Caterpillar is to butterfly as book is to ? or Writing an Artist Statement

This week I thought I’d write about the process of developing an artist statement. Instead, you are getting a super-short post as I continue to wrestle with the statement that has to accompany these photos. Together they will soon be off to East Gippsland Art Gallery to be considered for selection for “Books Beyond Words – Books Evolving”.

I wasn’t planning to suggest that I am expert in these matters, although I think I probably face the task with less dread than some artists I know.

The artist statement is crucial if you want to send your work, well, anywhere really. You will be asked for one in any gallery context, and as it will be representing you in your absence, it needs to be good!

So I will definitely put together some information on exactly what an artist statement is, what to include, what not to include and the process I use to write mine. I also have some references on the subject to share.

In the mean time, you could pop along to this site, which has been developed to help the struggling artist to generate their own Critical Response to the Art Product (or CRAP). I was delighted with this pearl which I hope to include somehow!

I'm troubled by how the reductive quality of the sexual signifier notates a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90s.

 

Hmm, maybe not!

How to Sell Art Online pt 2

 

This week I’m going to share the research that I did into a number of online selling options. Now I didn’t explore absolutely everything that is out there. I felt that examining three or four ways to go was good enough for me to make a decision. I probably would have gone further if none of those seemed a good “fit” for my needs, but as you know if you read last week’s post, I chose RedBubble for my first online selling domain.

I will compare four options – Etsy, BigCartel, RedBubble and using PayPal from your own blog/website. I’ll talk about each in turn, starting with an overall description and their fees, then listing the advantages/disadvantages. Of course, some features may be viewed either way depending on your needs and viewpoint, so these are really just my own thought processes, but I will try to present both views.

---

1.  Etsy.com

What is it?

Etsy is an online shopping space where literally thousands of craftspeople and artists sell handmade or vintage items, or supplies. Basically you join up for free, set up your own shopfront, with its own style and flavour, and set your prices independently. All prices are in US dollars, so there may be a few currency conversions before you receive your money e.g. a buyer in the Netherlands has to exchange their Euro to US dollars, and then that will be exchanged to whatever currency you as the seller use, in my case the Aussie dollar. You won’t be paying for the first conversion, but you probably will be for the second. I believe there is some sort of “back-door” arrangement some people offer to buyers in their own country, as I’ve seen it offered, but haven’t looked into it.

Fees

• For each item you list, there is a 20 cent fee.
• If the item sells, you pay 3.5% of the sale price, but not on shipping.
• If the item has not sold after 4 months, it will be unlisted. You may re-list it for another 20 cents.

Advantages

• You have full control over production of the items you sell, how they are packaged, shipped etc. You are definitely in control.
• An established site, known by potential buyers
• Relatively easy set up, no need to know HTML or whatever.
• Reasonable costs, in particular low set-up cost
• Groups and teams, forum, community atmosphere – there is a lot of support, tips & encouragement provided to help you get started and continue to expand your business.

Disadvantages

• Your shop name will be a derivative of etsy.com e.g. etsy.com/shop/Amanda’sArt
• You have to list work often to keep your profile up on the site. e.g. I did a search for “handmade journal” and there were 44 pages of results. On the front page, there were 40 items with pictures – the most recently listed items. You can also sort by relevancy (which doesn’t make much difference) and price. So you can see that if you haven’t listed work lately, your beautiful journal could be buried somewhere around page 20.

• In the same vein, you compete with everyone else on etsy to entice buyers to your shop. It can be easy to lose potential buyers - they can just click on another image and they are away.
• You really need to be active in other forums eg blogging, facebook, flickr to drive customers to your shop.
• You do all the work yourself – packing, posting items yourself. (Some may see this as an advantage)

Post Script: In the comments, Sara & Buechertiger mentioned a couple of improvements on Etsy that I had missed.

1. It is possible to relist items for AU 0.40c, which will cause them to bounce back up to the top of searches etc
2. Transactions can now be done in numerous currencies (including the Aussie $), not just US $s – so if a buyer is international there will only be one currency conversion – from their money to AU $. Hope this makes sense! Feel free to get in touch if I haven’t explained this clearly.

---

2. BigCartel.com

What is it?

BigCartel functions as an online directory and shopping cart for all sorts of creative products ranging from bands selling their CDs and vinyl (yes! its the latest trend - again), up-and-coming clothing designers, artists and craftspeople. You can create your own online shop, list your items and use their shopping cart mechanism. A number of currencies are supported including the US $, Aussie $, GBP, NZ $ and the Euro.

Fees

• There is a sliding fee schedule, ranging from free to $29.99/month. For free, you can list up to 5 products, but only 1 image per product. There is basic customization of your shop available.
• $9.99/month: 25 products with 3 images each. Much better customization & features including your own url e.g. Amanda’sArtShop.com.au (you will have to buy this).
• $19.99/month: 100 products, 5 images each, best features.
• $29.99/month: 300 products, 5 images each, features as above.

Advantages

• Sell in your own currency (for Aussie’s anyway)
• Some might argue with me, but I think BigCartel is about as well-known as Etsy. Possibly it has a broader profile, because it is well-known for clothing and music. Perhaps this is a disadvantage, if these people aren’t into buying art, but I think there would be plenty of crossover.
• BigCartel shops can be integrated with Pulley for digital downloads e.g. e-books.
• Personally I like the search system on BigCartel. I searched for “handmade journal”, and got only 5 results, but these were shop-front graphics, not individual items. I could then work my way through each shop in turn. This just seemed much simpler.

As a seller, this means you don’t have to rely on a particular item drawing a potential customer in, and similarly, some gorgeous item in someone else’s shop can’t lure your customer away. On the other hand, I’m sure some other searches come up with many more results, and you need to name and “brand” your shop accurately to attract the right people.

• There is a “store directory” where you send your graphic and your store will be included. This is in addition to the search mechanism. Stores who opt to be in the directory may be featured from time to time.

 

Disadvantages

• You are competing for the buyer’s dollar with a broader range of product.
• You need to have a PayPal account. Personally I don’t see this as a problem, but some might.
• Less of a community feel. No teams or forums, although the help section seems pretty good. This is pretty business-like, as the name, BigCartel suggests.
• You do all the work yourself – packing, posting items yourself. (Some may see this as an advantage)

---

This post is pretty long and there’s a lot to digest, so I think I’ll hold RedBubble and PayPal over to the next post.

In the meantime, I would love to hear from anyone out there who has a shop on Etsy or BigCartel. It would be terrific to hear about your experiences, how it is going and any tips or advice you can add. That way, we can create a useful resource for artists who are thinking about selling their work online.

 

 

 

 

Where to find me: Recent Publishing

I’ve been lucky enough to have my have my work published twice recently. Doug Spowart re-worked his article from Imprint and it was accepted for the online journal, Bonefolder. The article is a review of the Southern Cross University exhibition last year, where my book Like Weather was selected for acquisition. It includes a lovely shot of my book, taken by Doug. It’s fantastic to have my work included in Bonefolder, as it’s part of the US Book Arts Web, and has an international readership.

The extra benefit of the article being in Bonefolder is that you can access it to read for free online, if you didn’t catch it in Imprint.

I’ve also had some of my ceramic work included in the recently published book by Jeffery B. Snyder, Ceramics Today.

They accepted five images, including the installation work, Wraith, and my porcelain book, Self (States of Change), which has just been in Mackay at the Libris Awards. Unfortunately I haven’t received my copy of the book yet, so I can’t be positive they all made the final cut, but I’m told it’s on page 240.

 

Finally, in case you haven’t noticed the widget in the side-bar, I’ve started Twittering.

I’ve thought a lot about whether or not to join in this silent cacophony, and despite initially despising the idea, in the end I decided that Twitter would be a useful tool for me.

I was convinced by the artists stories I read in The Unconventional Guide to Art and Money. It’s for artists who choose to conduct their careers primarily in the context of the internet, rather than going the traditional gallery route. It explains how to pull together all your online content, get your work out there and (for some, at least) make a living. It seems especially well-suited to the shy, the rebellious and the control-freak. And of course, by default, those who are too tired by 6pm to make it to all those openings in order to “network”.

So… I signed on to Twitter a couple of weeks ago, and began sharing stuff I thought might interest people. As well as providing another means of knowing within seconds when a new blog post hits the ether, I have found it’s a nice way to share the best of those links you come across in the course of your day but which don’t really qualify for a blog post.  I’ve mostly been posting links to inspiring art, art events or opportunities, as well as some about zen and de-stressing. If you’re interested in following you can sign up for Twitter here and find me as amandaw_w . Or not. I won’t offended at all.

Plans, dreams, goals?

2009 is starting out pretty slowly for me, but that is fine. Outside the weather is alternating between heavy tropical showers and blasting hot sun. The temperature has been in the low 30's C (high 80-low 90s F) but the humidity has been 80%+. There's something about the humidity that just seems to sap the energy from you, as if by osmosis, so I've been staying inside sheltering in the air conditioning. I tend to think of this weather as our tropical equivalent of being snowed in!

The new year always starts off slowly for me due to the weather, and after the pace of last year, I really want to make sure I change a few things this year. For the last few years I've really been in a fairly unwise place when it comes to my health, always playing catch-up and resting just enough to keep going. The need to finally make it to the end of my masters coloured every day and it is really important to me that I re-evaluate and make some decisions that are good for me.

This sounds as if the masters was "forced" on me, and of course it wasn't, but it was something I wanted to do that was about achieving according to terms set by the outside world. Now I've done that, and I'm very pleased and proud that I have, but I do acknowledge there was a significant cost. So far it doesn't seem to be as serious as I feared it might be, but that doesn't diminish the realisation that I must look after myself much more than I have in the past. No more waiting till the warning bells are so loud they are deafening.

The end of my masters has placed me at a crossroad, at I'm peering down the alternative paths, wondering which to choose next. With the blossoming of etsy.com and the general online art community, I've realised that there are a lot of people out there who earn money from their art, and that being an artist isn't necessarily about getting really famous. I realize that sounds incredibly naive, but I have come from a very non-art oriented family, or at least one that saw an artist as the rare genius we read about in art history books. As a result I always thought I'd make money from my "real career" (OT) and this would allow me to pursue art without any thought of generating an income from it. Since my involvement with art came after I developed CFS, this just meant both of these would be on an extremely part-time basis.

Now I'm wondering about the possibility of gearing my art practice towards sale-able objects. For over a year, even without this consideration, I've been subscribing to Alyson B. Stanfield's Art Biz Blog. I receive the free newsletter weekly, and have joined a couple of the online teleseminars which piqued my interest. There's a lot of good information on this website free, and I have been enjoying the slow drip feeding of business/marketing ideas over time - it's an area that really makes me squirm, but I know it's important.

It's all inspired me to think about how I could make art to sell, in a really, really low-stress way. I don't want to be rushing around, trying to meet self-imposed deadlines and making life unbearable and stressy for everyone around me. So, is it possible to make a body of work and then just "release" it? Either online in a virtual store, or in a real one? Should I put myself up for commissions? Or maybe it's better to stick to making work for exhibition and leave organising the actual gallery until the work is completed. More thinking to do....suggestions welcome!