Five Artists share what worked & why

When eval­u­at­ing goals, inten­tions or actions one of the most impor­tant things you can do to help  main­tain for­ward momen­tum is to bask in your suc­cesses. That doesn’t mean boast­fully pro­claim­ing how great you are to any­one will­ing to lis­ten, instead it means to take the suc­cess in, let them form pil­lars that can sup­port you when you need the sup­port, and let them pro­vide the intu­itive base that will guide you fur­ther toward wher­ever you are going.

A major fac­tor in allow­ing your suc­cesses to be there for you is to under­stand not only what worked but also why and how it worked. Once you have the three  in hand you can then use that infor­ma­tion to rein­force your foun­da­tion of intu­ition and belief in your­self. it is this foun­da­tion that gives you the will­ing­ness to take ever­more cre­ative risks and cou­pled with what we’ll cover tomor­row an ever stronger belief in your a stronger sense that fail­ure is not an issue because risk is an exper­i­ment based solely on your vision of what you are work­ing to cre­ate. All fail­ure means in this con­text is that it is time to adjust your course.

So, know­ing your suc­cesses and the how,what and why of their suc­cess will con­tinue to rein­force your cre­ative confidence.

Today, Jan, Kris­ten, Michelle, Liese and Jane look at their goals for 2009 and talk about what they tried and why it worked.

What did you do in 2009 that worked and why do you think it worked?

Jan Blencowe

| web site | blog | twit­ter | face­book |

My goal for learn­ing how to use social media sites like Face­book and Twit­ter was a large over­ar­ch­ing goal for the year. To make that work I went straight for pro­fes­sional help. I reg­is­tered to attend the smARTist Tele­sum­mit in Jan­u­ary 2009. Sev­eral of the speak­ers were experts in using social media sites, specif­i­cally Face­book and Twit­ter and oth­ers on cre­at­ing on-line vis­i­bil­ity and pub­lic­ity. Per­fect. I learned a great deal and the strate­gies I learned and imple­mented cat­a­pulted me into the world of web 2.0. In all fair­ness I do have to add that this was a time inten­sive goal and I ended up spend­ing approx­i­mately 20 hours a week get­ting going in the begin­ning. Through the year I have learned to be more effi­cient and once things get going in social media they tend too have a snow­ball effect and roll right along with less resistance.

Clearly defin­ing my style and authen­tic voice and writ­ing my artist’s state­ment were so closely linked that they actu­ally became one large goal. Since I was ter­ri­fied about writ­ing my state­ment, hav­ing made sev­eral very lame attempts pre­vi­ously I called in pro­fes­sional help for this one too. I pur­chased Ari­ane Goodwin’s book Writ­ing the Artist State­ment: Reveal­ing the True Spirit of your Work, and made a com­mit­ment to do every sin­gle writ­ing exer­cise fol­low­ing the direc­tions exactly.  This was with­out a doubt one of the most dif­fi­cult things I have done, and yet in the end it was one of the most sat­is­fy­ing and beneficial.

Museum trips were delight­ful and just required some advance plan­ning and paint­ing trips to the Hud­son River Val­ley were eas­ily arranged through an artist friend I met on-line sev­eral years ago who has a home there. The trips were in prepa­ra­tion for 2 group shows. One in Rhinebeck, NY fea­tur­ing Hud­son Val­ley Daily Painters, a group of artists I’ve con­nected with via the inter­net, and a sec­ond at Domini­can Col­lege, Orange­burg, NY.

The triple paint­ing goals of work­ing larger/more clas­si­cal for­mat, cre­at­ing a thicker more var­ied paint sur­face and cre­at­ing a poetic aes­thetic required a lot of exper­i­men­ta­tion and study, some frus­tra­tion and a cou­ple of paint­ings that really bombed! It actu­ally wasn’t until the very end of 2009 that I began to “get it” and hit a stride.

Fill­ing the 50 page sketch­book was sup­posed to occur over the sum­mer but in actu­al­ity extended well into the fall but I did fill the book!

Kris­ten Stein

| web site | blog | twit­ter | face­book |

Many of my goals were met for 2009. I was able to have a few pieces of art selected for use on set designs for TV and motion pic­tures. I learned from another artist that this may be a result of set design­ers look­ing beyond the typ­i­cal design house when search­ing for art­work to adorn their sets.  I do not know how they found my web­site, but I am grate­ful that some of my work was selected to appear in upcom­ing shows. Here’s a link to one of the shows air­ing this Feb­ru­ary: http://kristensteinfineart.blogspot.com/2010/01/artwork-to-be-used-on-set-of-past-life.html

I was for­tu­nate to also find many won­der­ful retail estab­lish­ments and gal­leries to carry my work this year. It’s a par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult econ­omy for a wide-range of busi­nesses, but gal­leries seem to be espe­cially sen­si­tive to eco­nomic down­turns. I feel for­tu­nate to have had last­ing busi­ness rela­tion­ships with many won­der­ful store­own­ers and cre­ated won­der­ful new bonds in 2009 which I hope will con­tinue into 2010.

Michchelle Ciarlo-Hayes

|web site |etsy | twit­ter |

Set­ting goals for in-person sales at art fairs — this was my first goal-setting task (sum­mer ’09) and it worked because it helped me stay moti­vated dur­ing a long day. I didn’t get dis­cour­aged dur­ing the slow points, I sim­ply stayed pos­i­tive and focused on mak­ing great con­nec­tions with each per­son who stopped at my table. Invari­ably, a pos­i­tive and engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion lead to a sale.

Liese Mar­tin

| blog | twit­ter | etsy |

The Etsy store worked out great, lots of re list­ing and using Twit­ter to drive traf­fic there was awe­somely suc­cess­ful. Mak­ing lots of the things that sell well in a price range that folks can afford made a huge dif­fer­ence in gallery sales as well as on Etsy.  Being real­is­tic and keep­ing my hourly pay for art­work between $10-$15 an hour helped things move bet­ter. I’d rather be sell­ing things at a liv­ing wage than hav­ing things pile up in my house! Break­ing out into metal-smithing also made me stand out in a gallery that has mostly bead work, so my work became very mem­o­rable in con­trast. Finally, col­lab­o­rat­ing with other artists was HUGE for me this year. Basi­cally I have folks that use my images to cre­ate their own crafts, and I get a per­cent­age of com­pleted sales. It felt like free money! Thanks, guys!

Jane Camp­bell

| blog | Twit­ter |

I feel my biggest accom­plish­ment of 2009, one one I’m most proud of, was expos­ing myself on a mar­ket­ing level, as well as on
an artis­tic level, to a big­ger extent, which is a bit dif­fi­cult for my shy self. I joined the Twit­ter com­mu­nity and started a 2nd blog. I have more fol­low­ers than I ever invi­sioned and have met some lovely peo­ple, estab­lished some col­lec­tors & pre­cious friend­ships. For this I am blessed & grate­ful. I had 3 gallery open­ings & estab­lished rela­tion­ships in the art world both online and in the “real” world.