It has been a while since I’ve done anything art-related, but I offered some prints for sale to benefit Animal Rights Rochester at the Alternative Fair yesterday. Here are some of the framed prints I had out. I sold Lupito.
I donated three prints to Rochester VegFest‘s Silent Auction at the Friday night event, September 15th. My friend had framed them and the proceeds went to VegFest.
I’m told an article about my art has appeared in the Fall 2013 edition of American Vegan.
I’ll be selling prints and cards at the Trumansburg Farmer’s Market this Wednesday, July 3rd, from 4-7 pm.
I may have originals on hand if the weather is not as bad as forecast.
I attended a seminar this morning at the Rochester Arts and Cultural Council called Social Media 101: Lessons from Lady Gaga by Deborah Mourey. She offered Lady Gaga’s web site as a good model, with clear menus representing not what Gaga wanted to show off but what she thought her fans wanted to see. For instance, Lyrics are probably on the main menu because people were always calling about them, and having them on the site brings traffic to her instead of having people find lyrics at a third-party site. Ms. Mourey said that marketing used to be “See how great I am!” and now needs to be “Here’s what you need.”
I thought the seminar was very well done, and I walked away with many items for my to-do list.
I think overall my web site is good, though I’ve tweaked it a bit now, such as making it easier to find my “Email Updates” button. Also I notice that people who have visited my site often ask about my prices and policies, so they must not be obvious enough. I’ll have to think about how to make those pages more prominent without appearing pushy.
She convinced me that Twitter, which I had thought was pretty stupid, was a very important facet of social marketing. So I have signed up.
Other items were to set up a LinkedIn Company page, even for a one-person business (however, I can’t do that without a dedicated company email address) and to consider video, which is well-selected by search engines and most popular with viewers, who will watch what they might not bother to read.
She said Facebook was basically evil and had gotten even worse since the IPO. It wasn’t made for business, didn’t handle it well (as I have found), and she barely bothered with it. She suggested not wasting your time creating content on Facebook as it does not get picked up by search engines. I feel vindicated in not using Facebook much, thought it was due to laziness.
Towards the end she and some audience members began hurrying and tossing around buzzwords: Instagram! SproutSocial! GoogleAlert! HootSuite! I’ll sort it out eventually.
I submitted these two pieces to the 2013 Rochester Contemporary Art Center 6×6 show today. This is a fun show where you donate original 6″ x 6″ works of art and they sell them to raise funds for the center. The artist’s name is not revealed until after the item is sold. I heard they were about to go under a few years ago, and they decided to give it one more shot. They marketed it better I guess, and now the show receives international submissions. Last year there were over 7,000 pieces, which they put up with tacks in a grid floor to ceiling. It is fun to attend, seeing this crazy variety of art – my kids liked it a lot. Admission is only $1 and it runs through June and the first half of July.
Lupito is a rescued Chihuahua, and McLovin’ lives at Farm Sanctuary.
This is my first time printing a computer-aided work. Not wanting to print it on fine-art paper, with its cold-press sort-of texture, I used Moab Lasal Matte paper on my Canon Pixma Pro 9000 II. I used the ICC file Moab provides with no problems. It came out fantastic – it glows in the least amount of light, almost seeming like it would glow in the dark. Click the Business-Prints category at the right to see more about printing.
Lupito 2, 8 x 10 Pastel (O, P)
I donated a framed print to Four Legged Friends, a local animal adoption agency, for the silent auction at their Winter Homecoming Gala. I gave them free pick from my web site and they chose Lupito 2.
Halley, 8 x 10 Pastel (O, P)
I did this pastel as a demonstration at the Brighton Arts Festival.
I entered three paintings in this year’s art show.
I’ve been asked by ARAUNY, a local animal rights organization, if I’d like to sell my animal artwork at Greentopia, a big environmental fair downtown in September. The idea of sitting at a craft fair table for an entire weekend makes me want to crawl out of my skin, but I think this would be a good match for me since animal rights motivates so much of my art and I had been trying to think of a promotional outlet for it. I don’t expect a large number of sales, but am hoping I can make some connections and get some exposure and creative ideas.
We haven’t ironed out the details, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to get a start on some more works of the subjects I want to highlight at this venue: farm animals. You can see more of them at the “Barnyard” link above.
This young cow was rescued and lives at Farm Sanctuary near Watkins Glen.
Expanding Circle 