Please visit my new online home

My new website, online gallery, blog and generally "just a cool place to hang out" can be found here. Hope to hear from you soon.

Dennis Brady Studios

I finally did it, I'm moving

After much debate (between my lazy half and my want to get a new website half) I spent the last 5 days creating a new website along with an accompanying online store. I've been listening to a favorite podcast of mine (TWIT) for years and for the past 6 months or so they've been talking about this new sponsor of theirs (SquareSpace) being the most forward thinking, easy to use and completely customizable web/blog host imaginable. Every time I thought about how much work was involved in building a new site, I got cold feet and stuck with the one I've been using for the past 3 years.

I normally do go out of my way to bad mouth a company (unless they deserve it) but the eBay subsidiary ProStores finally pushed me over the proverbial edge last week with their terrible customer support and cumbersome UI. Even though they say their set-up and customer usability is the best in the industry, it isn't. In fact, in the nearly 15 years of building websites, theirs is the worst. Well, maybe a 1998 version of Microsoft's FrontPage beats them out but not by much. I don't want this post to turn into a hatefest for ProStores as much as I want to highly recommend SquareSpace.

From now on I will be combining my entire online presence (website, online store, blog and future video podcasts) on my new SquareSpace site.

From now on this blog can be found at www.dennisbradystudios.com

Part 2

Pranav Mistry at TED; The Sixth Sense - part 1

I consider myself technically proficient, a total geek and a forward thinker. Then I watched this demonstration at the TED conference and was completely in awe. I need to work harder.

A Special Kind Of Symmetry

I love NPR and here is one of the reasons why.

A Special Kind Of Symmetry

Too many decisions

The start of 2010 was suppose to bring changes into my life regarding my website, my blog, my show schedule and my art. So far the only changes made have been to my art. I'll be taking a more "fine art" approach to my style. I've been making fractal art for decades and I can tell you the year a piece was created by the style and color combination I used on it. My earlier works were more psychedelic and highlighted strange new shapes (at least to non mathematicians) like the Mandelbrot and Julia sets. Today my work tends to lean more to earth tones and brush stroke type shapes. Both are good, it's just my transition as an artist.

My blog and website are a completely different matter. Because of my extensive travel schedule and the hassle of trying to get web orders shipped to my customers in a timely manner, I researched using many different hosting and "photo fulfillment" companies that would allow orders placed on my website to be printed and shipped to my customers without my involvement. I would no longer have to stop what I was doing or worse, figure out a way to print, frame and ship an order to a customer when I was traveling and away from my studio. Cool huh?

After spending the better part of a week looking over my different options I settled on either Smug Mug or another company called Square Space. Both seemed like they'd work out fine. Costs were in line to what I am already spending, print quality looked great but after looking at all of the additional work I was going to be faced with like photo uploading, new data entry and pricing, plus (and this was the killer) I would have had to spend 30-40 hours resizing my images to fit their formats or run the risk of their "auto cropping" feature chopping off a portion of my fractals to fit their print sizes, I decided to stand pat and not make the switch.

I'm just too anal about the end quality I want my buyers and collectors to have, so at least for now, I'll keep handling my printing and order fulfillment in house and put up with the hassle of wearing the multiple hats of being an artist, a traveling art gallery, a fine art printer and the shipping manager.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2010

For me, 2009 rocked. Sales of my fractals were up from 2008 which was also a good year. No complaints from the art show circuit from me. Many of my artist friends had similar reports to tell for the year but other (unfortunately) did not.

2009 was a year for affordable art. Nearly everyone who sells into the high end market took a hit. That is completely understandable considering nearly every newscast doom and gloomer talking head was predicting the end of the financial world as we knew it. People were loosing their jobs, their homes, their savings and faith in the system.

Even though it appeared that crowds at most of the festivals I attended were strong, I think many people were there to look, take in the ambiance, listen to the music and possibly plan for future art purchases. Those artist who offered unique, affordable art were usually the ones smiling during load out. This is a cycle. My friends who sell high ticket items will have their day once again, hopefully in 2010.