Art – Page 5 – Teel McClanahan

thinking about galleries

It’s always come up, from time to time, but I’ve been noticing it more in the last few months, that people want to know what galleries I’m showing at. Years ago, it was uncommon – I would tell people I was an artist, and they would ask about the art: “What style of art do you do?” … “What medium do you work in?” … “What is your art about?” … that sort of thing (which I almost never had a good answer for, either) but now when I tell people I’m an artist, a larger and larger share have a first question of “What galleries do you show at?” I’ve even begun to get it at the Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk, where I am a street vendor. People see me standing in front of my art, hear me talking about my art, watch me trying to sell my art, and ask what galleries they can see it in. If my work was in a gallery, don’t you think I’d be there, rather than standing in the road, competing with myself?

My website, wretchedcreature.com, is my gallery, I say. I do most of my sales online, I say, and a fair amount through the First Fridays Art Walk.

Then, about half the time, they want to talk about what other local artists I know, show with, and/or work with.

Sigh. Continue reading thinking about galleries

Thoughts on ‘new year,’ ‘old decade’

I suppose we’re a week into the new year now, it’s getting “late” for one of those year-end/new-year type of posts. Especially in internet time. New Year’s memes were born, blossomed, and wilted in the space of hours – I watched a few of them come and go and get replaced by newer, even-shorter-lived ones on Twitter over the weekend. A few of them drew my interest, got me thinking, but my thinking lasts longer than online conversations. I’m sure I’m not finished thinking, yet.

One of the thoughts was related to the apparent ‘new decade’ (no need to get into technical definitions and ‘counting starts at 1’ – my beliefs about time are far and away less specific, & more meaningful and orderly) and the question of what one was doing 10 years prior. On Twitter this was often read as 10 years ago to the minute; I suppose it was fun for people to think about a 10-year-old party on New Year’s Eve. But a lot can happen in ten years. A lot happened in mine. Ten years ago… Ten years ago I’d already begun painting again, a bit, though I still hadn’t re-started my writing. Ten years ago I’d just begun creating online comics for the first time. Ten years ago I was living in Tempe. Ten years ago I cut my hair off: New Year’s Eve 1999 I had hair so long I could sit on it, New Year’s Day 2000 I had “normal” short hair. Ten years ago this month I was getting fired (technically I quit) from MicroAge for insubordination for calling out my boss’s incompetence in front of the other employees (he & I & his boss & HR all agreed he was incompetent and that I was right about everything except saying so where the other employees could hear), and later that day I was getting hired at Realink. It was nearly ten years ago that Sara said yes. (Did you know she said yes, once?) Continue reading Thoughts on ‘new year,’ ‘old decade’

Numbers for 2009 (and 2008)

I’ve spent the last few days gathering numbers and putting them into a spreadsheet. Now I’m going to take a few of them and try to communicate them to you here. The numbers come from several places, representing podcast downloads, eBook downloads, and sales of books and of art. Since I didn’t make a post about it for 2008’s numbers, I’ll probably include some of them as well, for comparison. I’ll try not to turn this post into a spreadsheet, just numbers, but will try to make it more like my usual rambles.

To begin, a snapshot of right now. As of 1/1/2010, I have 13 titles in some form of publication or other. 5 standalone novels, 2 poetry journals, 2 short story collections, 3 books in the Untrue Tales… series and a single edition containing those 3 books. One of the novels (the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut) is currently only available as an eBook. One of the short story collections (Time, emiT, and Time Again) isn’t yet finished, but I’ve released one of the short stories that will be contained in it as a standalone chapbook. The 3 individual Untrue Tales… books aren’t technically “in print”, though I have a few copies, printed by Cafepress & sans ISBN. I am not counting The Vintage Collection, though it is another book I’ve put together, had printed, and sold at one time. (I plan to edit and re-release it at a later date.) Seven of my books are available as podcast audiobooks, and all but the poetry is available as eBooks. Continue reading Numbers for 2009 (and 2008)

independence in words is not seen as equal

This will probably be a bit of a ramble. I haven’t fully thought this out, though I’ve been thinking in this area of thought for some time, now. I may write a more coherent post/essay on this or a similar subject in the future. This is … well, this is me writing my thoughts out on my online journal. It’s part of how I work through thoughts & feelings, sometimes, and you either already know that or you’re new here.

There exists a great disparity between the creation of literature/books (and perceptions thereof) and the creation of other forms of art. One key aspect of this difference is in the concept of independence, and it is brought into clearer focus in the idea of the editor. In writing, there is a commonly held belief that all writing needs to be edited – and not just edited, but that it needs to be edited by someone who is not the author, and preferably by someone whose whole job is to be a professional editor. This belief extends outward to create the impression in many minds that all writing which has not been filtered and perfected by professional editors is bad writing. ie: only books published by a major publisher are worth reading. That is the extreme view (though also the widest-held view in the profession), and there are a lot of hangers-on; that professional copy-editors, typesetters, cover designers, web designers, publicists, et cetera all need to have a hand in forming a worthy book. The author cannot, independently, create something worth reading; this reads to me as a loss of authorship. (See also: authority)

Other forms of art do not (exclusively) hold such strange beliefs. If a musician creates a work of art independently, it is not pre-judged and cast aside without being listened to. If a Mozart or a Beethoven, a Trent Reznor or a Moby sits alone by themselves and carefully crafts the exact piece of music they -as the artist/author/creator- want to craft, that’s acceptable. The independent, unsigned musician playing all their own songs a live, local gig is a much-loved creator who gets respect from music-lovers. (And if/when they get signed and get an editor/producer to help them “polish” their sound, it’s common for their existing fans to complain! To say that editing the music took away the best of it.) When a painter or a sculptor is the sole creator of a work of visual art, that’s the expected and normal course of action. If an independent filmmaker is the writer/director/producer/editor/star, it’s impressive and may actually help sell the film. All these arts are judged on the artwork itself – we listen to the music, we look at the art, we watch the film.

Yet with writing, the independent author’s creation is judged without being read, more often than not. The author is told “…a book really needs an editor’s collaboration, no matter how good the writer is.” (That’s just the quote/link I have today – I see comments like these go by every day on Twitter.) That no one should ever Self-Publish, that independent publishing is a joke, that all self-published books are crap. There is a rash of book reviews going around the internet right now, wherein self-published books are “reviewed” negatively without even being read. The reviewers aren’t even stating something like “this book was so bad I only read the first 30 pages, and here’s what I think of them,” they’re writing the reviews as though the whole book had been read. In one case last week there was one where the “reviewer” didn’t even have a copy of the book! They were reviewing it based on the marketing blurb & publisher info! Even self-publishing advocates start from the basis of “every book needs professional editing” and will gladly point you in the direction of editors-for-hire. Most of the people I’ve heard from who proudly stand behind independent publishing say the same things. It’s endemic.

Why does such an inequality exist? Why are independent music, independent visual artists et cetera seen so differently from independent authors? Why isn’t there a balance? Professionally edited/produced/polished/marketed music is able to live alongside a flourishing independent music scene. Graphic designers and professional illustrators are able to co-exist in the world with independent visual artists. Why do publishers, writers, and even a lot of readers maintain that they cannot suffer independent authorship to exist? Why, in fact, isn’t it cherished and encouraged by the most discerning readers?

In music: the masses like the pop music and the heavily-produced music, and the audiophiles and people who care about music the most prefer independent, local, and live music. In visual art: the masses are swayed by a well-designed ad and a slick website, and art critics and collectors pay attention to independent artists whose work pushes the limits of understanding. In film: the big audiences turn out to see the dozen big, dumb blockbuster action flicks and a dozen cookie-cutter horror flicks a year, and the discerning cinephiles support a landscape of hundreds of independent films every year. In writing: only the slick, heavily-edited books with mass-market appeal are worth reading, and the most avid readers and book buyers seem to agree with that sentiment. Huh? What?

Me? I’m an independent creator. I create visual art. I create books. I create websites. I create podcasts. I create music. I create short films. I create sculptural furniture. I do it all myself. I am the author of my art. It isn’t for everyone, it isn’t meant to be – I’m not creating lowest-common-denominator/homogeneous work for mass consumption, I’m creating independent/original work for the discerning mind.

I just don’t understand why that’s okay with 9/10ths of what I create, but not with my writing.

Problems of Perception

At the latest Art Walk, for the first time, I had some chapbooks/mini-books to sell at a lower price point than I normally have product at. I had two different, complete, individual short stories put together as 32pp & 44pp mini-books. I printed up 50 copies of each, signed & numbered them, and set the price at $2 apiece. The primary motivating factor here was to try to make sales to all the people who implied they wanted to buy one of my books but that they didn’t have the $13 or $14 required or a credit card (I totally take credit cards). I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that some of those people would have at least a couple dollars with them. I only moved 5 mini-books at the Art Walk.

The fact that people didn’t have (or lied about not having) $2 to buy a short story isn’t what struck me the most about the experience that night. Instead it was this: People assumed they were free.

Now, I could have used a color and/or cardstock cover to clarify that they weren’t simply photocopied brochures or flyers, though I suspect there may still have been some people who assumed they were free. A lot of people picked the mini-books up, looked them over, and managed to ignore the price marked on it in 70pt type. Over and over again. They grabbed, they looked, we discussed what it was, and they moved to walk off without even considering that a product at a vendor booth might have a price.

I thought this was bad enough, then when the crowd had thickened a bit later in the evening, it got worse. People started grabbing the mini-books and moving to walk off with them without so much as slowing down or asking what it was they were grabbing. Upon final inventory Saturday morning I confirmed that I’d caught everyone who’d tried to walk off with an unpaid copy, but the experience further illuminated some problems with perception I’ve been having pretty consistently with my business.

Another aspect of the problem that also manifested itself last Friday at the Art Walk comes across in the oft-voiced assumption that the art I’m showing is prints (as opposed to the handmade originals they all actually are). I’d thought this might be related to my relatively-affordable prices, so this month I didn’t post any prices. More people than ever asked whether my art was prints before (or without) asking about pricing. I know that some of the other artists at the art walk offer both prints and originals, and that some even offer prints exclusively. I just wonder what is driving this assumption about my work.

In thinking about this problem, it occurred to me that it might have something to do with the precise nature of my recent work, and of how carefully I’ve worked to produce clean, crisp, bold intersections and interactions of color fields. That some of my recent work is so well-crafted that it appears to have been created in (or cleaned up in) a computer and then printed out. That the sharp edges I create with my hand-carved tape-stencils are clearly not created with manual brush strokes. I really don’t know what it is, I can only guess, and these are what I’ve come up with in the last few days.

The other possibility is that people are projecting on to the work what they want from it. That they don’t believe they can afford original artwork, so project the idea that the art they want is available as an affordable print. That they can’t afford a couple of bucks for a chapbook, so they project the idea that they’re free.

Other perception problems I’ve had potential customers express: People who have been to my websites (modernevil.com, wretchedcreature.com) and who honestly are not aware that they can buy my books and/or art online (or in some cases, that they’re available for sale at all). People who have my business card (and/or are looking at one of my websites) and don’t know my address, phone number, or email address to contact me. (Literally: My name, address, phone number, and email address are on every single page of both of my business sites.) People who have purchased an handmade original piece of art from me, given it away to someone else, and come back to buy another copy of the same thing for themselves – sincerely believing that what they bought was a mass-produced (or at least multiply produced) item.

I don’t know what to do about these perception problems. Putting “all artwork original” on a sign at my Art Walk booth and on wretchedcreature.com doesn’t seem to have helped to communicate that I’m not merely selling prints. Offering prints isn’t the answer, either. Not only do I not like the idea of it, preferring each piece to be handmade and unique, but I’ve also looked into it and found the costs to be prohibitive. I’d have to at least double the prices on all my art, probably up to double the normal prices (ie: quadruple or more the current prices), or some of the prints would actually be more expensive -just to print- than the prices I’m asking for the originals. I’ve been thinking of changing my prices, but downward, not upward. I want my art to be selling briskly more than I want individual pieces to be gaining value.

Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts on these quirks of perception; I mostly just don’t understand them. Book pricing, perception of value of the printed word, perception of value of chapbooks, these are a separate discussion I’d meant to get to earlier today, but haven’t yet made time to. Perhaps tomorrow. I thought I needed a nap 5 hours ago; by now I need a full night’s sleep. Good night.