Friday, August 20, 2010

An Awakening

You can probably see by the paucity of posts (wow! Awesome alliteration) that I have not really given much attention to this blog. As I said in my first post, I started this blog because everything I read about how to sell my art told me to have one as part of a multi-pronged marketing campaign. I am supposed to use this blog to tell you about my art, or about what I am thinking or feeling as I create it. In reality, I started this blog as means of venting my anxieties and frustrations related to this new career track.




It should have been obvious to me that you really don’t want to read about my trials and tribulations unless they, in some way, impart knowledge or insight or something of value to you, not just cathartic relief for me. But before I completely shed my narcissism, I want to say that this adventure has been an awakening. Let me explain. Fifty plus years ago, when I discovered architecture (my primary and current career), I also found a passion as well as a career. It was one of many passions that this teenager discovered as his hormones begin to dominate his life before his brain gave direction to his energies. As teenagers we approach a career track quite differently than we would when starting a new venture in our mid sixties. While teenagers are not known for their patience, they have a very different sense of time than us old farts. There are only beginnings, no end game. There is plenty of time available to accomplish goals, or to simply discover all of the things we tend to stumble across in the process of maturing. Starting something new at the tender age of 65, however, looks a little different. In reality, there is probably less patience. While the endgame can be a long way off, we are much more aware of it and so are more anxious about achieving some success. If you add to this the time it takes to build some recognition in the subjective world of art, you can sense that the anxiety level is off the charts.



This is the nth version of a blog post started almost three months ago. The other versions tried to deal with a very amorphous concept of how my work which is done with digital tools rather than actual paint applied to a surface is not considered art. I spent much time trying to get my brain wrapped around the issue so as to make a cogent argument about how unfair, unenlightened, unreasonable, un-American, un-whatever this prejudice is. The truth was that I was just carping about a perceived slight because I hadn’t yet set the art world on fire. After all it had been almost four months since I first uploaded my website, and embarked on a Google “Adwords” advertising campaign and set up a Facebook page, created a blog, and told a whole bunch of people about all of this. I still hadn’t been contacted by MOMA, or the Getty or any of the Guggenheims about acquiring some of my work. This was patently wrong! How can I attract wealthy patrons and convince them to invest in my art and make me wealthy also if my work is looked upon this way? Of course I am only being sarcastic. I know this is not the proper motivation for creating art, but any artist who tells you that they don’t long for recognition is lying.



In my efforts to build this argument, I expanded my research on digital art. I recalled some writing by J.D. Jarvis that I had come across when if first investigated the idea of creating on a computer rather than an easel. You can find his work and essays at http://www.dunkingbirdproductions.com/. Links on his website, and Google references led me to other sources including the Museum of Computer Art, in Brooklyn, NY. I joined this museum and established a digital gallery with a few selected works there. You can visit this at http://www.moca.virtual.museum/. Through the MOCA I discovered a site called http://www.blurb.com/ which is a great place to create your own books. It is especially good for small pieces with a lot of photos or graphics.



By this time, it was painfully apparent that I wasn’t going to become rich and famous with a website alone and that I needed to think seriously about getting my work into some galleries and doing some art shows. My research on art shows revealed that it was too late in the season to get into any of the quality shows for this year. You really have to plan about a year in advance. So I focused on the galleries. Since my work is “virtual” until it is printed and since Giclee prints are actually more expensive than canvass and paint to do an original of comparable size, I didn’t really have and “inventory” of “product” to take around to galleries. I decided to use the new found site at blurb.com to create a catalog of my work to act as “sales brochure” so to speak. This was actually a great deal of fun and very rewarding. You can see the results of this here:








Collide-O-Scope 4
Of course, while I was becoming an author to embellish my status as an artist, I was also doing some painting. I have discovered that I love doing paintings as a series. My latest series is called “Collide-O-Scope”. Here is one in that series.



To close this post then, the “awakening” that I referred to earlier is simply the joy and excitement of becoming engaged in a whole new career. Yes it is different than my original journey, but I realize that I cannot be too impatient. It is going to take time. I should know by now that if it is easy or instant, it’s probably not worth it.



Thanks for listening, Vic Cinquino, The Ranting Italian