It starts off so innocently with finger paints or crayons then on to big kid pencils and markers. Maybe some clay beads and definitely paste. You graduate from the craft aisle of a big chain store to one that sells only creative supplies! Soon you are online searching for the stuff you can’t get by driving to a store and browsing the aisles.
You make stuff and hang it in your room or your house. You make stuff and give it to your closest friends as gifts. One day you make stuff and realize that you are making art.
“O”, “M”, “G”! How did this happen?
These days you start to post your creations on your favorite social network. It’s a great ego ooster. You can post a sketch and your friends tell you how much they like it. I suppose it’s inevitable that at some point you start to think – I should sell something – I want to share the things I create.
In the past this would mean that you needed to put together a portfolio and hoof it to galleries or prospective buyers. You sent letters to publishing companies. You would create your rear end off and then you would sit at craft fairs and hope to make the cost of your table.
I remember that world. It had its good points and bad points. I do miss the craft fair circuit of the late 80’s. I’m sure that it survives on some level. I wouldn’t know, however. I shut myself off from that stuff almost two decades ago. Anyhow, I find myself again wanting to sell. I sold boxes of crafts and a few art pieces in the past so I figure it isn’t all that horrible a notion.
Things are different now. We have websites, Facebook, Twitter, My Space, Zazzle, Café Press, Etsy, Ebay and “Blogs Blogs Blogs”. The electronic world has made it relatively easy to present your idea to the public for sale. In the past you were competing against just those individuals who contacted the same publishers or gallery owners. You competed with your fellow crafters in a church basement. Today you compete against hundreds of thousands of other artists, craftsmen and businesses to make that precious sale. The question isn’t “Can I find a funny t-shirt about my Grandmother’s Chicken Soup” it’s “Which Grandmother’s Chicken Soup t-shirt should I buy from this list of 100.”
Scary Grandma is Watching You
Marketing yourself becomes the problem.
Recently I’ve been asking myself how can I pull together different parts of the online world to build my own presence there. It seems all too obvious that the most successful artists these days not only have a respectable body of work but it’s also supported by a fan base that is tapped into the artist via electronic social forums. Where you once had to wait to see an artist’s finished piece you can now share the creative experience through updates directly to your phone!
So I find myself at that scary but exciting place where I’m thinking about names and web designs and content and everything else. In the modern word it isn’t enough to be a visual artist – you need to be a marketing artist as well.
Only time will tell the path that is ahead of me but now that I have found my art again – I want to share it – not loose it.
In the spirit of Self Promotion – you can find grandma and other items I designed on my Zazzle store: http://www.zazzle.com/michaelgiza
