Spring Break Assigment 2

In chapter nine Battenfield is tells us how to structure our day-to-day operations. I do believe that this is something that is really important. You cannot run a business if you cannot structure your operation. Everything would go everywhere and become a big mess. The first thing Battenfield talk about in the chapter is time management. Your artistic imagination may be infinite, but your time is not. You can’t make the day longer then twenty-four hours or a week longer than seven days, although you may have learned how to burn the midnight oil. Since you can’t create more time, you need to learn how to restructure and use it more gracefully (Battenfield). As much as I wish we can make more time, sometimes. I know it’s not possible, so I have to learn how to manage my time. Track your time. Use a notepad, planner, or computer to take notes about what you do every day. Record how you use your time in and out of the studio to provide a complete picture of your activities. Use notations as specific or general as you like: work, sleep, studio, relaxing, commuting, cooking, video gaming, email, web surfing (Battenfield). This part I find pretty interesting. I always try to plan every day out, but I never thought to add sleep and like video gaming. But when you do think about it, those things do take up some time. Well reading I realized that driving can be planned as well. Driving can take up a very large chuck in time. That is one of the things I dislike about driving. Go back and assign each activity category. Work, family, friendship, romance, knowledge, health, finances, self, spiritual, art studio, art business, downtime, etc. part of this exercise is to be honest with yourself about which categories the activity belongs in (Battenfield). The last part of this exercise is to analyze the information. We to add everything together and see which categories have the most time. We need to list the categories in order from most time up top of the list, and then less time in the bottom of the list. At that time we need to analyze the list and see what is up top. We need to make sure that the most important things are up top, if not then we need to make some changes on the list to fix that. The next section that Battenfield talks about in chapter nine is organization. Organizing yourself frees up emotional space and rewards you by making your art life easier and more productive (Battenfield). The very next thing Battenfield talks about I never thought of doing, or I’ve never done before. Getting Help. Battenfield tells us to get help when things start getting out of control. I’ve thought about hiring people to work for me, but I have never thought of them as help. The last thing that Battenfield talks about in this chapter that I believe that was important to me was record keeping. Now that to be is the most important thing in this chapter. I make sure to keep record of everything I do.

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.

The How-to's

This chapter basically talks about how to get good images of our work. In the beginning of this section Jackie talks about how important it is to have great quality pictures. “I can’t street this enough. Remember, the only relationship most viewer will ever have with your art will be through a reproduction of it” (Battenfield, The Artist’s Guide). She also stress about having great works before it leaves our studio. “Once the art leaves your hands, the opportunity to document it is gone or becomes more complicated” (Battenfield, The Artist’s Guide). Next she goes into taking the picture of our art how we want people to read it. Then at point she went into if we should hire a photographer or take the pictures of our art ourselves. She did advices that if we do hire someone to take our pictures to be very involved in the shot. We can’t hire someone and think that they will know how we want them to take the picture. We have to direct them on how we want it done. What angle tells our story or how we want the story to be told. The next she talks about was labeling our work. Which is something in the past that I did not so be I will start doing it now. Then she went into talking about video and still images from film and video. Some of the things she talk about in this section was really good stuff but I feel as a photography major some of it doesn’t really relate to me, like taking the picture of my works. My work is pictures, that what I do. But beside that everything else that relates to me was very informed for me. I really like this book.

Jan 27: Jackie Battenfield

Jackie Battenfield talked about her life and how her career started. After she had graduated she decided she wanted to do art in New York. She started a non-profit gallery in Brookline and started going to studio visits. She did 200 of them in her first year. She learned how to write grants, scholarship to help make up the money that was running out. She mentions that, in her third year of owning the art gallery she had a baby. She let us know that even though she had the baby it did not stop her from doing what she was doing. The baby came along sometime. After 8 year she realizes that she did not want to do that anymore. By that time she was pregnant with her second child and she didn’t want 10 day mandatory leave, she want to stay home full time. She started selling her own her. When she got about 6 months of living funds in her account she quit her job. She had a plan.
She started getting back with people and started looking for many galleries. She would start looking everywhere for galleries. Her plan was to have a lot of money in 5 years time that would pay for her and her family’s life, in New York City, and that she would be paining full time. She encourages everyone to dream big and to tell no one our dream. So she spread herself out, she had people everywhere helping sell her painting. She would introduce herself and her work to anyone who would listen or wanted to her. She researched her galleries as well and got her targeted audience. She would carry everything that was needed, that had to do with her work, with her. After every interview she made sure to follow up. She mentions that when you know what you want there is a way that you walk, a way that you hold yourself. After many interview she got a 10,000 dollar commission. She made first year goal in 6 months. She did really well for herself and gave us really good advice. She gave us the rules that made her successful l. I can’t say that I agree or disagree really, cause it something I would have to try first to know if it works or not.

Obituary

At my funeral, I see my family there and my closest friends there. And this is what I believe will be said:
Ruchama Lubin was a friendly person. She was always the one to call on when you need help with something; or if you just wanted to talked. She was a very religious person, whatever she was doing she made sure the Lord Father God was in it first before she did anything. Loved that about her. She was a free little bird, she never really like being tired down with work or family life. I remember when we use to talk about marriage and stuff; she would say that she doesn’t really see herself getting married. She said that, “I cannot see myself not being able to do what I want because of my family.” But she end up getting married to her best friend and loved it. She loved her family and spending time with them. She made it a keep element in her life to make sure that she was there for her kids and husband. Her work was her passion. She could make a regular moment become this great moment with her photography. And as good as she was she never took her work to serious where it controlled her life. Chama loved her work. I mean she loved taking pictures. This girl carried with her two, sometime three, cameras with her where ever she went. She really lived up to her work statement which was Live Life and Capture Every Moment. Thank You!

Jan 20: Sarah Sands

Sarah is a painter that at the beginning of her career started painting thing perspective. She would paint what she would see, especially what she would see. She did things like bathrooms, china cases, and people. From there she started painted thing like windows. This came from the whole western tradition. And the windows that she would paint would become mirror images. She spoke of someone name Lose Manedio, I think that’s how you spell it. And with Lose Manedio he had this whole mirror window thing as well that would go in to space. In her beginning work she related a lot of her work to him.
Well after a while she moved to Indiana and became a teacher. At that time she saw how her students were free, more free then she was, and she went with that. She said that she always put rules in with her painting and working with her student she realize that there really are no rules when it comes to art. At that point she started to draw/paint more freely. She had a time where she was drawing/painting lines that look like they were going inward and then outward. It was really nice. Her work now has a lot to do with like yard. She started with actually put a piece of yard on her paper and just started drawing/painting. And in her painting now you can see the lines intertwining with each other; in and out. I really enjoy those painting cause you can see that she was relax and was just drawing at that point, no rules. I could really relate to the part about the rules, because as a photographer I feel that I give myself a lot of rules. But now I see that there is no need for rules. I need to relax and just take pictures.

Project done in class. After watching the movie Brazil