Friday, August 31, 2012

Promoting Your Work: A Creative Capital Recap

The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition recently hosted the Creative Capital Core Weekend Workshop, an intensive weekend retreat for 24 artists focused on business training.

A good amount of time was spent discussing key elements for promoting your work. Two of the most important tools you can have for promotion are images and words.

Images
Much of the world will never have the chance to see your work in person. Think about this: how many people would recognize the Mona Lisa? Now, how many have seen that work in person? Most haven't, but they are familiar with it because of the images they have seen.

Not only do your artwork images help with promotion, they also serve as an archive for you.

The quality of the image matters, too. Which of these images looks better to you? 

Stuart Asprey, Dog Can, Ceramic

Stuart Asprey, Nutz 3 Ways, Ceramic
Hopefully you agree that the 2nd image looks better. It is cropped well, the work is evenly lit with shadows that accentuate rather than distract, and it has a clean and unobtrusive background.

Check this previous blog post for more examples of good vs. bad images.

Words
This means anything you say or write about your work. Words are important for artist statements, press releases, artist talks, cocktail parties, openings... the list goes on. When communicating about your work in words, think about these things:

  • What do you want people to know about your work?
  • What are people curious about? Listen to your viewers. What are they asking you?

These questions are a good starting place for determining what's most important to express.

Need more help?
If you need more help with the images and words related to your work, I encourage you to attend our upcoming Portfolio & Proposal Boot Camp workshops, offered in OKC on September 8 and Tulsa on October 13. The workshops will cover photographing your art, writing an artist statement and resume, and successful proposal writing tips.

On both dates, we also offer appointments to have your work photographed for just $10 per piece.

Visit www.ArtistSurvivalKit.org for details.







2 comments:

sarah makes pictures said...

I particularly enjoyed the Writing and Talking exercise at the retreat. I found it helps me keep an authentic, relaxed voice when writing about my work. I'll be talking more about that in my Proposal Writing presentation at the bootcamp.

Kelsey Karper said...

Agreed, Sarah. I think the "writing and talking" exercise can be really helpful. We'll do something very similar during the Portfolio Boot Camp portion of the workshop on Saturday, too. Looking forward to it!