New Work II

To illustrate my process, I have taken pictures, again, of the work currently in my studio. There are soon to be two new pieces started as well. Once that happens, I will be working on four pieces at once.

The following pictures are of Noel Heberling as Zues... and of my suit piece (which is still untitled)

Tribute to four working artists

I would like to make this blog posting a tribute to friends and associates out there for whom I have a great deal of respect for. These people are all young artists trying to make a name for their art and working at the same time. In a constant effort to promote my work and find inspiration, it is these people who have given me opportunity, shown me companionship, and who have lead the way by example.

Listed in no order:

Jan Chovanec is the man in Prague. He is a young artist interested in bringing international talent to his home city. Jan is the source behind “This is 7” and “Greetings” in Prague. Anyone interested in the Prague art scene, Jan is the person to contact. Visit http://www.thisis7.com for more information.

Noel Heberling has worked in the NYC gallery scene with me since the beginning, and has remained loyal to his artwork and his ambitions (not an easy task). He has worked in some of the more major galleries in the city, and uses his resources to curate shows. Noel’s work relies mainly on rules of conduct, which are established prior to the work’s development. He usually works on pages of academic resource. Among the most memorable adventures in the NYC art scene, is the tale of his old blog http://captive411.blogspot.com, which has just returned to service. I am currently working on a portrait of Noel.

Jason Szalla is an inspiring success story among my peers, of everyone I know, no one shows as often or creates as many artworks as Jason. He is also the one person I know who has never once strayed from his artwork, even after his daughter was born. His passion to create and promote his artwork border obsession, and it is for this fact that I must pay great tribute to him, because it has shown me what it takes to make things happen in this business. Jason is also the words and writing behind “This is 7”. Jason mainly does painting, though he often commands the use of sculpture, words, installation, performance and video. Visit http://szalla.com for more information on Jason Szalla. Also see the portrait of Jason I created on crateartist.com.

Matt Lucas is an artist I have worked with on several occasions. He and his girlfriend have created a curatorial company and online gallery called Metro Color Collision (http://metrocolorcollision.com). Metro Color Collision has had much success, and is currently hosting a show at the Frisbee Art Fair in Miami Florida. Aside from MCC, Matt Lucas is a brilliant artist whose work can be seen at http://www.ishotmattlucas.com.

In the future I will post other tributes to other artists.

Comment on Comments

A side note everyone: I have been getting spam comments on my blog lately and have been deleting them. I do not want peopel to be confused in thinking that I am deleting serious comments. People are adding comments to my blog that try to get others to see thier website for "quick divorce" or "real estate quotes". Why my blog? I guess I will never know, they must be adding comments to everyone.

I want to create a discussion on the Crateartist blog, and I will never delete a comment from this blog that concerns the issues I am trying to preset, those issues being artwork, and the profession of an artist. I welcome everyone's comments, even if I do not agree with them, and will leave them posted no matter what. I also do not mind you adding a link to your website or to your blog is you are an artist or a professional involved in art along with your comment.

However, I will delete all blog spam. If you see any deleted comments on my blog, know that they were not real comments, unless you are interested in all time low intrest rates for your car loan.

New Work

For the past two days I have made sure to spend extended time in my studio. I am seeing now that promotion of artwork and studio time are equally important at this stage mf my career, and both take large amounts of time. I have been so busy for the past few days sending out portfolios that I have not made enough time for creation of more Crateart. So, it was really delightful to return to my studio and see my new works and do a little Crayolaing.

After I worked a bit one piece, I took a few pictures of the newest works of Crateart, the Crateart in progress. These images should show my process, and I will continue to take more images as these works are made.

There are two Crateart pieces in works right now. The first one is titled “Noel Heberling as the Zeus of Manhattan and the Poseidon of Brooklyn”. I have written about this piece an earlier blog, so I will not give a huge detailed description here of what I intend for this piece to be when it is finished. What it is now is the beginning stage of a huge Crateart piece. The piece is 8 feet by 18 inches and almost the entire area, front and back, will be a Crayola painting, the largest Crayola painting I have done yet. This piece will take a long time to finish, as I complete on average about one square inch an hour.

The second piece, which I also have described in an earlier blog, is my old suit. This piece still does not have a title, and I am thinking that it may just be one of those pieces that the title is not known until it is finished. I have prepared the surface of this piece about a month ago. It is a beautiful surface. The next step in this piece is a Crayola flower still life. Then I will need to find the hanger to hang the suit on. While this piece seems in an early stage of production, it will be finished long before “Noel as Zeus” will be.

The last piece I want to show is one that was finished a few weeks ago, before I began all this promo stuff and while I was still full time working at the gallery. This piece titled “They Used To Call Me Ali Baba” is a piece that was specially created for a show. My friend in Prague, Jan Chovanec, who was the person behind “This is 7”, invited me to take part in a show he was curating on a tram in Prague. The title of the show is “Greetings” and the concept Jan had in mind was for 15 artists from 8 different countries to create work that gives a summer greeting to the passengers of Tram #17 in the dead of the Czech winter. These pieces, which are to be displayed in the top area of the tram, where the advertisements usually go, had to be flat, paper, and 32cm x 40cm.

“They Used to Call Me Ali Baba”. Is a picture of a bodega in Bushwick Brooklyn, which is a dreary neighborhood east of Williamsburg, and where I lived for some time. For some reason, everytime I entered the bodega, the guys behind the counter would greet me as Ali Baba (true story). I never found out why. When I moved away from Bushwick, to Carroll Gardens, I missed being dubbed Ali Baba. I painted this portrait of the bodega as a colorful and beautiful place, and it is my hope that the color and the objects in the window, which are faded, give a sort of pleasant memory feeling. This piece is about greetings and things that are gone and that you (only mildly) miss, like summer. It is Crayola and Elmer’s Glue on Paper.

The show in Prague runs from December First to December Tenth. It is on Tram #17.

How to Apply

I have been searching online to find places to send my portfolios. Personally, I feel that sending portfolios to galleries is a total waste of time. I've been working in galleries now for a long time, and if you saw how many portfolios a gallery receives you would understand. Whether you come in personally, or you mail your stuff, it all goes in the box. Then after a year (a year of your portfolio floating in limbo) a staff member pulls out his or her three favorites and shows them to someone important. Out of those three, the director will pick one if the director is looking to take on a new artist. Chance of making it into a gallery by sending in a portfolio, 1 in 1000 if lucky. Galleries don't want artist portfolios, they want to find artists outside the gallery and bring them in.

I think I am going to go the contest route. I have seen the "juried contest" work several times before. I aided in two juried contests, and I know that hundreds, if not thousands of artists send in. However, the jury usually is picking at least ten artists. On top of that, they will send back your portfolio after the jury is over, so if you do not make the contest at least you can resend your portfolio.

There are a few slide places I intend to send to, registries as they are called. NuruteArt (www.nurtureart.org) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is a good one. The idea there is that they take just about anyone's slides into a registry, and then they invite curators to submit proposals for show concepts. Once a curator's concept is accepted they pick the artists but only out of the NurtureArt registry. Another one that I like is art.com. Art.com allows artists to post 16 images for free on their website, in hope that someone will be interested in buying a poster of your work (you receive 10% of poster sales). While the poster thing seems a bit cheesy, the posting of work for free sounds pretty good, and poster selling most likely brings people in.

Today is my first “all-studio” day, though most of it will not be sent in the studio. I want to send a lot of stuff out today and a lot of requests for prospectus and a lot of SASEs. All this promo stuff is pissing me off just sitting at my house; this stuff has to go out. Any artist that reads this blog please post a response. I am interested in what other artists do to promote their work, as I am sure others who read this blog are.

The plan

When I left my job I gave a long notice of four months. I decided that in that time I wanted to be fully prepared for the promotion of my artwork. Today is the last day of this four month notice, my last day at Forum Gallery. In those four months this is what I have prepared: I have twelve fully stocked portfolios (each containing 15 full-page color images, 15 slides, a four-page illustrated statement, a bio, a cover letter, and a SASE), I have business cards, I have a website (crateartist.com), I have slides, photography, just about everything I need for promotion. So, I am on schedule. I have a few places I intend to send portfolios, but the portfolios were just finished yesterday so none have been sent out yet. I also intend to send out a mass email to everyone I know to tell them to visit the website, but again, the website was just finished two or three days ago and I have not had the opportunity to get my mailing list together.

As for the "paying rent" portion of my blog, it seems that things are working out and that the problem of finding work is not a problem at all. I sent out a lot of resumes for freelance art installation, and I have had a huge response. It has become an issue of making sure I do not work too much instead of trying to make sure I work enough to pay the bills. Any other young artists out there trying to find employment in an art gallery, let me give you a tip: go to myfax.com and order myfax. Write a resume and a cover letter. Get a Gallery Guide from any gallery. Go through the gallery guide and pick 200 galleries you would not mind working at and fax your resume to them. The fax number is in the Gallery Guide and myfax give you 100 faxes for free and then charges you $.10 a page thereafter. Total cost for sending out 200 resumes = $30. Total time invested = about 3 hours + the amount of time it takes to make the resume. This works well and I promise you will get a response.

My ambition is to work about three-four days a week, and have three full days a week to be in my studio or to be sending out promotional material.

The studio is the third part of this lifestyle, and the most exciting part. My studio is about half a mile from my home, and it is a nice one-room studio with large windows. I have not been there in a couple of days, due to all the portfolios I have been making. At my studio there are two new Crateart pieces in the works. The first one is a piece I have been working on since I finished the Moonshine piece. It is a portrait of my friend Noel Heberling. This piece, which I have titled "Portrait of Noel Heberling as the Zeus of Manhattan and the Poseidon of Brooklyn", is an 8' x 2' crate piece that will be two sided, one vertical and one horizontal. The piece will be able to move from one side to the other easily, and when it is done it will have a swiveling fish, stone lions, duck heads, the largest Crayole pieces I have ever done, and a forged steel barbarian's sword (or axe, I have not yet decided).

The second piece has not been given a title yet. It is the jacket of a suit that has a lot of history with me, a suit I stole on my first night out with other artists in New York City. I have stretched the back of the suit and I have gessoed the suit and the primed the gesso with white Crayola. The painting dimensions are about 12 x 7 inches. I have a beautiful guilded frame to place over it when it is finished. The Suit Piece will be a flower still life painting on suit. The suit will have a big puffy hanger and will be hung on a hook in the wall. I already have the hook, it is a chrome gecko hook with green gem eyes. The suit can be worn with the painting on it. I will take my camera next time I am at the studio and be sure to post pictures of these two works on some future blog post.

Enough blogging for today. I have to begin my last day at Forum Gallery in 2 hours. Tonight I have another gallery installation and then a big party to attend. It’s a busy day.