Connecting

Every now and then things just click. You know, fall into place, come together, and merge with the cosmos. What ever you call it, you’ll know when it happens. Maybe it’s something that you’ve been working on for some time. Or maybe it just falls into your lap, but when it happens, you’ll know it.

Selling your art, like any other profession that requires trading goods for money needs a network for distribution. The reason that I am able to support myself with something that I love to do, create art, is because I’ve developed a way to get my prints into the hands and then walls of thousands of different people each year. I touched on this briefly yesterday.

I use my website to allow people all over the world see and hopefully buy my art. I’ve procrastinated for 3 years over whether or not to add to my already crowed day by journaling my life as an artist trough a blog. You’re reading this blog so you know my decision on that. I travel all around the country, setting up my temporary, home away from home canopy and display my art to hundreds of thousands of people who attend these festivals looking to buy art. What a concept.

The one aspect of selling my art without me physically being there (whether personally running my site or being at an art fair) has so far alluded me even though I’ve put some effort into making it happen. I’ve wanted to find a working relationship with a distributor to sell my art to their already existing market. That was much harder to find than I imagined when I started looking a few years back. Sure there are hordes of existing sales rep firms and manufactures distributors out there. Just google it and you’ll be overwhelmed with the choices. I did, and spent countless hours researching, interviewing and in a few cases even started relationships with people who for many different reasons, didn’t pan out.

Finding someone else who has a passion for what they do (sell art) as great as the passion you have (create art) is the Holly Grail. I knew it existed but I just couldn’t quite find it and hold onto it long enough to make it work, for the both of us. Because of that, I put it aside, stopped thinking, no obsessing about it and went along with what was already working for me.

Remembering that “good things come to people who wait” or in my case forgot about it, I was pleasantly surprised when I got an e-mail from Teresa Coppla of Starshine Arts last December. She introduced herself and said that a mutual friend recommended that she take a look at my art to possibly be included as a greeting card line in her catalog. She asked for samples and because I already produced a line of cards that I sell on my site and at art festivals, I was able to send a few off for Teresa to examine the next day. Because I’ve gone through this exercise before, I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

After a month of correspondence, I’ve entered into an agreement with Teresa and Starshine Arts to distribute my line of fractal greeting cards. The working relationship is just beginning, a new chapter in my life as an artist trying to support himself doing something he loves. Considering I’ve never met Teresa except for our exchanges of e-mail, I still get the feeling of trust, mutual admiration and financial success with our dealings so far.

One never knows when you’ll find that missing piece, the connection. I think I have.

http://www.starshinearts.com/catalog