Did you weed the beds, put out new seedlings and spray the old so the bugs and the damp don’t get it?
That’s the way it is with growing things, they need constant attention, and so does your art. If you haven’t gotten out and started your spring planting, you are way behind.
Have you started your Independence Day paintings, sculptures, photos? It takes six months led time to get anything in the slick magazines. They don’t look for what is happening right now they are out there half a year ahead doing what needs to be done so that when all of their projects come together they can put out that July issue and have it look right.
Sure it is too cold and wet with all of our rivers overflowing and the pastures sunken under ten feet of water so don’t even think about trotting out and starting something. If you don’t have it in the can you are outta luck!
Valentines Day? You should have thought of that way back in September! Now it’s too late for this year, better start planning for next year and while you are at it make out a calendar with all of the projects you need to start for next year.
You don’t? How can you expect your art to make a living for you if you don’t plan ahead? Sure there are a handful of artists who have such a reputation and following they don’t have to plan. How did they get that way? They worked and planned and got out in the trenches and made it happen.
So you don’t think you want to focus on magazines anyway. That’s commercial art and you are a person with aesthetic vision and don’t pander to the decorative interests of common folks.
Jeeze, you are on an ego thingy aren’t you. Those common folks you are so quick to dismiss are the ones who will be loading up their campers and RVs in the next few months and driving along the Oregon coast where they will buy things to take back to where they came from and hang in their travel trailers and Winnebago’s and it might just be your art if only you had planned ahead and gotten it ready so that they could find it when they got here, but you didn’t do that did you?
You think living here in paradise is all that you have to do to create a reputation so vast and broad that it gets written up in all of the travel magazines? Oh that’s right you don’t think you want to get your art into slick magazines.
The next time you have to go to a doctor, dentist or a CPA, it is coming up on tax season or maybe you have to go see a lawyer and are shaking in your boots because the kid ran the car into the neighbor’s fence and then drove off without saying so much as “sorry” and now that neighbor is suing you for the cost of a new fence made of solid gold and the court costs and lawyers fees which make the teensy little cost of the O.J. trial look like pocket money and there you are sweating and moaning and flipping through magazines which are at least six months old and reading about what you can do to make a pumpkin scary without losing fingers or having to have a transfusion and you suddenly flip a page and see ole Blind Fogy’s duck picture that was in the Public Hanging two years ago and was snapped by an AP photographer covering the event and seen by an art director in San Francisco and now it’s in the magazine and old Blind Fogy is getting paid enough to buy a new Audi 2000 and no one will safe on the streets of Coos Bay and how did it all happen? Old Blind Fogy got his work out there and got it seen, that’s how.
Entering shows is one of the best ways to get your work out where it can do you some good. And because the news folks with the big cameras come and look and get to take pictures which the general public does not because the work is hanging in a museum where there is no photography allowed and the picture goes viral and winds up on Letterman and there you are Old Blind Fogy got a big pay day and what did you get?
Maybe you just don’t like museums and the whole juried show process? It isn’t fair that some get chosen and the rest get cast aside. Does that mean you are out of luck? No of course not. You won’t get as much exposure as Old Blind Fogy but you can still get your work out there, if you plant the seeds.
So where are you showing your work while you are waiting for the next big show so that you can be the one that the UPI photographer snaps and besides you look a lot better on camera than Old Blind Fogy, so it would be much better for Letterman if he had you on the show instead of Old Blind Fogy.
You aren’t? The shows are really the only way to get your work displayed without shelling out beaucoups bucks and you just don’t have the beaucoups right now to spare so you’ll just have to wait for an opportunity which doesn’t require quiet so much beaucoups.
No you will not. The libraries, Coos Bay, North Bend, and Bandon are always looking for art to show in their cases and they get big name artists cause the Big Guys know that not spending your hard earned beaucoups is the best way to go and so they show their work at the library where if you have a card you can get The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and be literary while being a successful artist with imagination.
No library card, try one of the local art shops. There are a bunch of them and they gladly take consignments. They’ll show your work, sell your work and give you the money and you don’t even have to be there to get the job done.
What about one of the free, that’s right free display places? Josie’s On Broadway right in the middle of beautiful downtown Coos Bay or North Point real estate office, both places have lots of space and are artist friendly. But you have to go and check it out.
The Crystal Dolphin will also take art on consignment High Tide Café displays art and Ken and Jane Snoddy at Easy Lane Frames and Select Gallery have just finished one show and are hosting another one. Call or email Jane and see if she has room for your work. Even getting one piece out of the closet and on to a wall will do more than all of the stuff in your closets.
Spring is the time for new planting; make sure that your art garden gets as much attention as the garden at your house. Then this fall it will be you and not Old Blind Fogy showing up on all of the morning shows, getting their picture taken with Sharon and Ozzy Osborne on The Talk and even getting a kiss from Kim Kardashian! Now that’s a spring to look forward to!
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