GOING PUBLIC by Lynda Pogue
I t takes guts for an artist to “Go Public”. And, sometimes this gustiness gets confused with vanity. This article will explore the fallacy of equating marketing oneself with being vain. It just ain’t so.
Picture this… An artist is alone in the studio and has just had the enormous satisfaction of letting his or her shoulders down, is smiling at the finished piece of art and is sighing, “I’m done.” Now, several questions emerge. How does that piece of art move from the hands of the lone artist and onto the wall of a satis­fied client? How is the piece actively showcased/marketed? How does the piece of art go public? And, who pays for what? Let’s take a look at costs. Creating a piece of art requires raw en­ergy therefore a significant cost variable is how are artists paid for their time? How long does it take to complete a piece of art from conception to completion? Hours? Days? Weeks? Years? (As an aside, I recently heard a 35-year-old artist reply to the inevitable question “How long did it take you to do this piece?” with the answer “It took me 35 years.”) Time-on-task varies greatly from artist to artist so there can be no general rule of thumb for pay­ment of time.
Also, many artists argue that because they have spent so much money in the creation of their pieces of art that they must not only recoup their costs but must also make a substantial profit in order to make a decent living. Again, there can be no general rule of thumb for artists to follow because the cost of materials varies greatly from artist to artist. In addition, many artists personally use several forms of electronic media to create/enhance/record/ share their art. This creates more costs that may be absorbed by the artist for computer-related materials.
OK. The piece of art is complete and there were expenses in the form of time and money from the artist. Now what? There are artists who create their artwork only for their personal pleasure. These artists are not concerned with any form of payment going out or coming in. On the other hand, there are professional artists who need to sell their art in order to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. And, in order to accomplish this task, they must pay more than creation costs… now there are marketing costs. What is the cost of getting that fabulous piece of art seen and sold?
Several issues must be considered:
Does the artist possess the requisite marketing skills to get in­volved with self-promotion or does the artist want to take the time to research the best match between the art and a professional marketer?
Should a webmaster who knows how to best showcase art and artists be retained?
Should the artist have a private salon or should they exhibit through a gallery?
Does the artist create a personal e-list or hard copy of potential clients or do they hire someone with a broader database to do this for them? If choosing to be represented by a gallery, is the artist willing to
invest in a gallery that charges for marketing services plus a 30%
commission or does s/he submit their art to a gallery that does
not directly charge for services but takes 50-60% commission on
sales?
Thriving artists seem to prefer a combination of the above.
The choices given to a professional artist are:
Create art and market yourself.
Create art and have someone else market for you.
Create art and combine marketing efforts with someone else.
“The harder I work the luckier I get.” (Samuel Goldwyn)
An international discussion has recently surfaced in the art world: should an artist pay for his or her own marketing? The signifi­cant word here is pay. Pay with time? Pay with money? Pay with what? This word is bringing forth a fascinating array of responses from artists and agents across the world.
Consider this: Billions of dollars are spent worldwide on suchthings as personal trainers, financial advisors or career coun­seling. Corporations and businesses purchase tradeshow booth space for upwards of $1500 for two days… and that’s for a 10’ x 10’ space to show/sell a product It’s the cost of doing busi­ness. Read that last sentence again if you have any doubt as to whether an artist should consider “paying” for marketing their art. Remember the old adage: you have to spend money in order to make money.
How does John Q Public get to see a piece of art? There is no one right way to do it. There is only the way that is right for the indi­vidual artist. Marketing is its own art form and a skill and craft that not many of us have… especially artists who have to concern themselves with creating the product before selling the product. What’s natural for the artist? How one goes public boils down to personality traits. Outgoing people might do well at networking while commercially-oriented people do better at concentrating on the product itself. Those who are neither of these need to find their own way.
An artist colleague who is currently enjoying great success says that his goal is to find ways of making people aware of his art. That if one half of one percent of artists can actually make a liv­ing from selling art then he knows that he has to get involved with marketing, brick by brick, by believing in himself and maintain­ing a passion about what he does. He reminded me that his grand­father says, ” When one says no another will say yes.”
There are several different means and ways of accomplishing that incredible journey from studio to wall. An artist can appren­tice with a master-artist and take note of the business and social realms of the profession. Or they might simply turn to other art­ists to ask advice on how to accomplish successful marketing of their work, or go to marketing workshops designed for artists, or they may study countless books or internet articles that give great marketing ideas. (I know of one artist who admits that he’s waiting for his fairy godmother to appear and sell his art for him!) And, of course, the advice can also come from an agent of an art