Progress

In spite of all appearances to the contrary…

I know my gallery is kaput, and I haven’t updated this blog in a few years, but I am still working.

If anyone is reading this, please check out my newest project: Articulate Matter.

It is a sculptural web comic that is updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (with perhaps one or two exceptions…). It started out with a story line, but quickly evolved into stream-of-consciousness vignettes that are frankly much more interesting to me. :) Many of the characters are available on my etsy site.

There will, hopefully, be more to see here soon. In the meantime, I hope everyone is well.

For those of you who arrived here via SOS, greetings!

For those of you who know about me already… Hey look! I’m self-promoting!

I’ll be opening up my studio to anyone who is interested in taking a peek on April 30th and May 1st. There’s more information on the whole program here.

I’ll be adding more photos in an attempt to entice people to come visit, so if you like what you see, there will be more.

Thanks for taking a gander.

So in yet another example of my advertising after the fact, I was in a craft fair today.

It did not go well because it was very sparsely attended. Few people displaying work actually recouped the amount spent to reserve the booths, let alone the cost of materials or time.

I didn’t sell anything that I made. I did however make back the reservation amount by selling some pieces of marble that I was using as display pieces to another crafter. She thought they were a great idea for displaying jewelry and insisted on buying them for $5 each.

There are three ways of looking at this…

1) Self-deprecating: “People would rather buy rocks than my work!”

2) Self-aggrandizing: “I’m so talented, I can sell rocks to people for $5 a pop!”

3) Bemused: “Heh, I sold rocks today.”

I think the third option is the best.

Better luck next time.

Saturday, December 13th, 2003 at the Puppet Showplace Theatre.

Come to the PuppetSLAM!

I know I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else will have to show.

Another lesson learned for next time… not all printers are aware of the postal regulations for postcards. (Not surprising, since I had a hard time finding information on them.) It’s not just about paper weight and size.

Postcards are sent through scanners and if the text isn’t situated in the correct manner they won’t go through. This page had the only useful template for how they should look. The address must be on the right, under the stamp, and written lengthwise. End of story.

All of my postcards got sent out… in envelopes.

… is not as easy as one would think. Or at least not as easy as I thought it would be.

The basic lessons are as follows:
1) Always call twice.
2) Expect to get a different story the next day.
3) You get what you pay for.

After contemplating different options I decided to simply go with the traditional postcard for advertisement (maybe next time I’ll go for a bumper sticker). Not being able to afford a professional photographer, I tried my hand at it. After about two weeks of cursing the results, and some help from Joe, I came up with a rather cool image.

I had some business cards printed up last December by a printer I’d gotten to know and wanted to go to him for this project. However, there was no answer to my phone call. I tried looking up his company online but saw no trace of the website and so assumed something had happened and he’d gone out of business. I decided I should try the cheap route… and headed to Kinko’s.

I went in on a Thursday afternoon and spoke to the helpful guy behind the counter. I asked him the price per page, what file format I should use, and the proper sizing for each image. The answers he gave sounded good; 99 cents per page, in PDF, and images were to be 4.25×5.5 inches in order to fit four images on each sheet of card stock. After asking a few more questions, I went home and got everything in order.

When I arrived the next day the person who came to my assistance told me that I would not be able to fit four images on a sheet. This person was very snippy and it took some coaxing to find out the reasons behind this inability. She just kept not-quite-yelling that it wouldn’t fit. Once I found out the reasons, that they don’t do “full-bleed” images and instead need a quarter-inch gutter around each image, she then informed me that the only card stock she could give me would cost $2.30 per sheet.

So I decided to look through the phone book. While perusing the printing section I came across the company who’d done my business cards. I decided to try calling them again. They answered! I can still get some cards printed from them… 100 cards for $113.75, 250 for $217, etc. I know they will be good quality. I just need to decide if I want to spend that much money when I’ve found another solution…

Gnomon Copy on Mount Auburn St. in Harvard Square. On the same day that Kinko’s lost my business, I got a recommendation to try this company. They too would require a quarter inch gutter around each image, but it came to 85 cents per page and they were very nice to me.

The quality of the text on the back isn’t as sharp as one would like, but the picture is good and they are done! I still may get some by Westwood Graphics (look in the Cambridge, MA phone book… they’re not online), but the urgency isn’t as keen as it was last week.

Updating the gallery… with luck more people will be viewing it in the next month.

I’ve been working on sculptures and boxes for the upcoming show. I have enough projects going at one time that if I’m feeling blocked on one I can work on another; that seems to be how I work best… provided I actually finish the projects and don’t just keep starting new ones.

Much of what I’ve been feeling recently has been insecurity and I don’t think that makes for very compelling blogging. Plus, if I’ve got a free moment it should be devoted to my artwork… of course it doesn’t always work out that way, but that impulse has helped to keep me from composing.

This stage of planning (naming the show, writing the artist statement, getting the promotional materials together, printing postcards, etc…) seems to consist of lots of thing I’m not very good at doing. I’m not used to selling myself. My natural inclinations are mouse-like; just do my work, and then sneak it into a space where it can be seen and see if anyone notices but not actively call attention to it. However, that won’t fly if I hope to continue showing my work.

And I’ll get better at it as I continue. That’s a comforting thought.

Today I managed to talk with some folks who run a local non-profit gallery. I brought some of my work with me and asked them if there could be a possibility of there, maybe, being some space for me to show my work, pretty-please. (They meet every Tuesday to discuss their calendar and want artists to come by who are interested in helping them fill it, so I wasn’t really dropping in out of the blue… which coincidentally is the name of the gallery.)

Because of this meeting and the support the gallery managers have shown me, I will have an opening reception on October 17th for a week long show of my artwork.