As an artist returning to traditional studio production, I have some experience with certain exhibition display and audience response approaches, found in various territories of connecting the artist and their audience.
In essence- what is marketing art and how does one go about it?
My own familiarity includes approaching galleries and institutions, portfolio presentation, a little grant writing; considering the art I am producing and who might be attracted to supporting it; displaying it in settings and contexts that are a fit from more than one angle, and over time- cultivating who may buy semi-regularly.
Cultivating relationships with members of my art audience, including galleries and other arts industry professionals, artists who are colleagues, still others who are friends and sometimes both- is a set of processes that is engrossing to say the least.
Known to throw nicely catered receptions I make myself, one relates to this part of the art making/connecting reality as interwoven. For the most part, I still respond to it with genuine enjoyment, even relish!
Currently and with a commitment to keep learning- I enjoy what are to me- some of the early results of utilization, application and coordination with a spectrum of new online tools and traditional practices that work for the art I am producing, while learning to build the audiences I seek to target.
This terrifyingly wonderful journey of rebuilding a following of tried and true supporters, and discovering new communities of supporters both locally and online, includes coordinating personal and inter-personally scaled historically embedded values that are simultaneously uniquely emerging in my returning studio practices.
This is the second work now-in-progress, in the Iconic Views at OSU Series. What do you see going on in this picture?
Why the interruption?
There is always a greater personally-lived context for the events that occur in life, and observation developed over time lends to appreciation for right context.
Attempting an unburdened reintroduction, for the past 2 1/2 years I have been operating in parallel universes to learn about evolving a unique and more broad market access through social education, or free-choice learning and ways to offer this access in mobile technology. Free choice learning is an activity we all engage whenever we go to museums and the many public institutions that permanently house those collections that speak to our individual interests and curiosities.
In 2011 I became curious about how to take traditional forms of access to the arts a step further, and I started collaborating across disciplines with developers and engineers in mobile technology. My goals were and are motivated to provide broader producer and audience opportunities on multiple sides of the permanent, public art and access experience, within niche public settings.
As a result, the ARt project was realized in July 2012. Now in second stage UI refinements, and due for a project unveiling in May 2014, I am learning there may be many unique and powerful openings to consider about what were once traditional paths of access. Through the ARt project, I am among the early adopters- artists and collaborative partners with other industry areas, who are innovating together, new examples for the continuation of traditional studio activity, creative production and exhibition- to increase creative and collaborative activity and interaction new 21st C. design and possibilities.
One increased access and activity area is art marketing, as it currently enjoys a dynamic response to new forms of internet communication, owing in no small part, to artists’- long isolated from the opportunities of making a living, we are now more than ever empowered to make inherently direct forms of audience contact, connection and as a result- access more sales opportunities.
In art, culture and education- there are many new possibilities that mobile technologies are being and will continue to both be implemented and explored, between our inter-activities with it and our audiences.
With greater rapidity, we all continue learn and expand more, how and what it means to connect audiences to subject interest areas and the makers of them thanks to the current transition to ubiquitous computing.
