How to Build a House
Email is overwhelming me. It's not the getting of them that is the issue – I love hearing from people. It's answering them that is the challenge. I am just getting too many to keep up. I was worried about how many emails I would get when I wrote the editorial on the business practices of gallery owner Sergio Patrich in the July 07 Opus Newsletter. But no! I got barely any mail and I was amazed considering how many artists who have vented to me over the years about problems with their galleries.
In last month's editorial, I wrote about a friend who is struggling to devote more of her life to making art and less of her life doing work outside her artistic practice. Just another column, I thought. But no! Wrong again! And I should have known better. I was shocked by the volume and length of the responses I received. One reason that accounted for a lot of them was that I mentioned that I lead artist's workshops. Many of you wrote to ask about them and whether or not I do individual "coaching."
I have had a diversity of experience that has taught me a lot about artists, the artistic life and marketing during my career. I founded and ran a public art gallery for several years and even organized a show of artwork that I made that was very successful for me in terms of sales and experience. (I am not interested in a career as a visual artist, but I am very interested in the artist's process.) Perhaps no work experience of mine has been more educational and rewarding, however, than writing this monthly column. I have learned so much from artists writing to me in response to my editorials. They have told me, in countless letters, emails and phone calls over twenty-one years, about their problems and their challenges, and in many cases I have stayed in touch with them through the resolution of their dilemmas.
For years, I devised and supervised workshops for visual artists as part of my job at Opus. Inevitably, after every workshop, many participants would follow up on the workshop with an email to me asking lots and lots of questions. Often one question led to more and each email turned into an e-dialogue – just as happened with the September editorial. Both the editorial and my workshops provoked questions that were not easy to answer – so many, it seemed to me, needed a long essay as a response.
The focus of my workshops is marketing, with a particular emphasis on pricing, effective sales strategies and publicity. They are designed for artists wanting to increase their income from their artistic practice. They are about making money, as was the September editorial. So the emails and the questions are about the business of life as an artist, and the answers I offer to so many questions disappoint me because the recipient gets an answer out of the context of the bigger professional picture. When I answer the questions I feel like I am describing how to build a window for a home without dealing with how to lay the foundation or how to build the walls.
Consequently, last year I resolved to compile as much as possible of what I have learned during my career into a single resource – a professional development manual for Canadian visual artists. Now, one year later, I have a website almost finished, a pretty good first half of the manual done and the other half still to write – the easiest half is what I have left to do. I have, therefore, found myself answering those who sent questions to me in response to the September editorial about my plans for the manual instead of answering their question at length in an email. If I do a good job, answers to nearly all the questions I have been asked over twenty-one years will be in the manual.
The manual is a better response to appeals for help than are workshops or personal coaching sessions. The manual will explain how to build the window, but it will also explain how to build the whole house. And whereas taking two workshops for a total of four hours of instruction costs somewhere between $75 and $100, the manual will be a more modest $30. Also, the manual allows me to be more thorough and it is a permanent record that I can update or augment in its partner website.
Whereas there are many worthwhile books for entrepreneurs on starting and growing a small business, my manual looks at key components of small business theory and discusses them in the context of a creative skills-based small-business – the self-employed Canadian visual artist. It is designed to motivate and assist artists seeking to increase the percentage of their income that comes from their artistic practice.
I am working diligently to finish it. Telling you and all the "question askers" who wrote to me after the September editorial will help provide me with the pressure I value to stick to such a massive project – 60,000 words. I expect to have it published next summer and in Opus stores next fall. I will write about it again when it is finished.
Keep your emails coming!
ctyrell@shaw.ca
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