What are you doing for Valentine's Day?

You do know it's only thirteen days away.

Yes, being focused on your art can make you blind to what is going on around you, but you might just want to take a breath and think about what you are going to do on that day of hearts and flowers.

No silly, I'm not talking about a big, heart-shaped box for your main squeeze, I am talking about what you plan to do to promote yourself and your work.

Every holiday gives you untapped opportunities to get out there and say, “Hey, look me over.” I know, you are a serious artist and never stoop to crass commercialism, so how is standing in that soup line? Folks, if you haven't noticed, its a depression out there. Don't believe me, take a drive down any street. Are there more empty building than there were this time last year? There's your answer.

Do you want to be one of the casualties of the Great Recession? If the answer is yes, then you are doing the right thing and can go back to watching Martha Stewart or whatever you were watching, if not then you'd better start thinking.

George Lucas has built an empire not by making movies, which he does very well in deed, but by taking those movies he makes and marketing the tar out of them. He controls the Lucas Film vault, some of the best movies ever made, he controls the sound with Skywalker Sound, the sound in theaters with THX Theater Sound and he has that little side-business, Industrial Light and Magic. George doesn’t have to ever make another movie.

So where's your spread? Have you wired your fences and set cow-punchers to ride your range or are you waiting for the Art Fairy to come along and make everything all right?

No, you can't monopolize art like a movie mogul can take over the business, but you can see that your own little empire gets covered in stuff with your name all over it.

Have you looked at your doctor's office lately? It is too painful for words. And what about your dentist? Your lawyer, butcher, baker and candlestick maker, are they working in offices that would make an ambulance chaser weep? Why haven't you given them a piece of your art so that they can see what real art looks like? Of course you'd want a nice, tasteful, little sign giving your name, address, website, phone number and Facebook account.

Doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs, pardon, Native American CEO's trained hard to be where they are, but there's no art appreciation course in graduate school. You have to show them what good art is and what better way than with your art? They might even decide to knock three percent off your next office call. And yes, I know it works, Dutch has art at the North Bend Medical Center, right behind the reception desk. You better than Dutch Mostert?

Have you tried contacting fabric companies? They have an enormous appetite for patterns. You think all of that cloth comes from the brilliant minds of silk worms? And leaves, flowers, trees, rocks and water all make wonderful patterns. Could be you have just the image they are looking for.

What about the greeting card companies? They do a land office business on Valentines and are you getting a cut? Then why are you waiting? It's too late this year but you're just about right for next year's catalog.

One last chance, graphic arts companies. They need images all of the time. Mostly they contact photographers because photographers are used to being hired guns and making images for soul-less philistines and don't take it personally when some yutz asks if they have a snapshot of a grapefruit on top of the Chrysler Building and could they go get one for under twenty bucks because the building is there all the time and all you have to do is put a grapefruit on top of it.

Yeah I know I am a hard man for asking a painter to work with ad agencies and magazine publishers and their art departments. But Norman Rockwell seems to have had a bit of success doing that weekend magazine, so why not you?

And while you are plotting and scheming, go ahead and get that big, heart-shaped box of Pangburn's best. I think forgetting Valentine's was what John Wayne Bobbit in so much trouble and you don't really want to see if that was just an isolated incident or a major social trend, so go buy the candy.