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Email Contacts - What's Real?
Occasionally on ArtId, we get a person or company that contacts a number of our members through the contact page in their ArtId galleries offering artists anything from representation to licensing deals. Sometimes these offers are legitimate and, unfortunately, sometimes they are not. Because your contact page is open for anyone to use, these emails cannot be dealt with as spam. An email received through your ArtId contact does not mean that we have endorsed the company or person. So, we'd like to give you some tips on how to discriminate between truly interested business people and those whose real goal is to get you to pay them a lot of money for nothing.
How to Compare
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TO ALL ARTID ARTISTS:
Please be sure to send us an email to info@artid.com with a link to your blog post about upcoming art shows or exhibits. We will post it in our Member Art Shows blog so art collectors have one central place to look for information
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The Calder Game – Not Just for Kids
It’s a mystery…How could a children’s book could be so compelling? Perhaps it speaks to kid in all of us who, no matter how we dress ourselves up, still lives. Now and then a great mystery gets written and it is just plain enjoyable. No sex, no nudity, no romance, just simple code encrypting, mayhem and suspense. Author Blue Balliett is on to something. Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3 and The Calder Game give the ten to twelve-year-old set an inside track on the art world, while speaking the language of intrigue. The characters, three emerging sleuths, are empowered by the adults in their lives (most of the time) to help solve different art thefts
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Back in my days as a student of Architecture, I read with interest the writings of Charles Jencks on Le Corbusier, one of the giants of the modern movement in the 20th century. In advocating for the greatness of Le Corbusier, Jencks did someting much more ambitious: he propounded a theory of value to be applied to all art, based on multiple levels of meaning. All works of art, he says, fall somewhere on a spectrum from "Univalence" (single-leveled) to "multivalence" (multileveled), and truly great works are always multivalent.
He compares in detail Le Corbusier's apartment block in Marseilles, the "Unite d'Habitation", with a contemporary church design (of which I could find no image) in the form of a cross of thorns
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by art_composition , February 2, 2010—12:00 AM
There are no self taught artists, but there are many lessons beyond the formal walls of the classroom. Museums have long been places where artists can sharpen their skills, and many welcome students with sketchbook in hand. Some paintings within the museums you frequently visit may become old friends that you must spend time with even when you are there to view a special show.
At Stockton's Haggin Museum "Sophistication", a 1908 work by Harry Wilson Watrous, is such a work for me. So are the Albert Bierstadt works in the museum's permanent collection. My fascination with "Sophistication" led a young friend to give me the box pictured here from the Haggin's gift shop
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by hispanic_arts , January 26, 2010—12:00 AM
When will our Museums learn to give back to the surrounding communities?
Museums look for support from the communities that surround them but often give little back to the area artists and arts organizations that support them. I do not know if this is typical in all areas of the country or just the few Museums that are close to where I live in New York? Still I do not feel that Museums in general do enough to help enrich the lives of the artists and arts organizations around them. For one example I would take the DIA Museum in Beacon, New York the DIA has a wonderful building with a beautiful art collection in an area of New York that has a flourishing arts community and lots of artists.Still the DIA Museum does nothing to create shows for area artists or other area arts organizations
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A million years ago before there was electricity, I studied ballet. I was a late bloomer, starting in my early twenties and ending in my mid thirties. I had no dreams of being on the stage, I was too old and at 118 pounds, too fat. I just wanted to dance. My teacher was a wonderful Russian gentleman, Alexander Dunaeff. Just when I was considering taking lessons, in my head, he found me. I was at the counter of an instant printing place and I stood up for some reason, not looking, when I went to sit back down, there was someone in what was I thought was still my seat. So there I was sitting in a strangers lap, totally embarrassed, but he was laughing and we struck up a conversation. Ballet Teacher? Is that so? I started lessons the next week.
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Visual impact is the first thing we work toward in a painting, with color, value, and composition forming a triad of essentials. After the sense of sight, we most often appeal to that of touch. We want the viewer to be able to imagine from our visual clues the silken smoothness of a fabric, the rough bark of redwood or oak, the scratch of a kitten's tongue, the heft of a stone. Less often we spark the senses of taste, hearing, and smell. When I developed "Heavenly Aroma", I hoped to visually depict a smell.
I was afraid the painting shown here was a little too "local" to make it into the highly competitive juried show currently open at Delicato Winery. Only about 30% of the paintings entered made the cut, and I had better hopes for my other entries
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The other day a member asked me how she could get more visitors to notice her gallery among the multitude on the site. I gave her several suggestions, including sending people to your gallery through other media such as Facebook, blogging about it, or using key descriptive words in your text.
Another way is to have a niche, a little corner of the art scene which, when a viewer is looking for it, they will find only a handful artists who qualify. If you are an Equestrian painter, or a painter of infant portraits, your chances are vastly improved
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When I first joined artId.com, I was almost immediately challenged by another artist who seemed, by and large, much more experienced and knowledgeable about this whole thing called art than I will likely ever claim to be... He didn't seem to like my work and I really didn’t like what he seemed to be trying to say to me about it. I evaded his remarks as best I could and I got rather defensive in return, to say the least. I didn’t like what he was insinuating about my “art” because, at the time, it seemed like he was trying to tell me that all the elements of an innate ability are found within my work, but it seemed to me that he (more than anything else) thought my work lacked something
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It’s easy to get caught up measuring “hits” to your website when you are selling artwork online, and then wondering, “Why so many hits and no sales?”
Remember, hits are people, too. Not just faceless numbers on a statistic sheet.
January is a great time to go back to your ArtId gallery and look at it from a buyer’s perspective. Ask yourself some questions and see how you might improve your gallery according to your answers
… Continue reading… 13 commentsFantastic 2010 Latino Artists Exhibition at UCONN Stamford Gallery.
by hispanic_arts , January 8, 2010—12:00 AM
On January 7, 2010 I had the great privilege of attending the opening of the Latino Artists at the University of Connecticut exhibition. I was fortunate to be asked to participate in this exhibition and I am so glad I accepted. The opening party was fantastic with over 200 people attending. The 8 artists that were exhibiting were also in attendance and I am glad I got to talk to them and also take pictures with them. Some are very established in the art world while others are the rising stars of today. Everyone enjoyed the beautiful exhibition and the great foods supplied by our sponsor restaurants DeMaya, Tacos Guadalajara and Quechua Restaurant.
The event also had great Music by Manos del Candombe and a beautiful color catalog with images of all the art and artists in the event
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I am a huge fan of Tom Robbins. I really am. I just read Skinny Legs and All and in this book (for anyone who hasn't read it) one of the main characters is an artist. A painter. Her names is Ellen Cherry Charles. In the story she painted funky landscapes. Near the end of the story she painted a mural on the wall of a restaurant where she worked as a waitress. In the story, there were patrons who were dumfounded by the scene she created (dumfounded in a good way) and then there were those who shared the trite old sentiment that goes a little something like this "I could have done that." Or worse: "My five year old could have done that
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As we approach the new year, I am realizing that it is now ten years since ArtId took birth (as MindsIsland), and just how many articles I have written and posted over that period. I took a look, and discovered that many of the older ones were not presentable, having been crudely converted from native HTML to our present platform. I have just completed a process of spiffing them up, in high hopes that someone out there might care.
This post is for those who have enjoyed my writings, and are interested in poking around among the many I have done in the past. It is a summary of the main topics I have dealt with, and some instructions on how you can find them. Because if you don't know they are there, you can't even decide whether you care or not
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It is arguable that, as artists, one of our primary goals is to produce a reflection of what we understand as reality. If we are artists working in the Western Tradition, or simply raised in it, we are heirs to 600 years of realism. Though much Western art in the last 100 years has rejected this tradition, it is still a very powerful force. Whether it is a photorealist like Tennett, or the pervasive legacy of the impressionists, art dedicated to reflecting the real world is everywhere. But there are lots of choices, because there is no single definition of what is real.
The strongest thread since Renaissance times had been to define reality as the world as it appears to us from a certain viewpoint
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by art_composition , December 10, 2009—12:53 PM
After deciding which slice of the world will make a good landscape composition, a second problem to be worked out is how much detail to show. When I saw these ducks sitting in the sun on a weathered boardwalk bridge rail at Neary Lagoon I was struck by their bright beauty. There was no doubt they were the stars of the scene. They would make a lovely watercolor painting by themselves. Yet I was also struck by patterns which spoke of the rich complexity of the landscape. The weathered wood had a lavender tone where it had been exposed by the peeling paint, and revealed growth patterns in the wood as the paint held to some layers better than to others. The ducks themselves had an array of colors in their feathers although the male’s head and wings made them clearly identifiable as mallards
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Hispanic Art Market will be Hot in 2010
I feel that in 2010 the Hispanic art market will take off. Why do I feel that way? Because all the talk and action taking place right now suggest that to me. In Miami more galleries are representing Hispanic artists. In Union City, New Jersey the Hispanic art events are growing in numbers as well as the galleries that represent Hispanic artists. Most of the Hispanic art events I participated in this past year were very successful for me as well as for other Hispanic artists that participated (Lets not forget the galleries and institutions that were very happy as they made from 30-50% Commission). Museums & Universities are also adding more Hispanic art to their collections
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I seem to have had, most of my life, a side of me that is drawn towards sexually charged images (who isn't, I suppose). I have had love affairs that seemed so intense and so consuming I thought I had died and gone to heaven or hell, depending on the temperature of the relationship at the time. I thought for a while there was something wrong with me.
As I get older, I start to see myself in a different light. I stumbled upon some extremely beautiful erotic art here yesterday and I was almost instantly liberated by the viewing of it. It was the works of Carolyn Weltman. If you have seen her work and appreciated its honesty and boldness, then you know exactly what I am talking about
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Is creating your self portrait narcissistic? That’s a question that I never really asked myself until I drew a portrait of myself and my wife told me I was narcissistic for doing so.
So, is it?
At first, after my wife made her comment, I started believing it. I thought, yes, I must be. I mean, why would I choose to draw a picture of myself rather than picking a celebrity or some random person out of a book or magazine? Why would I want a drawing of myself in my portfolio? It did seem a little vain and self-absorbed, I must say. But then I really started thinking about it because it bothered me for quite a while. If there’s anything that I am, it certainly isn’t narcissistic
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Artists all seem to have a common fantasy: that fame and riches will come to them posthumously. We may not really believe it, but it is a well entrenched part of artistic mythology. We could call it the Van Gogh Factor. This raises another interesting question: if our death is the first day of the rest of our artistic lives, what's the best time to die?
There is abundant evidence that dying young may be a great career move; there is a similar wealth of examples proving that we should live to a ripe old age. Artists who die young may leave a vibrant and untarnished legacy; on the other hand there are many artists who reach new heights in maturity
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