What do irreverent toy set ups, friendly chipmunks, and a huge supply of almonds have in common? A flickr user by the name of Chris McVeigh. His most notable photos involve toys interacting with each other in scenes, and some with chipmunks he befriended in his family’s backyard. The little toys range from Star Wars action figures to Lego men, posed and shot as if human. Check out his photography on Flickr, and if you are a Twitter user, he’s recently joined Twitter as ActionFigured.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3322/3260736444_446fbb63a9_b.jpg
As a step towards the initial mission of this blog, to create a platform where artists can be featured, ARTKAMP is making an Artist Directory! Emerging, established professionals, illustrators, designers, and even student artists are welcome to submit. Once we have enough entries, we will list them on a dedicated page. Here are the basic things we need.
- Link to your artist site, or whatever form of web presence for your work.
- A brief statement about you and/or work. Don’t feel forced to write anything new or prolific, we aren’t a museum, we’ll take what you have.
- An image, or link to an image that you would prefer to be a representative of your work. Web resolution (72dpi) is fine but a higher res image is preferable, just be sure that its at least 400px in shortest dimension. (hate being technical here, but come on! Just give us something of decent image quality to work with. It’s your work afterall.)
We can’t really call it a jurying process, but we do reserve the right to opt not to include an artist. We want it to be worth both your time and the time of the other artists included. It is from this list that ARTKAMP will make future artist features, interviews, etc! This is meant to be as accessible as possible. Designers and Illustrator who identify as artists can also apply (no stigma from us on that front) so please do. You can contact us with the above info by email [artkampblog(at)gmail(dot)com], or simply @reply to @ARTKAMP on Twitter to express interest and we can create some form of correspondance.
Thanks, looking forward to the submissions!
BrandonJD (bobeotm)
Founder of Artkamp
If you are an artist on twitter, you definitely have heard of Etsy. Etsy positions almost like an Amazon Martketplace for only handmade items. The service skews towards craft generally (some might object to that, but that’s another discussion) and as a result also skews towards the inexpensive. So as visual artist in a conventional medium (painting) I gave the site a look.
First of all, before getting into any caveats, it’s important to not that Etsy is for strictly selling, not for building any sort of reputation with the art establishment. So if you want to one day be on Art:21, Etsy is likely not the path you will take to get there. But If you are looking for a few dollars here and there, it might be the place if your work fits. So here is my list of caveats:
- Your work has to be small. No one will want to play for a $100 work that has $50 shipping. If you look through the site, things rarely get larger than 20 or so inches in any direction.
- Your work has to be fast. If you are making time consuming stuff, you will likely not be able to sell it for enough to recoup your labor costs. YOUR TIME IS WORTH SOMETHING! You shouldn’t work a month on something that is only going to get you 30 bucks outside of materials.
- You work has to be cheap. This not only applies to the retail price, but the the materials that went into it. Since hardly anything on the site breaks $250, its probably wise to consider cheaper materials to make as much profit as possible. If you normally use high end materials, opt for cheaper alternatives. It’s not like this stuff is going to be put in a museum. It is a great venue for prints of work, and photographs. Think of your work as a product more so than an artwork, then you will see why its important to keep the prices low.
- It’s a store not a gallery. Keep your high-minded work at the door. Aesthetically pleasing is more important than conceptually stimulating. You are competing with craft painters, so nothing you would consider for a gallery should be considered for Etsy.
Am I on Etsy? No. Because of all the aforementioned reasons. My work is slow, at times fairly large, not cheap enough, and somewhat gallery minded. I would to create a separate vein of work to be able to sell anything on Etsy, but maybe this is a perfect fit for you!
Are there any Etsy sellers out there that agree with this list? Any tips I missed? If so leave them in the comments.
In Defense of Eye Candy – http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy
Article about the importance of makin’ things pretty. All you web site designers out there…check it. I can personally say that I don’t spend more than a few seconds on a webpage if it isn’t easy to navigate, but I don’t like to be bored (or visually assaulted, as the case may be) either.
Have you ever been so excited about the prospects of an idea, that you’re on board before the idea has matured? That has just happened with me in regards to a new service that has recently launched, Art Babble. Art Babble is positioning itself to be the “YouTube of Art Content” by allowing institutions to post video, partnering with Museums and Art Organizations to get content from their sources. The “YouTube” descriptor is a bit misplaced as you will find out later in the post. The service is in its nascent stage, the hardest phase of development for a social media network, because this is the make or break period as to whether it will take off or not.
Currently the only content is from the partners, and content submission is currently restricted to institutional providers like museums.. I can totally see video from Juxtapose and Fecal Face making a home here, but they seem to currently accept only “institutions” which causes a problem with artists and outlets that exist and thrive somewhat outside of mainstream museum and gallery recognition. Created by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, it makes sense that they have a vested interest in keeping the content quality high, but if they have to tight a hold on the content, they will stunt the growth of their service. Users can’t currently add video, but only comment and make quotes from existing videos.
This could be big, if they are willing to let go their vice-like grip on the content and content publishing. It’s clear by what they currently have available is that they want the quality of the video itself to be high, as well as the content therein. Understandably it’s hard keeping the quality at such a high level when you open up content submission, and get Jane-16yr old posting video of herself with lame iMovie effect filters over it. So it’s makes sense to restrict content, but if they are going to be the sole decider, they definitely need to broaden the tent of providers to include more than a hand full of Museums, to perhaps allow some respected publications that have video content to contribute. There is a video into after the break.
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With the latest Facebook iteration looking to grab a piece of the Twitter pie, has it inadvertently created the blueprint for its successor?
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