve always wanted is on the other side of your fear.  So look at it because it will get in your way.  If you are in your own way, you will mess things up again and again.  So the plan here is two fold: deal with your fear and get your work out there any way you can with taste.  THAT IS THE KICKER:  with taste.

What does that mean?  Well, don’t tack your paintings up on bulletin boards – though a good guerilla tactic would be to make a series of work that you staple to telephone poles.  Bulletin boards are schlocky, telephone poles could be cool because outsider art is often found there.

Starting at the beginning: don’t let fear stop you.  All those thoughts running through your mind like ‘what if…’.  Here’s an example: what if people like my stuff and I can’t make enough?  What if no one likes my work and I sell nothing?  What if…?’   Okay, you get the idea.  Throw those all out of your head or ignore them.  Do whatever it takes to shut those thoughts down. Just know that you must make your art to be you.  Isn’t THAT enough to do it?   If it feeds your soul and floats your boat, what is to stop you?   This is dealing with blatant fear.  Tomorrow: subterranean fear.

 

Pricing Your Work, Part 2

There are two prevailing philosophies for pricing a thing for sale.  One is to sell an item on the expensive end of the range for that item.  This way with each one sold you have a larger return but may not sell as many items in total.  The other way is to price the items lower, make less return but sell more items.

The first way requires that the items for sale can command that higher price and that you can float between sales without generating income from those items.  The second way requires that you can produce enough to keep up with demand.

What’s important about knowing this when you price your work?  Here’s a real life scenario:

I have arthritis which limits how much I can produce in a given time period.  This means that I make fewer items overall compared to someone without any hand issues.  If I were to sell my items at the lower price range and have them all sell in a short period of time,  I would have nothing to sell until I can make more.  Since it takes me longer to make enough to sell this would cause a supply/demand issue.   It’s best to be able to keep up with demand so that you aren’t re-inventing your entire inventory all the time (unless you have the ability to do so).

Keep your eye on the prize, as they say.  If the goal is to sell things, see where you fit into these equations, figure out what is realistic for you and your plan will be clear.   Sometimes the plan is to have your work seen and gain exposure, maybe not so much sell it.  This is how you develop a market.  But that is for another post!

Pricing Your Work

Vincent Van Gogh painting.

The question I get asked the most by my students is about how to price your work.  This is always a mystery and difficult.  There is a magical “prime price point” somewhere.  That is the price point that magically puts something in demand, gets it bought and paid for.   Trying to figure out what that prime price point is depends on a lot of variables.

The first thing I always advise is start looking in the market for things like what you’re making and taking a poll on what they are being sold for.  It’s good to understand what the environment of competition is.   So if you’re making things by hand, make sure you’re looking at things made by hand but also check out the commercial retail offerings.  Let’s say you hand fabricate rings out of sterling silver.  Look at other hand fabricated, sterling silver rings and then also look at what is offered commercially for a similar weight or style of ring.  You can never gather too much information and having a good understanding of what is being offered gives you a good solid foundation to work from.

I know there are lots of formulas out there but they don’t take into consideration the market place, how long you’ve been making your work, what is going on economically in the world, etc.   All of these things come into play on the price of other goods and so it should also come into play for pricing your own work.

The biggest question is how much is it worth to YOU to let the piece go?  Sometimes a piece is more valuable to you then anyone will pay for.  I’m sure that you’ve seen this as a buyer:  the shoes that looked really good until you saw how much they cost?   Same idea applies here.

It’s Fall

In Seattle there is “Dry Fall” and there is “Wet Fall”.   We had a ‘Dry Fall’ going until the weather went inevitably wet on us.  We have been pounded and deluged with a ton of rain which has definitely caught us up from the long dry Summer we’ve had.  The colors and everything were beautiful until that first wind and rain storm made everything fall off the trees.

A photo by Dorian Muncey, copyright 2009 (www.dorianmunceyinteriors.com)

Ahhh, Seattle in the ‘Dry Fall’…   thanks to Dorian Muncey, who took this photo Oct. 24th of the foliage on Mercer Island, WA in the Seattle metro area.

Look at all that color!

Mixed Media Resource Books and Online Classes

Other books by Maggie Grey:

Stitches, Straps and Layers

New book written by Maggie Grey

Embellish and Stitch

Interesting books by other people:

Stitching the Textured Surface by Lynda Monk and Carol McFee

Each of the above books are offering free online classes through www.d4daisy.com

Another innovative textile artist's book

Mixed Media Resources

I consider Maggie Grey and the UK Fiber/Textiles that she is part of to be extremely innovative when it comes to experimentation with different materials and mixing media.  You can see Maggie’s blog at:

http://magstitch.blogspot.com/

This last year, Maggie had a list group called ‘Catalog Killers’.  The premise of this group was to bury a catalog outside for a period of time, dry it out thoroughly and then use it as the basis for a variety of different art making projects and techniques.  The results were incredible.  I was fascinated by the comments of people unburying their catalogs and considering them not done yet and then re-burying with inventive ideas on how to make the catalogs decay properly, further and faster, etc.

Create amazing materials to make wall art, books, vessels and more.

While it sounds ugly, the results were amazing.  All of the applied techniques are available Maggie’s book ‘Textile Translations’, an amazing and rich book full of experimentation on just about every material imaginable.   Additionally, Maggie had free classes connected to this book online, hence the list group.  The group was password protected keyed to specific words in the book so you had to have the book to access the group.

http://www.d4daisy.com/classes.htm

Free E-Newsletters

Did you know that you can sign up for free newsletters all over the place?  check out www.interweave.com for example.  There you can sign up for free newsletters on different topics on daily beading tips, techniques and projects,
http://www.beadingdaily.com/

They also have e-newsletters for quilting, knitting, fiber arts, mixed media, and more.   I find that I can get a lot of info from the e-newsletter for their magazine ‘Cloth, Paper, Scissors’.  If you don’t know about this magazine and are interested in experimenting with different mediums, this would be  the one worth checking out.