Mary Richmond Design

Not Marketing My Art

I've decided to take a day job. I know, it's sort of going in the opposite direction one might expect me to take, especially as an artist and an entrepreneur.....It's only for the summer and it's working outside with kids and nature and wonderful young people just starting out on their career path as environmental educators. It pays enough to be helpful as I work my way out of debt and it should be fun. I'm actually pretty excited about it. It will give me a chance to breathe for a bit and not worry about paying my bills for a few months.

This doesn't mean I'm giving up making art. I always seem to do that, no matter what else I'm doing, but it does mean I'm going to stop marketing my art for awhile. I have tile work in enough places that I will still get orders and my website and blog pick up even more but at this point these are all sort of passive marketing venues for me. I will probably become more active later in the summer but for now I am just burnt out.

I am tired of reading about marketing my art. I am tired of reading about marketing, period. Maybe I'm just tired. It's not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with marketing, I'm just, as they say, over it for now. It's probably because I've just closed my shop. It's probably because I failed as a shop keeper, gallery owner or whatever it was I was doing. Did I mention I was tired?

Has anyone else noticed how many really mediocre artists are filling up art marketing courses? Aren't we all deluged with the same old images all day every day already? Just because we make it doesn't mean we are entitled to sell it....or maybe we are. There does seem to be a market for everything. Look at Ebay.

But also look at yard sales. We all own way more stuff than we need, even way more stuff than we want...we all have piles of junk in our closets, in our basements and attics and anywhere else it will fit. I guess I am thinking I don't want to contribute to anyone else's junk pile right now. I'm really tired of junk.....and right now everything is beginning to look like future junk to me.

So I'm taking a day job. I'll still be writing my columns and other articles and I'll still be illustrating them. But my art this summer will be what fits in a sketchbook and what goes on a tile commissioned to be used on a wall somewhere. For the moment my art needs to be functional.

How are you dealing with all the stuff you create? Do you sell everything? Destroy old stuff? I just threw out all the art I made in college. It was down in my mom's basement and well, it was time to go....Now I'm looking at the stuff that's more current and am thinking of getting rid of it, too....I sell a lot of my work but I have plenty that hasn't sold, too....it's not great art. The world will survive without it. What are other people doing with all their unsold work, sketches, etc.?

What to do with all this stuff we collect?

Packing up my studio is going to be a somewhat daunting task. Most of it is stuff I use either making art or tiles. I have shelves full of reference books and photos, many of which you can see here against the back wall. I have already packed a dozen boxes from those shelves, by the way.

I have glazes and clay, blank, bisque fired tiles, brushes and tools as well as my slab roller and kiln. There are painting supplies, pastel supplies and oodles of supplies for kid's art classes.

There are matting supplies, framing supplies and lots of CD's for listening to while I work.

And then there's the shop itself. All those tile panels will be redistributed to tile dealers who represent me but for now most of them have to be packed up and stored. The displays have to be dismantled so we can reuse them and all the holiday displays and other display items have to be either stored or given away.

It's a lot of.....STUFF for someone who doesn't really go much for buying clothes or knick knacks or other things for myself or my home. But I sure have a lot of STUFF anyway. I can argue it's productive stuff, that it is an accumulation of tools for my various trades and it is....but man, there's still a lot of stuff.

Getting ready to move always brings us closer to the things we own and dismantling my mother's house and figuring out what to do with her belongings, most of which are worthless except for sentimentality, at the same time has brought me back to thinking about all the things we accumulate and why. I've noticed no one takes any of their stuff with them when they die....and having cleaned out several houses as well as working a brief stint for an auction company I know that most of our stuff gets thrown away or pawned off once we're gone. So why do we collect so much stuff?

Both my husband and I are packrats. My kids are packrats. My whole family before me were packrats. Throwing anything away seems.......well, almost sacreligious! Certainly it must have another use we should be saving it for. After my grandmother died I found boxes and boxes of rubber bands and string, buttons cut off old blouses and reams of old paper salvaged and cut for scraps....and that's just the tip of the ice berg that was my grandmother's stuff....we still haven't gone through all of it.

Earlier today a friend said she saw a definition of clutter that said it was about 'potentiality'. We might use it.....someday, for some purpose. Boy, can I hear that!

Truth is I do use my tools, my matting supplies, my painting supplies and my reference materials....but do I use them all? I think I need to be doing some weeding out, some tweaking of books and supplies that maybe someone else can use.

Wish me luck!

On Paper, Paints and Pencils

One of my favorite things to do when I go to New York or Boston is go to the big art stores like Pearl Paint. I first discovered Pearl Paint about 30 years ago when I first moved to New York as a young artist. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

If you've been to Canal Street in lower Manhattan you know you can buy just about anything there. Today the streets are full of all sorts of imported wares spilling out from tiny storefronts. Back in the late 70's and early 80's the shops were more utilitarian and the spill out reflected that. My husband loved to look through boxes of tools and gadgets while I was drooling over the sight of the Pearl Paint banner. 7, count 'em, 7 stories of art supplies. Wow! I never knew where to begin. Paper? Paints? Pastels? Brushes? Pencils?

This trip was no different. One of the best parts of this big store was all the unique papers, the hard to find paints, pencils, etc. Years ago I had bought some incredible 300 lb. hand made Indian watercolor paper that I got to hand pick and I was looking forward to getting some more.

Imagine my disappointment when the young man behind the counter just stared at me and said, no, we don't have anything like that.

All they had were the same old papers everyone has. Don't get me wrong, they still have a huge selection of amazing papers. But so do lots of the big stores and catalogues. I was struck by the thought that if it can't be carried in large quantities and packaged for internet or catalogue sales then the stores aren't carrying it.

It's bad enough that big warehouse art stores have closed out the little neighborhood art stores but now they are controlling what we can and cannot buy in an unprecedented way. Sure, they carry the supplies to mix your own paints and sketchbooks of every size and type of paper available. But just try and find a single Wolf carbon pencil. You can buy a package of 4, all different grades of softness, but not 4 of the same softness.....sheesh. The two things I wanted, the hand made watercolor paper and a Wolf pencil were unattainable in a 7 story art store.....What's this world coming to?

We live in a funny time, I think. We have so much that is available to us in unbelievable amounts and variety. But there's no zing to it. There's nothing special. It's all been pre-cut, pre-packaged and set out in cookie cutter fashion for us.

It's interesting because in many ways our culture is thirsty for the acknowledgement of the individual. In a time when everything is becoming more and more homogenized there are still a lot of us out here looking for something unique, something special, something hand made.

Art supplies can be very expensive and as much as I love to support local, small businesses I have found it more and more difficult to buy from my local art dealer. The good one we had in town got driven out of business by A.C Moore. I'm sure A.C Moore has its place on the retail food chain but for the most part their art supplies are sub par and many are not even suitable for children. They are cheap, poorly made and frustrating to use. There is one locally run art supply shop nearby and as much as I would like to support them their prices are more than ridiculous. They sell single sheets of watercolor paper for $10-$15 a sheet! I can buy the same paper for $2 a sheet through a catalogue. Sorry, I'll pay a dollar or so more to support local business but $8-13 more? No way....And of course, the smaller stores can no longer afford to carry unique things like hand made Indian watercolor paper, either. The sad thing is even this local store doesn't carry individual drawing pencils any more and has resorted to packages meant for beginning students. In fact, the whole store seems to be positioning itself to sell to the parents of aspiring art students, not artists themselves.

Where do you get your art supplies?

Pet Peeves and more

One of the interesting things about tracking a blog is that you can see what search words are used to find postings on your blog. Recently my blog has been "googled" a lot for pet peeves. Awhile back I wrote about the Pottery Barn throwing away perfectly good furniture and lamps and listed it under pet peeves so it seems to be showing up in google land. Apparently some school has assigned an essay on pet peeves because those are the search words that keep showing up this week on my blog stat keeper, or whatever you want to call it. And there have been over 20 of these searches just this weekend....

So here's my thought. Aren't there enough pet peeves out there in everyone's life that an essay would be easy and actually fun to write? I would think college students especially would have plenty of funny and annoying things to choose from even if they just stood still and looked around themselves on campus for a minute or two.  Surely there are all those rules and regulations randomly imposed by quirky teachers, administrators and dorm parents to start with. What about roommates who brush their teeth only to the loudest music at 3 a.m. or leave old food around inviting lovely rodents and bugs to visit under the bed? How about the cafeteria? That could have occupied me for awhile....Most people could find a pet peeve while driving to the post office and some could find them waiting in line at the grocery store. Really, you have to google an essay on pet peeves???? Now, that could become one of my own if I didn't think it was so funny!

It's made me realize how prevalent searching for essays and papers on the internet really must be. This wasn't an option when I was at school. It must drive teachers crazy but mostly it must make them sad. By "borrowing" other people's work, students are missing out on an opportunity to explore their own thoughts, their own knowledge, their own minds. It's especially poignant when you realize that these same students often complain about other people telling them what to do all the time. Don't they realize that by borrowing (or let's just say plagerizing) other people's work they are letting someone else speak for them once again? Ironic, isn't it....when young people claim they want independence and respect more than anything.

I realize that some of these students may be high school students and that is even sadder. They are so young and have so much to say with their own voices. How will they ever know what they sound like if they don't start using them?

Shame on Pottery Barn!

My little shop is located in Mashpee Commons where there is also a Pottery Barn.

I think the public should know that in the name of marketing and not wanting to look like they have old merchandise in their shop Pottery Barn throws out perfectly good inventory like this lamp almost every day. My computer desk sits where I can see them throw stuff away and rugs, mirrors, dishes and furniture get tossed on a regular basis. They slash, break, spray paint and ruin everything as much as they can to prevent dumpster diving. This lamp has been spray painted and had the electrical wiring pulled out.

How shameful and wasteful is this???? Especially when you multiply it by like minded stores all across the country......