Being an Artist

A whole day of working hard as an artist without making any art.

Well that's not entirely true, I did draw for about an hour while Ned was at the gym, The rest of the day though, from about 4:00PM to 1:30AM was spend in working at being an artist without making any art. I feel like I just run a marathon, and at the end of it, got hit by a truck.

This is what was achieved:

1) Sending an e-mail to an Etsy customer requesting money, then getting the money though paypal, packing the order, writing a note adding a small bonus drawing, going to the post office to send it.

2) Writing a letter to one of the women we meat in Ned's portfolio powerhouse review. We just couldn't get through to her by e-mail, so, as a last resort, I wrote her a letter, and send it to her office, hopefully, it'll find her, though she works in a very big company, and probably have people going over her letters and only bring in what's important.

3) writing a thank you letter to a wonderful woman in the Vespine gallery where I had my show, I feel so bad about not attending to this before, but finally it was done.

4) receiving a newsletter from the Lower East Side PrintShop about applications for their residence program, and deciding that unless I do it right away I'll loose my nerves, so, dumping everything else, I started choosing art work, shooting and scanning what I couldn't find elsewhere, filling forms, modifing my resume and artist statement (it needed to be not more then 1000 letters, it was 1071), changing files names, burning CD and trying to figure out who I can use as 2 references, which is hard since I didn't go to art school in the USA and so teachers are out of the question, so eventually, I wrote and asked the Vespine Gallery woman and another person who I appriciate and worked with. I put their names in the submission before I heard from them, I hope it's going to be OK, I hate having to ask for favores and I feel really bad about this somehow.

5) following a link on their site to some artist and from there to some gallery and from there ot some artist portfolio sites, I decided ot apply for that one as well, so again, resume, statement, images bla bla bla....

6) get the images form the Vespine show from Ned's computer to my computer. Tomorrow I will start color correcting them and prepering them for a Blurb book, I want ot take it with me when we go to LA and possible show it to some galleries.

My brain feels fried and I'm so tired, and all I want is ot make some drawings to remind myself why am I trying to get all this done instead of getting a certificate to do people's nail for a living...

Kelly Krantz on LoucheLink

Kelly is the Tattoo artist who did my new tattoo a last weekend. He also did the one we got when we got married, the raven. He's a really quite guy and sort of shy, but he's a super professional tattoo artist with a lot of respect to other people's designs and a cool style of his own.

Read the interview here.

Francesco Ercolini on Louchelink

What I really like about Francesco's photography is that it feels like his life is an endless cool chaotic party.

I don't know if this is so, but I just love visiting his life though his pictures and seeing how, though people look different in different places, the feelings and the enjoyment they experience is universal.

Plus, I think it's super cool that his portraits of dogs are at least as funny, quirky and respectful as the ones of people.

Read interview here:
www.louchelink.com/

New Site

We were sitting in Fornino Pizza this evening, Ned was feeling sort of low, and we were talking about promoting his work so he gets some more cool projects like the Law & Order shoot. I was thinking of how hard it is to find places to promote myself and my own work and how I hate doing that.

It made us realize that one of the things artists want the most is spaces where they can promote and show their art and personality. And that a good way to make people aware of you, is by promoting other people (I was thinking of Joy quarterly magazine, which is really lovely, but the guy who edit and produce it also take a lot of the photos in it, which give the magazine a pretty isolated feel and also, total lack of interest from other people).

And I Decided to make a new website in which, every 2 weeks Ned and I will feature another artist or photographer or musician or friend.

So now it's 7:00 in the morning and the website is done! it's called LouchLink and since I wanted to finish the layout today, Ned is the first artist who's featured on it (we couldn't get anyone else on such short notice...) but from now on, we'll be featuring other artists and awesome people.

If you would like to be featured, e-mail us some photos of your work and a few sentenses about who you are and what you do, or follow the "submit" button on the site.

Vespine gallery show

So a few weeks ago Ned gets this phone call from an art gallery in Chicago, it turn out that they were looking for me for a few weeks, I usually don't answer my phone and for some reason I didn't get any of their e-mails. They wanted to give me an art show in their gallery.

This is not only my own personal dream (and art show without having to run after the gallery, but them running after me) but probably the dream every artist I know.

I couldn't bring myself to call them, but I e-mailed, Ned did, he told them I'll e-mail them and so I did.

So then, I never heard back, which made me a bit sad, but I sort of moved on. Then about 2 weeks later, they called Ned's phone again. It turned out that for some reason, again, I didn't get their e-mail. They needed the artist statement, and bio and know when I'm sending the pieces and so on.

Again, I couldn't bring myself to call, and Ned did. He's been doing all the communication for me, even e-mails, that I'm usually not so anxious about. He consulted a gallery owner that we know about prices and arrangement and what to ask and do.

It turned out that this is the only show in the year in which participant artist don't have to pay for the space. the gallery is giving me one of the most amazing gifts and opportunity I could ever wish for. Everyone around me who Ned have told to about this are so happy and helpful and wonderful about this.

Yet, I feel so scared and anxious and like I'm messing up. I've been creating a second body of work for this show, about 30 drawings in less then a week. I've written a nice enough artist statement, later improved by Ned, a gallery owner \ friend and Ned's dad. And yet I feel like I haven't done a thing and like I keep messing up.

Everything is so good, I just paralyzed with fear waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The show is going to be at the Vespine Gallery in Chicago on November 15. We are already planning a motorcycle trip to come to the opening!

This week has been such a crazy emotional roller coaster.

I just want to sleep (and for all my painting to sell in the show of course...)

Worry

Worry was the word of the week on Illustration Friday. Sometime it's really hard to find what I want to do for it, and some time it's super easy. This was one of the super easy ones, cause earlier this week I took a picture that I titled "Worry".

The photo was a self portrait I took after Ned got an e-mail that he got in to Grafuck book this year, we both send 3 images, he got one in and I didn't get any request for high resolution files which means I got rejected. I was so happy and proud for Ned but so sad and feeling like a failure for myself. Also him getting in meant that I couldn't write this off as one of those "those editors don't even know anything about art or anything" because they did show very good judgment by picking Ned's piece. So basically, however I could twisted it in my mind, the only conclusion was that I'm just not good enough.



The other day, while being in the train, I thought about a painting i made that day. I listed it on Etsy for 45$, and another one from the same day for 20$. I thought about a friend of mine that
had an art show in a gallery a few months back and now have one of her pieces in some auction site for 1,200$. And how it sort of suck and I feel about 30 times less of an artist then her. Then I thought that if I have to choose between selling 30 paintings to make 1,200$ or only one, I rather sell 30, cause it gives me the chance to make 30 paintings and though this is a pretty small comfort, it's still a comfort.

I'm really worried, not so much about the value of my art but about my own courage and abillity to step out of my comfort zone and becoming the artist I want to be.

Like Birthday and Christmas all at once!

I was trying to find a specific quote by Oscar Wilde that I always liked, but can't seem to place it now. It was something about how artists should always surround themselves with beautiful things. I always felt like having a lot of art around and beautiful things, is a good way to protect one self from the harshness of reality.

I'm not much of a collector those days, I moved to NY with 2 suitcases and a box full of books, of course some stuff had been collected in the past year and a half - books, art, cloths and so on, but we do try to keep it simple and not hang on to too much stuff.

Why am I writing all this, because today an amazing portfolio of 30 (!) amazing art print arrived in the mail. I send 30 of mine a long long time ago, for a Baren Print exchange and today I got back the prints from 30 other artists.

While working on my print, I though to myself, that I really don't need 30 prints back and that I hate printing so many, but today, when I'm the proud owner of an extensive print collection, I realize how important it is to be exposed and own other artist's work. I feel so inspired I really want to start working on a new print.






List of participants: Barbara Mason, Robert Simola, Jeanne Norman Chase, Tiberiu Chelcea, Viza Arlington, Ld Lawrence, Su Tamsett, Loren Letourneau, Charles Philip Brook, James Mundie, Lee Churchill, Mary Kuster, Linda Hornberger, Wimberley Burton, Michelle Morrell, Robert Viana, Diane Cutter, Sharen Linder, Barbara Patera, Julio Rodriguez, Monica Bright, Jean Womack, Joseph Taylor, Claudia G Coonen, Eli Griggs, George Jarvis, Judith Kornett, Kolene Dietz, Mark Mason, Linda Mcphail