Spring Break Assigment 1

The second section of Jackie Battenfield ‘The Artist’s Guide’ is more or less discussing circulating our work. In chapter three she starts off by saying that we need to get our self out in the world. We cannot sit and wait for people to come and see us and our work. We have to be the one to get up and out to the world and show our work. She make a commit about how waiting for someone to finally notice what a fabulous artist we are and exhibit our work is one way to go about building a career, but that can take a frustratingly long time. She continues by saying that are best allies are our peers and colleagues. When we are ready to let people see our work, our peers and colleagues should be the first group of people we should talk to. They may be art school buddies, former teachers, studio mates, an interested work colleague, or someone we may have met at an opening. That is a good way to talk about our work and other topics related to the work. Studio visits are primarily opportunities to foster a dialogue about you practice. Studio visits introduce your work to professional in the art community (Battenfield). Then she talked about people coming over to our own studio to see our work. She talked about some of her good and bad studio visits. Most of the more memorable ones were the ones where the conversation flowed naturally. They didn’t only talk about her work but about other things. The discussion wasn’t me and my work, but also included the visitor’s. She learned about more about them personally, about projects they were developing or suggestions of artists and shows to see. The worst studio visits were conversations that felt forced; like a bad blind date. She said that we should engage in studio visits with old and new friends to gather different reactions to our work. When we return the favor by visiting their studios, the conversations continue and deepen. She commits on how good friends and peer will provide us with thoughtful, honest feedback that will help us assess our strengths. The studio visits can and will help us practice presenting and talking about our work and oter artists’ work with increasing self-assurance (Battenfield). The next part of chapter three she talked about ‘generating our own opportunities.’ She tells us to self-generated venues, that way it all us. It more flexible of us because it is design, funded, promoted, and hosted by us. We would call all the shots. We would not have to wait for anyone to call us. We can call anyone else if we want them in our venues. My favor thing is opening a studio event. She says for us to plan an Open Studio event for friends, family and acquaintances. This is a great way for a good group of people can see our work at once. And it’s free, can beat that. We choose the work that we want to be shown, and how we want it to be seen. We can make the work tell a story, if that is h0ow the work goes. It our opening we can do what we please. There is no one telling us anything about ‘not this work’ or ‘not here. A special energy is created by the party-like atmosphere when many people mill around, meet each other, and engage with your work. Open studio are appropriate at any stage of your career (Battenield). She talks about after cleaning and arranging our work we should stage an open studio for a week or two, and post mail and email our invitations. And if someone important that we wanted to come does not come to the open, invite them to a private showing. To get more people to the opening she says to assign our friends the task of bringing someone that we don’t know to the open studio so we can enlarge our field of contacts. The open studio announces your eagerness to have the work seen by a larger audience. Listen carefully to the suggestions that are offered, ask for referrals, and, afterwards, follow up (Battenfield)! Another way to get our work out in the world is to put our work in a free artist registry. Participating in an artist registry is a way to announce your readiness to engage in a wider discussion about your work. It places you in a larger network of artists (Battenfield). She talks about creating our own website to show our work, which I believe now a day that is the best way to shows you work. Everyone and everything is going electronic. I know every time I tell someone I’m a photographer and they want to see my work the first thing they ask for is if I have a website. Your website is like an extended exhibition of your work; which I believe is very true. It also like a 24 hour gallery. People can go on your website at anytime of the day to see you work. It easy, people can access it right from their living room or wherever, never really having to go anywhere. Your website needs to be aligned with your goals and should provide enough information to introduce or update the viewer about you and your work. When designing it, ask yourself some questions. Where am I headed? Who are the most important people I want to reach with this information? What do they need to know? What do I want them to remember? You answer will determine the information and organization of your site (Battenfield). She says to have fun with it. It should look professional, but it doesn’t have to look impersonal. Allow the layout, images, and words and your aesthetics. This means it should be easy to navigate and have a design that does not get in the way of viewing the visual information (Battenfield). She also says that it does matter how you get it done. We can use a web designer or we can create it our self with one of the easy-to-follow programs available online. She talks about having a blog, like the one we have in class. She put the same website, for the blog, that we are using for the class. The blog is a good way of letting people comment on our work. It also can be diary-like. Somewhere to enter updates for our community o our process. She talk about collaborating with other artists on a show, which I’m not a big fan of. She then talks about exploring our community organizations and novel venues. Look around, and perceive your neighborhood and community with “art” eyes. Begin to collect all the possible places for exhibiting your work. There are many diverse municipal art spaces, artist societies, art centers, arts festivals, park departments, libraries, and state and local arts councils with exhibiting programs (Battenfield). The last thing she talked about in chapter three is to take our art directly to the people. Many artists take their paintings, sculpture, performances, and video projections directly to the public in outdoor spaces (Battenfiel). In chapter four she talks about how to introduce our work to professional community. She gives us guidelines for self-promotion. First she says to develop a brief descriptive statement about our self and our work. She a term in advertising, elevator pitch. Which mean what could we tell someone in a thirty-second elevator ride about our work that work make them get an understanding about how or what our work looks like. Next she say for us to carry business cards with us and use them. On her business card she does not put her email address on it. She has her website but not her email address. She wants people to go to her website to see her work before contacting her. I think that is a very good idea. That let people see her work and at that point they can decide if they want to contract her or not. The next guideline she gives us is she wants us to know that developing good relationships take time. Being open to-and staying in touch with-those who cross your path is how your community of support grows. Allow stronger relationships to evolve naturally (Battenield). She talks about working with nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits usually work with individual artist unlike organizations that make profits off their artists. Nonprofits programs decisions reflect their mission and funding. Since most nonprofit organizations are receive grants from local, stat, and national sources, they have a responsibility to be open and accessible to the public (battenfield). One of the last things that she talks about is using our college and/or university art galleries. Which I believe everyone should take full advances of. College and university art galleries provide training opportunities. This is where we are learning, so I think this is where we should start our practice.