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.

An experiment

The artistic side of my brain works in spurts. Sometimes, new works pour out at a rate that I feel guilty doing them that fast. But most of the time, I go through a methodical approach to making my art that takes time, often a lot of time. I often get asked when showing at festivals, “how long does it take you to create that piece.”

I most of the time give a stock answer that goes some thing like, “Because I work in layers, the finished piece might be made up of a dozens or more layers, which combined, make up the fractal.” I then go on to say, “depending on the complexity of each layer, it could take as little as 10 minutes per layer or over an hour. If the piece is say 20 layers deep I could literally be on it for a few days. I normally don’t sit in front of my computer working on the same image from start to finish so I might be working on several different fractals at once to keep each new piece fresh while I create it.”

My art career has become so busy with traveling to art festivals, gallery openings, website and blog work etc. that in order to find time to make art I’ve needed to implement a more strategic approach to being creative.

I’ve read about artists that do a piece of art a day, everyday and offer it for sale on sites like eBay, Etsy and a variety of other online art auction sites. They promote each piece through blogs similar to mine. The common denominator of these types of sales is that usually the painting, photo, collage or whatever is small. Typically these pieces of art are post card size or possibly 6” x 6”. Here is an example of an artist that has taken this art marketing to the extreme. His name is Duane Keiser and his art can be found on his blog at,

duanekeiser.blogspot.com

Take a look and you’ll have a better idea of what I’m proposing for my own art.

Starting soon, along with my regular articles, I’ll be posting a “new” never before sold fractal on this blog. I will give details on each print such as size, matted or not, whether the piece will be framed, if it will be an “open edition” or “limited edition” etc. I’ve decided NOT to include each print in my gallery website www.dennisbradystudios.com until after this “original” is sold.

My goal is to debut between 3 and 5 different fractals per week. If the experiment works, I’ll continue with it. If it becomes too much work for too little return, I’ll kill it. You’ll determine which path I take.

In any event, at least I'll be making art in a very regular cycle.

How to survive on the art festival circuit

Because I’ve been very busy lately getting ready for the up-coming 2008 art festival season, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the many new-comers who will venturing out into this world of direct selling their art to collectors at the various art fairs held around the country.

Through out the year I will be writing a series of articles that will offer visitors a look into the world of art festivals. Thousands of artists a year make all or part of their income by producing some sort of artwork and selling it through a network of festivals.

Every single weekend of the year, promoters provide venues for artists to meet with and hopefully sell their art to the end user. In other words, this transaction takes place between artist and the person who will own their art. This direct selling approach offers the artist the opportunity to explain their art as well as how it’s produced, directly to the buyer. The consumer appreciates this direct contact with the artist and the artist keeps a greater piece of the pie for each piece sold. In comparison to art galleries where sales commissions can run as high as 50%, this means of marketing can offer the artist a higher profit per piece sold.

That is the upside of being a traveling artist. There are however, many aspects of this lifestyle is not as glamorous as what the public sees. The long hours spent away from home and in many cases, families. The thousands of miles that is driven each year to attend these festivals. Each hour on the road is an hour not available to create art. The escalating expenses ranging from increasingly high jury and booth fees, lodging expense, food, gas, lose from stolen or broken art pieces and the dreaded mechanical breakdown.

I’ve developed many techniques during my art career, not all of which are used in making my art. Part of the reason I am as successful as I am is because of the techniques I’ve learned that enable me to sell my art. I will try to give you a glimpse into the artist’s world but more importantly, I will offer a platform where artists can turn to for information to make this lifestyle easier, more profitable and fun. Some of the topics I will be covering are:

• How to choose the right show for your type of art.
• How to prepare your festival applications to “get you in.”
• How to price your art to make you more money yet keeps it affordable to the buyer.
• How to set up your booth and display area to maximize visibility as well as salability.
• How to “close the sale” in a friendly way.
• How to keep cost down on the road.
• How to resell to past customers.
• How to write a professional “Artist Statement.”

These topics will become posts as they become relevant during my season. I’m in my preparation stage now, submitting applications to the various shows I want to do for 2008. This is one of the least liked jobs an artist has to do each year, but it is one of the most important parts of building a successful career selling your art.

Starting Out in 2008

My winter break never seems long enough. I normally end my show circuit season almost 1800 miles from home, which gives me 3 long days of drive time to examine how the year turned out. Not that I don't already have a good idea of how successful the season was, but this solo drive gives ample time for contemplation.

Once home, Christmas is right around the corner. My daughter is home from college and we are busy making plans for our other 3 son’s trip back to the snowy climate of North Idaho. That always presents a problem because they live in 3 different states along with their wives and our grand kids and the nearest one is 1000 miles away.

With the logistics of that over, I settle down for the next few weeks and try not to think about art, festivals, driving or anything else related to my life on the road as a traveling artist. Well, those few weeks are past and I am “back in the game” full throttle I’m in the studio creating new works, answering e-mail from prospective clients, handling orders for my wholesale accounts and applying to this year’s batch of festivals.

I swear I was just finishing my 2007 season just a few short weeks ago and here I am, back on the merry go round again…and loving every minute of it.

I’d like to finish this post by wishing my wife a happy anniversary. It’s been a wonderful 20 years.