Gallery Ready

A Creative Blueprint for Visual Artists

Franceska Alexander

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781683507987
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

Do you desire to show your art in a gallery, yet do not know where to begin?

Gallery Ready shares best practices for visual artists, from emerging to midcareer, so they can experience optimum results in making, showing and selling their art. As an artist, you will learn what you can do to attract the attention of a gallery director.

Gallery Owner, Franceska Alexander shows artists:

• How to make their art stand out from the crowd
• How to be fully prepared to meet with a important gallery decision makers
• How to keep their artwork fresh and collectors excited about the art

  Gallery Ready, A Creative Blueprint for Visual Artists, clearly illustrates what artists can do to make their art, gallery ready!
  
  

CHAPTER 1

A Gallery Owner is Born

“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”

CONFUCIUS

CHINESE PHILOSOPHER

I was lucky enough to receive my fine art eye, and aesthetic discernment from my father, a San Francisco Bay Area art collector. He was also figurative sculptor and journalist photographer. Our new 1950’s home was a part of the boon of suburbia. Our art collection filled our modest home with original large-scale nude oil paintings, modern stone sculptures and lots of musical instruments. My mother was a woman with a flair for fashion and interior design. Our home interior was more like an art gallery, entirely painted chalk white, including the brick fireplace I never remember a fire in. This home stimulated my thoughts, imagination and creativity. Even though it was a bit stark for a warm family environment, my life there was enamored by hours of gazing at brush strokes on the many original paintings hanging on the walls of our home. This included a particularly famous painting of a naked boy with a horse painted by Picasso. A voracious thirst for learning about painters grew within me and I read biographies of famous artists such as Renoir, Rembrandt and Picasso from a very young age.

Sadly at the ripe age of 7 years old, I was convinced you had to have come out of the womb with a paintbrush to be an artist. This bogus idea was partly because as a girl there were so few women artists’ voices in art history, as the majority of artists were men. It never ceased my enthusiasm for art and kept my appreciation steady. A desire to create my own artwork, though initially fraught with challenging old beliefs, eventually matched my inherent talents to make better art with skill and confidence.

Over the course of my life, I have worked with hundreds of artists; assisting many emerging artists, as well as established artists, to organize, guide, support and sell their art in the gallery. In addition, I have helped hundreds of customers in their inquiries, acquisitions, custom designs, deliveries, special displays and making contacts for commissioned art with the artists they have discovered at the gallery. I have managed to keep this gallery alive through changing cycles of discretionary spending and the sometimes-bleak years of unknown futures and downward economic shifts.

As creatives, we can appreciate the upward financial cycles that allow people to purchase art for the emotional value and the contribution art brings into a home or office. I attribute my dedication to this aesthetic purpose and my belief in the importance of having a public place to view and purchase fine art. This serves the community in ways that is oftentimes only felt. I am grateful my intuitive faculties have been high enough to navigate a curious business model with a critical eye and so far keep this savvy brick and mortar art gallery open.

It’s All In The Timing

Hundreds of artist submissions have flown across my desk for the last 14 years. Since the submissions for the gallery have been incessant from the start, it has also been a bit of a burden--though in a good way! This is because of the time it can take to vet and respond to artists in a respectable and timely fashion. There are so many of artists vying for a spot in this magnificent art space it has become increasingly challenging to communicate how art is chosen, and what will and will not work for all concerned: gallery, customer, and artist.

My gallery is an elegant environment that was created by an architect, a sculptor, a designer and artists. I must say anything displayed on the walls here looks great, from the most radical art to the finely articulated, figurative, impressionist or whimsical art. Located within an 1850’s building, the museum-like environment enhances and validates the value of the art piece being viewed. Ultimately, through skill, taste, and aesthetic presentation it all comes together in a unique collection of artists. Jewelers, ceramicists, painters, photographers, printmakers, sculptors, and more, find this gallery model and location very desirable for their art. For years, and with the thousands of artists and visitors I have worked with during this long creative sojourn, it continues to serve the art appreciating public in the tiny town of Nevada City.

When the gallery first opened, there were piles of envelopes with slides and portfolios for us to review. We thought we would be able to decide together as a “juried group” which artists to choose to show. But the immense amount of work that arrived was mounting faster than we could review in a timely manner. When CDs came out the volume increased, and hundreds stacked for further review. We considerately composed a kind letter of rejection on our letterhead emphasizing the need to continue the creative passion and infused with kindness to the hopeful artist inquiries. However, over time, artist submissions were just more then we could comfortably handle judiciously. Once in a while an artist became upset with the lack of response to their gallery submission--and no doubt many other galleries as well. I think it is fair to say; there may be a lack of understanding as to what it takes to keep a gallery viable given the multitude of submissions a gallery may receive. Now as artists are selling online it has created a new way to circumvent working with gallery frustration. Online artist websites have added additional woes to the gallery business model. Competition for the exclusive sale and understanding where to draw the line with an artist showing in a gallery and also selling online adds stress to ultimately whose sale is it, the artist or the gallery or both?

There is no doubt that most visual artist’s have the aspiration to be seen in a gallery. When they see their artwork as a perfect fit, it can often surprise me, “My art would be perfect in this gallery!” and I take a peek and see their perspective? I love helping new artists sense their next move to make that happen, and if we have the time to meet, I ask the questions and get to their immediate needs. My best-case scenario is working with artists to get them gallery ready, and to do that, it’s making the inquiring artist my top priority. I do take the gallery and the artists seriously. This is why I want to help show you in this book what you can to do as an artist to stand out from the crowd be effective with your time and with the time of gallery to make your art successful. This book is geared towards answering the many questions I’ve answered over the years, and to guide you towards being gallery ready. It is my intention to prepare you with what is needed to create unique art pieces that allow you as an artist to make an impact on the right gallery for you and to your art collectors for years to come.

The Artist Then and Now

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”

FRANCIS BACON,

IRISH ARTIST

Rarely has the artist’s path ever been easy. A “working artist” or “career artist” works hard to be seen, and history has generally ignored living visual artists, celebrating them only after they pass on from this realm. This historical evidence does seem to be changing now with online technology and the visual arts. It seems to be actually easier for an artist to be seen around the world through websites that show and sell her art. It takes virtual tools and networking abilities but today they open up doors right at her fingertips. The mystique of an artist is now about branding and with the benefit of the World Wide Web, there is also, tremendous competition. However, selling through an art gallery will take a certain level of professional mastery and planning.

Good, Bad or Meaningful Art

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”

PAUL CEZANNE,

FRENCH ARTIST

What is good art, what is bad art, and what is meaningful art? When is art good enough for an art gallery and what does it take to make a piece of art gallery ready? If you are a visual artist and you are passionate about showing your work then read on to see what you may need as an artist to be gallery ready.

For the most part, art is very subjective. How does an artist turn plain canvas and paint into a piece of fine art or a sculptor cast his creation out of a lump of clay into a near priceless Objet D’art? Is it an entirely subjective experience, or can there be an inherent value occurring in the mysterious making of art? In this book I will attempt to answer with my experience and ponderings about art through my life as an artist and gallery owner.

CHAPTER 2

The Gallery Legacy

“Let the beauty you love be what you do.”

RUMI

13TH CENTURY SUFI POET

How I came to own my current gallery actually began in 2002, when I met my future companion and dearest friend, John Mowen. John was a stone sculptor and bronze artist. He made his living making art for over thirty years. He was salt of the earth, a hard working artist with an expert skill in his craft/art making. He traveled throughout the United States showing and selling his art at the finest art shows. It takes a lot of effort to get into the quality art shows around the United States and since 2008 the better shows were in the Midwest and on the East Coast. This becomes a challenging dilemma of transportation expenses when you reside in Northern California as John did.

Coast to Coast Art Shows

During the eighties and up until the last ten years or so, arts and crafts shows, if you were a quality artist, required filling out applications manually with specific details from show to show. Application presentation was judged almost as much as the art itself. It would also require professional photos from a studio photographer who would make the images into slides. This meant finding a photographer who specialized in studio art photos and understood the best lighting for art in a photograph; transporting your artwork to the photographer, and getting everything up to date as you grew as an artist. Filling out the application specifics could be very stressful for an art show booth. It required great concentration because the forms were complicated and oftentimes artists such as John, asked family or friends to fill out his forms to make sure they were legible, accurate and made the very strict postal deadlines. The shows also required an application fee, some non-refundable. The “wait and see” time period to see if you were accepted into the art show put your planning the year ahead generally on hold, until you heard if you were accepted into the show or not. If so, you hoped to land a great booth location on the show floor plan and that you were not put on the “we will let you know at the last minute waitlist”. Today there are data programs like Zapplication, that have automated most of the tedious work required in years past for art shows. The application is sent directly to art shows with a push of a button on your computer!

Being an artist on the art show circuit, did, and still does, take a tremendous amount of stamina, street smarts, frugality, risk and expense. Many outdoor art venues are experienced strictly as entertainment. However, due to the historically high attendance on those art-focused weekends across the country, it can often be quite profitable for an artist. The shows create seasonal villages of gathered artists who also become good friends through the years. If the show is a good one, that is profitable, it also offers the possibility of earning thousands of dollars over the weekend. Multiply that with 6 to 30 shows a year, and you have a creative cash flow, making art and selling it. The individual artist determines whether a show is worth doing because in the long run, the art show life can be quite taxing the healthiest of artists.

Mowen Sculpture Gallery

When I met John, we instantly connected in the realms of love and business. He complained often of being “on the road”. When I noticed how hard he was working from long weekend shows strung together by highways traversing the art show circuits, it was easy to imagine showing his work in our town. The quality of his work was earthy and elegant. My intention for his gallery was to help mitigate his “road weariness” when he returned home. I felt a local gallery for his art would serve him well. Within our first few weeks of meeting, I offered a fine art gallery space for his sculptures in my downtown business location. It turned out to be a perfect fit for us. His art encompassed contemplative scriptures and sacred sculptural forms in stone and limited edition bronzes. We added Tibetan Thangkas, Asian artifacts, music and wisdom books to round off a sanctuary environment filled with the sensibility of contemplative art. This humble sculpture gallery became a place for John’s art establishing a growing community of collectors.

Mowen Solinsky Gallery

About one year later, a very large ret...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1—A Gallery Owner is Born
• Chapter 2—The Gallery Legacy
• Chapter 3—Your Creative Blueprint
• Chapter 4—Your Authentic Artist Voice
• Chapter 5—Find Your Art Market
• Chapter 6—Gallery Representation
• Chapter 7—Take Your Art To The Next Level
• Chapter 8—Final Thoughts on Getting Gallery Ready
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Thank You