Shameless Self Promotion and some musings On the Business of Art

      People have asked me  if, given that art expresses something personal about the maker, whether I find it difficult to sell. Don't I become emotionally attached to the piece? My answer is that I have very little difficulty with selling my work for the simple reason that I enjoy regular meals and sleeping indoors.  It is true that each piece I produce reflects some aspect of myself, sometimes in quite surprising ways, and that a part of the creative process is to fall in love with your project. I view the process of art making as an adventure filled with pitfalls, surprises, and wonderful discoveries. the actual finished piece is an artifact of this voyage. I am fond of them because they show where I have been, but ultimately, I do not need to posses them to remember. If someone else wants something I made, I am more than happy to part with it, for a fair price. If there's an item that I'm particularly attached to, I just make it more expensive!

Which brings me to the Self Promotion bit. After about a year of sitting fallow, my Etsy shop is now active. Here are the items that I have put up for sale so far:

... And here is an exclusive preview of the next item to be posted. I posted it here so that you could be among the first to see it....Because I love you!

(Thank you for checking out this post. If you don't wish to read a detailed belligerent rant about the perils of trying to make a living in the arts, here would be a good place to stop reading, although I do think I got a few funny lines in.)

  One of the most harmful false beliefs about the creative lifestyle, nearly as bad as the necessity of suffering (That is a whole separate rant that, at the moment, I won't subject you to!) is that artists are and should be divorced from mundane concerns. To be pragmatic and businesslike is somehow looked upon as selling out and not being true to your creative nature.  I have come to have a very definite opinion about the role of professionalism in the Art World. I firmly believe there ought to be some. I have the good fortune to count many talented successful artists as friends.Far from being divorced from reality, they are uniformly practical and professional. Working artists generally can come up with inventive business strategies, money saving tricks and innovative promotion techniques that would make a marketing department sit up and take notice.  They need to in order to survive . The sad truth is artists need to function in the real world. There is no bohemian exemption available on the federal tax forms. The phone company doesn't look at your occupation and say "because you work to find Truth and Beauty we're going to give you free service and a coupon for an  ice cream sundae." In fact the opposite is usually true. You find yourself constantly having to convince people that what you do is actually work. Non-profit Arts organisations are constantly trying to get you to donate a piece for their charity auctions or badgering you to pay them membership fees on the premise that they just might get you a show later on where you just might sell a piece. Casual acquaintances slyly  hint that they would love to own a piece of your work and then act as though you've mortally insulted them when you quote your selling price instead of just offering to give it to them.

Try this little social experiment next time you need to get your car repaired: Inform the mechanic that you drive a lot and know a lot of other drivers. Tell him that working on your car would be a great opportunity for him to showcase his abilities and could open a lot of doors for his business. Explain to him that because he enjoys working on cars so much anyway, and because of the amount of future work you could potentially drum up for him, that he should repair your vehicle for free, or at very least give you a really big discount.
 Now duck.
 There will be a rather large crescent wrench flying towards your head by this point.

Every artist I know has heard many different versions of this exact same argument over the years. Even more remarkably, none of them have ever been charged for assault.