Buying Handmade

I finally did it. I opened the Etsy shop.

If you don't know about Etsy, I encourage you to explore it. Etsy provides artists a venue to display and buyers to discover small hand-made treasures. Most of the work there is inexpensive, ranging from $10 - $100.

It's the place to go for a special gift. It's the place to go to support an artist. It's the place to go to buy hand-made.

I'm happy to see our culture returning to an appreciation of fine hand-made things. I've given hand-made gifts for years: note cards, pottery, knit scarves. Most people appreciated them -- some didn't. The ones who didn't thought I was being cheap. The ones who did loved that I spent time creating something just for them.

When I want a gift, I love buying finely crafted hand-made gifts. Of course, not all hand-made is created equal but the best hand-made

• is fair trade. I'm buying from the artist or the artist's agent.
  
• often is local. Not many resources are spent in shipping. Lots of the materials are local too.
  
• supports a fellow artist. Lots of us support ourselves our families from the work of our hands. We appreciate our patrons.
  
• preserves the craft and allow us a glimpse of other cultures and other peoples.
  
• introduces me to the artist. There's something special about owning or giving a gift when there's a personal connection to the maker -- even if the connection is a short email or phone call.
• reminds us of our values. Integrity of work, quality materials, customer service. No one's work is exploited in my studio. (Ask my intern. I think I'm fair. If not, I'll correct it!)
• is special and comes from the love of the work. That shows in the items created.

Every other generation or so, as a people we return to our roots. We pick up the basket reeds and clay lumps amd charcoals and needles and begin to create for ourselves again. I'm sorry that sometimes it takes an economic downturn for us to reject all the over-packaged, grossly-advertised store-bought, but I'm glad we're getting there again.

Hand-made is special. Hand-made is holistic. Hand-made is sustainable.

You Know What You Should Do.....?

Sunflower II, Mixed Media Painting, ©2009 Jeane Vogel, 16x16

Is there a connection between artists being told what to do and the banality of most art seen in public places in the US? Bear with me here.

The connection might be called Unsolicited Advice.

I seem to get it all the time. Strangers walk into my studio, look around. "You know what you should do..." Then it begins.

A fellow artist walks into my studio. "You know what you should be doing ...?" No, you do that. That suggestion has nothing to do with my work.

I'm not saying that I don't like input and advice. In fact, I often ask for it and get terrific responses. Sometimes I don't like the suggestion, but it might give me pause and force me to understand why I'm not heeding it. (As an aside, if I need my ego fed, I ask advice from my husband. He seems to think everything I do is wonderful. How cool is that?)

What I truly don't understand is why do people insist on telling me what I should be doing. Do I look incompetent? Do I seem confused or aimless? Did I ask for advice? Am I your student?

Unsolicited Advice. It makes you question your judgment, censor your thoughts, keep your work safe.

Or, are you telling me what art to produce because you don't like my work? Don't understand it? It's not what you expect? Ok. Tell me that instead.

A Buddhist friend tells me that I get so much unsolicited advice because I'm always giving it. Well, that should stop, shouldn't it? OK, I'll work on that, but there's something more.

Do we really want all art to look alike? Are we so narrow or limited or lazy or stupid that we have to be spoon fed only paintings of little girls holding a bouquet, or a sailboat on the sea, or a field of sunflowers. I've created art with all these things, but this is all we can do? Can't we create something that forces a viewer to spend more than 5 seconds with it before moving on?

Art should spark a conversation, link to another idea, inspire an action, even just solicit a smile. I'm not saying that every work produced has to be important or controversial or political. Our art should not just fade into the wall.

Take a look around at your bank, your hotel lobby, your dentist's office. Do you notice the art? If not, ask why it's there. I don't think we really want everything the same. We don't want to be told what we should be doing.

f8 & Be There

Those of us who began studying photography in the dark ages (read: darkroom ages) had this adage drilled into us. f8 and be there!

It means that the photographers who get the "best" pictures are those who have their camera set on a medium aperture (f8) to compensate for focusing errors (no auto-focus in those days), and are there -- at the spot they are supposed to be.

What it really means is, "be prepared." There's also an element of luck involved. Now, I've was a Girl Scout until I was kicked out at 13 (another story) and I've been a GS leader for 8 years. I'm a mom. I know all about "be prepared" and the value of "luck!"

I started thinking about what "f8 and be there" could mean for all artists today. It struck me that "f8 and be there" is the old photographer's shorthand for daVinci's 7 Virtues of Life for Artists.

Note that DaVinci didn't call these the "virtues of artists" but the virtues of LIFE for artists. I think what he is telling us is that talented artists who do not live in the world, experience the world, interact the world, comment on the world and struggle to fix the world are artists who are wasting their talent on self-indulgence and ego.

I've had daVinci's 7 Virtues, with my interpretations, posted in my studio for years:

Curiosita -- an attitude of curiosity of continuous learning. It's the "what, when, where, why & how?" of living.

Dimostrazione -- an ability to learn and to test by knowledge by experience. Have an experimental nature.

Sensazione -- a development of awareness and refinement of sight and other senses. Be alert. Be aware. Use all the senses to experience the world.

Sfumato --think the way you paint. Overlay. Blend. Have a tendency to embrace and accept uncertainty, ambiguity and paradox. Be a free thinker.

Arte/Scienza -- a develop a balance between science and art, logic and imagination. Use the whole brain. Think. Create.

Corporalita -- have a calculated desire to achieve poise, fitness and ambidexterity. Be physical. Take action.

Connessione -- recognize that all things are connected. Life, art, politics, people, nature, commerce, faith.

Thanks, Leonardo.

Let's Bring Back the Patronage System

Anyone who has been to Florence or Rome, or who stayed awake during the Art History class slide shows, has seen the splendor that was created during the height of Europe's golden age for artists. The 15th and 16th century in Europe was awash with money and princes and aggrandizement. The work was bold and new and demanded to be seen and discussed.

Ever wanting to best their peers, the elite hired hired artists, kept them on the payroll and commissioned grand work that still takes our breath away 500 years later. I haven't set foot inside the Medici Chapels since 1982, but given the chance I will gush on for 20 minutes about the detail and beauty and exquisite workmanship of the floor-to-ceiling mosaics.

It was an era of full employment for artists. Patrons paid, artists created.

Not that all was good, of course. Your patron had to like the work you created for him. Many a tortured artist was forced to produce pedestrian art to please the master. If not, you might be discharged -- permanently.

Diego Rivera experienced the pain of the displeased Patron in the '30s when Rockefeller destroyed the commissioned mural because it was too revolutionary. Rockefeller knew who Rivera was, right? Did he think that Diego would paint a mural of the benign industrialist? Or maybe dogs playing poker?

There are some who believe that we have a patron system in place right now: it's called the University. Artists teach and produce work. Some are no more satisfied with the new Patron system, than with the old. Though few art professors lose their heads if they get a negative review.

So here's my challenge. Let's bring back the Patronage system. Let's be active in seeking out matches for artists and collectors, companies and institutions. Let's be generous with our knowledge of each others' work. Let's encourage businesses to take down the anonymous, boring, beige mixed media abstracts and pretend-watercolors of sailboats, and replace them with work that will make people stop and look -- and want to come back to the business to look again.

The Patronage system filled 15th century Europe with beauty and majesty and work worth of comment. It's time we do the same in 2009 everywhere.

Phoning It In

Concentration, from the Game Series, ©2009 Jeane Vogel Photography, Infrared Photograph

Everyone body does it once in a while: phones it in. Creation become mundane. Even work we love can become boring. Maybe I'm feeling sick. Maybe I'm feeling bored. Maybe I'm burnt out. Maybe I'm resentful of the work the client wants.

Maybe I'm just lazy.

I know that sounds harsh, but let's call it what it is. It hits all of us once in a while. We let it slide. It's good enough. We hope it doesn't show.

Of course it shows. All of us are judged by work. Our most recent work. There's truth in the old saying that we're only as good as our last effort. The old stuff might be great, the new stuff is lackluster, but nobody will notice because we're successful or well-known or ... whatever.

I recently read an interview that drove this point home to me. A local reporter, long relieved of duties by layoffs, produced a freelance piece for a small paper. I know this person and the writer is competent. The article I read was not. The questions were common, the writing was lazy. The reporter phoned it in. It was good enough. When I thought about it, I realized that everything I've read by this writer lately has been far below what we used to except. Maybe the writer thought no body will notice.

I think lots of people notice.

As soon as the thought "it's good enough" pops into my head, I know I have to resist the temptation to believe it. As soon as I realized I'm "phoning it in," I know it's time to look at why.

Why is it "just good enough?"

Is the concept not good enough? Start over.

Is the client not paying enough? Learn from that and restructure the pricing -- next time.

Do I think I'm not talented enough to deliver the work I imagined or promised? Try it again. "I can't" generally means "This us too hard. I don't want to try."

Am I bored? Too bad. Do it anyway.

We all can't be the best, but there's no excuse for laziness. There's no excuse for phoning it in.

Game Series

Diversions, (c)2009 Jeane Vogel Photography, Infrared Photograph, from the Game Series

Pamper Me, (c)2009 Jeane Vogel Photography, Hand-altered Polaroid, from the Game Series

Photographers aren't taken seriously as artists by many people.

My work often doesn't look like photography, so patrons confide in me: "I don't really like photography. Any body can take a picture." Sometime they add, trying to be complimentary: "But YOUR work. That's art. You really had to do something."

I don't like pitting my work against other photographers or artists. I'd rather try to broaden the patron's view of art to include traditional photography.

It's true, anyone can take a photo. Seems that everyone does. An artist, though, creates a comprehensive body of work. An artist creates a distinctive style and captures his or her vision on film or sensor. An artist communicates. One or six nice pictures does not an artist make.

That being said, I like to push my medium a bit beyond the obvious. Most people think that photography captures a moment in time. I disagree. A snapshot captures a moment in time. A photograph captures a mood or emotion. It tells a story. It evokes a memory. It provokes a discussion. The moment in time is almost irrelevant.

I am especially fond of photographic processes that expose a part of our world that we cannot see with out eyes. I want to produce work that asks for a relationship -- demands a few minutes of your time and maybe even gives you something new every time you approach it.

My newest work -- the Game Series -- combines both goals. The set-ups take a long time, so I'm shooting each one in hand-altered Polaroid and in infrared. I'm delighted by how different each is, even with the same subject matter.

Does the Games Series demand your time and give you something new? You tell me.

George Bailey, meet Darwin

"Potter's not selling. He's buying! And why? Because we're panicking and he's not."
George Bailey, It's A Wonderful Life

A room full of scared people trying to get their money out of a rickety, broken down, old Savings & Loan before all hell breaks loose. That's the image that comes to mind as I prepare for Art Fair Season --2009.

Imagine the room filled with art fair artists. Imagine we've lost faith in ourselves and we fearful of what we face in the next months as we travel to fairs, set up displays and desperately, hopefully look to each person who comes by.

There's a different feeling this year, isn't there? The last couple of years have been rough sometimes, and that was before the bottom dropped out of everything.

As bad as things are for some people -- and I truly believe that we have to do everything we can to help each other -- it's not bad for everyone. Sure, the media is hyping us in to a disaster frenzy, but let's put things in perspective: There's always a market for good art.

As I head into this new season, there are a couple of things I'm going to keep in the front of my head:

• I refuse to go into "survival" mode. I will continue to be confident in the quality of my work.
• I will not cut corners with my materials. I might cut costs, but not quality.
• I paid attention in high school biology class. The fit survive. The weak won't. I will be fit.
• I will not slash my prices. I will not give my work away.
• I will not be greedy. When other artists sell, it's a good sign for all of us.
• I will be gentle but firm with hobbyists who are selling their work for nothing: undercut me if you want, but I do not consider you a peer. If you want to be treated like a professional, a colleague, you must act like one.
  
• I will not grouse about poor sales. Negative energy brings everyone down!
• I will focus even more on customer service.
  
• I will continue my practice to send a personal thank you note to every person who shares their address.
• I will continue to resist the temptation to copy the style of a more successful artist.
  

Will this be an easy season or a challenging one? Who knows? Not every artist will have the same experience. I've had terrific shows when my neighbor didn't make expenses. This year, we have to use all the skills we have.

Being a working artist is a lesson in Darwinism: The strong survive. The survivors adapt. The ranks thin and produce better offspring. In our case, our offspring is better art.

I'm not prone to "Pollyanna-ish" sentiment, but I think we have a great opportunity this year. My plan? I'm focusing on my core values: quality, integrity, attitude, graditude.

No Shortcuts to the Artist's Life

George Clooney is coming to town. More than 4000 people filled the shopping-mall-turned-art community this weekend, hoping to be cast as one of the extras in his new movie, to be filmed in St. Louis. My studio is in the old mall, and I got to watch the spectacle.

Since the casting call would bring so many people to this new art space, we were asked to have our studios open. I complied. And spent the day bursting dreams.

Well, I probably didn't, but that's what it felt like.

First, let me say that I am a believer in sharing information and encouraging people. There are so many people who helped me -- are STILL helping me -- and I want to return the favor.

What I cannot do is give someone a short cut. Sometimes folks don't want to hear the truth.

There were no fewer than two dozen young people -- under 30 -- who walked into my studio on Saturday and wanted a job, wanted an intership, wanted to know the secret of success, wanted to know why they couldn't sell their art, wanted to know --- well, you get the idea.

Don't be mistaken -- I'm not a art guru and I certainly don't look like I know the secrets of life. I was just there -- and apparently approachable. I was certainly happy to stop what I was doing to talk to them.

I was shocked by a number of things:

• Not one of these people was prepared with any information about themselves. A couple seemed put off when I suggested that they email me their resume and samples of their work.
  
• There was a lot of negativity in their attitudes: it's hard to break in, I don't have any money, no one will give me a chance. Did they mistake me for their mother or their girlfriend?
• They really didn't want to hear my answers.
• They wanted quick fixes.

I know times are tough. I haven't forgotten that when you're young and starting out, times are always tough. And I might be wrong, but I got the distinct impression that most of these people were used to be given what they wanted... until now.

Here's what I told each one of them:

• There is no quick way to life as an artist. You have to work at it. All the time.
• Get the education you can afford. Learn from everyone. Learn from everything.
  
• Teach what you know.
• Be willing to take chances.
  
• Show only your BEST work.
• Enter your best work in juried exhibits. Find out if you're really as good as you think you are.
• Don't be afraid of competition. There's always somebody who's better than you. Learn from them.
  
• Achieve the excellence you admire.
• You might not be able to have everything right now. There are decisions to make: cable or art supplies?
  
• Don't copy somebody's else's work or style. Find your own vision. Find your own voice.
• Come to grips with the fact that you might have to support yourself with other work while your art evolves.
• Don't assume you the world owes you any recognition. There are LOTS of talented people out there.
  
• Be responsible for your own success.
• Be grateful to people who help you.
• Be generous to people who need your help.
• It's ok to complain and gripe about how hard this is. My friends hear it from me all the time. But stop it there-- with friends. That's what they're for! To the rest of the world, show your confidence, and your willingness to work hard and take risks.
  
• Failure looks like failure. Success looks like success.
  

There are no short cuts to a successful artist's life. There are no short cuts to any successful life.

The Muse of Change

01.20.09 -- Let's Get to Work!, © 2009 Jeane Vogel Photography. Hand-altered Polaroid Photography

01/20/09 -- No More Excuses, © 2009 Jeane Vogel Photography. Infrared photograph

In classical Greek mythology, there are nine Muses -- the sisters of creation. 

Artists, especially women artists, are part of the larger sisterhood that is guided by these Muses.

There is no identified Muse of Change or Muse of Hope or Muse of Promise, but those women visited me in the studio. Not surprisingly, they came during the rebroadcast of Martin Luther King's speech at the March on Washington in 1963. I'm old enough to remember it. I'm old enough to believe in it.

I was working on a new series of "game" images. Games are important in our lives. Children learn from playing games. Adults work out frustrations or find new solutions to problems from games.  Like art, games might seem frivolous, but are vitally important to our mental health.

As I was working on setting up the first image I planned, the Muses took over. Just so I could have some control, I decided to shoot in Infrared --spectrum of light the eye cannot see -- and hand-altered Polaroid.

The set-ups are similar, but the messages are different.

The hand-altered Polaroid uses the new film, which has very different qualities from the old but is still wonderful. The color balance is skewed a bit, but I can make it work. The dark lines on the image represent the barriers to success -- we are not naive to the difficulty of what needs to be done. 

The second image is an Infrared photograph. In this image you can see the unplayed tiles. What will happen next? Those tiles are in darkness. We don't know what comes next, but we have hope and power. The edges of the tiles are lighted brightly. There are possibilities here.

We never know when the Muses will visit. All we can do is listen. And respond. And create.

No more excuses. Let's get to work.

Teach Me, Don't Sell Me

In the business world, this is classic marketing advice: get bodies in the workshop seats by promising to reveal the secret of quick bucks, mete out just enough information to entice your mark, er listener, then close the deal with the sale: "Everything you need to know -- and more! -- is in my book/DVD/day-long retreat. Only $199. But wait! There's more!"

It's come to the art world in the last few years in the form of tele-seminars and workshops. And it's giving all of us a bad name.

I know I don't know everything-- in fact I hardly know anything at all. When it comes to art, I know where to get my instruction. When it comes to the business of art, I'm struggling. 

Daily I get three or four reminders to sign up for workshops or webinars or teleconferences that will "jump start my art," "connect to the best galleries" or teach me the "secret of selling to the best collectors." This year the hook is "how to survive a recession." 

Yeah, yeah.

Every once in a while, I bite. I'm still annoyed by an hour I wasted this week on a "preview webinar." The idea, of course, is to give the listener a taste of the full session and hope I'll pay for the full thing scheduled for a few days later. Apparently a lot did. I cannot imagine why.

First, I cannot stand "perky." The marketer of this session interrupted every few minutes to make her pitch. And she was WAY too perky. I'm sure somebody coached her to sound that way. It sounded fake and disingenuous.

But the part the really repelled me was the way the hour-long webinar was handled. THERE WAS NO INFORMATION GIVEN! Nothing. Oh sure, there were little tidbits tossed out, but those nuggets were followed by: "I really don't have time to explain it all here, but I'll get into depth on Tuesday night." I looked at my watch. We have 45 minutes left! So what she was really saying was "You're not paying for this so I'm not telling you." 

Instead of enticing me, I came away doubting whether this person really did have something useful to share. Honestly, I expected her next sentence to be: "This little bottle of Dr. Brown's Elixir will ignite your muse, clear your desk clutter, wash your studio floor and finish your taxes. Why, I even knew one little lady who sold paintings to five major Chelsea galleries after one little sip!"

Yep, I felt like I had spent an hour with a snake oil salesman. 

I'm not saying that all of these mass seminars are bad, but if someone is selling something at the end, the build up better be useful and practical.

Lots of artists teach. I do. I love teaching -- not as much as creating art, but teachers learn so much from the act of sharing.  Every time I lead a workshop or class, even if it's to 5 year olds, I come away with a new understanding of my medium -- and more ideas for new work. 

Sharing our knowledge with each other doesn't diminish us -- it enriches us. We don't have to share it for free -- my workshops cost money too -- but we don't have to sell something at the end, do we?

Teach me. Stop selling me stuff.