The Fear and Folly of Public Opinion in Art

An artists life can sometimes be difficult. Not only are we often perceived as hippies who can't make a living, or that our art is a hobby and not a real job. Opinions, both good and bad on our work is a constant force on what we do. It has a power all its own that can be so acidic that it may burn through an artists life leaving scars and even death in its wake. No matter how well known we are, the court of public opinion asserts a great force on what we do and always will.

The Artist is a Child Who Should Never Grow Up

When I was a child, I had a vivid imagination. So much so that I think I spent most of my preteen years living in my fantasies and hiding from my realities. I don't know if I had an imaginary friend when I was very young, but I suppose I really didn't need it. I was my own imaginary friend.

I remember for awhile I was completely absorbed in knitting yarn. I would take the yarn and I would weave gigantic spider webs out of it. These things would stretch from one side of a room to the other. I would anchor each piece of yarn from one high corner to the opposing lower corner. When I had 8 of these crisscrossing each other, then I would start to weave an intricate spider web from one strand to the next until the thing dominated the room making it completely unusable unless you wanted to get caught in my web.

"I AM A..." How Artists Describe Themselves

We all attach labels to ourselves. In the art world there are so many labels that we can lose our perspective in what suits us best. 

It is not enough to say "I'm an artist". Its too vague. 

I conducted a small experiment awhile back. I would introduce myself sometimes as an artist and other times as a sculptor. There was an immediate difference in how I was perceived. 

To those who I told I was an artist, there was a vague sense of "oh how sad, he has no real job". 

To those I told I was a sculptor, there was more of a sense of interest. Telling them I was a sculptor evoked interest and a need to know more. What kind of sculptor was I? What kind of materials did I use? Was it hard work? 

The Not So Greatness of Alexander - A Story About Stolen Art

How do we handle the theft of our work? As artists, we face a constant threat of others stealing our work online? The worse cases of this are people who try to resell our intellectual property. 

I am not a believer in watermarks. I think a huge watermark over our work nullifies our attempts to promote our work online. I do believe in ID'ing our work with our logo, but a watermark that takes up the center point of an image does nothing except to detract from what we have created.

Immortality Has Arrived - The Artists Virtual Life

We are the first generation in the history of man to become immortal

The advent of the internet era has made a part of us impervious to death. What we perceive sometimes as a toy, as a method of communication, as a way to waste time when we are bored, has in its own quiet way turned us all into immortals. Its not because of the internet alone that I say this. Its because of the massive social networks promulgating the net now.

Before these came along in their present form, the internet was still a fractured place. Those using one service like AOL or a host of others, were still locked into a small part of the cyber universe. But now, organizations like Google, Yahoo and Facebook are unlocking the doors and expanding services to the point where we now have a doppelganger of our true selves living out there in cyberspace. 

Viewing Your Art Through the Buyers Eyes

Artists can be very myopic. We micromanage every piece of art we create and we fuss over every single detail incessantly. We see whats in front of us, but sometimes we miss the bigger picture.

The simple fact is that this is not how others view our work. Think about it, when you see another artists work for the first time, do you see every little detail about that work? Or rather do you take in the wholeness of the piece, seeing it as a complete structure and not as a series of small brush strokes?

Art Bloggers - Tips For Creating Content

Art bloggers make two common mistakes when they blog. These mistakes lay at opposite ends of the spectrum from each other.

At one end lays the trap of only blogging your art and nothing else. The result is that unless you can create new art daily, there are vast amounts of time where your blog sits unused while you create. No new content equals no new viewers.

The Spine is Strongest - Finding our Artistic Backbone

Creative people who share their views are often shunned. The Dixie Chicks come to mind as a great example of a group of singers who spoke their minds and had their careers nearly destroyed for speaking their minds on political issues.

What results is that anyone with a creative career such as musicians, movie stars, artists and performers have to think twice about whether they want to take the heat for expressing views that may go against their fans views.

The Art of Fear - The Nightmares Artists Face

I had a dream. I saw an abandoned house sitting alone in a field. The doors were open to the elements and the floor boards were cracked with gaping holes that were open to the dirt floor beneath. There were construction people with hardhats surveying the property. A large yellow tractor sat waiting outside. Several men walked through the house room by room until they came to the attic. At first view it was also empty, but one of the men noticed a small door to one side and opened it with some effort.

The Immense Power of Imagination in Art

As I work with emerging artists, I often see amazingly talented artists who have skills that far surpass my own. In every way they have the potential to become great artists and masters of the craft. But they are lacking one key element to move them from artist to master. 

Imagination. 

Choosing Your Artist Name - Standing Out From the Crowd

One of the things that artists don't think about when they are beginning their professional careers is their name. I think this is because many of us think "to change my name means I am not being true to myself". I respect that line of reasoning. But It is important that we at least consider alternatives earlier in our careers rather than later.

How Do We Make People Look? Name Recognition for Artists

One of the biggest questions emerging artists struggle with is how do we make people look at our work? What is the secret that some artists seem to find that makes people stop and actually look at their work. Is there a magical formula for it? My belief is that its simply word of mouth. The secret is in making word of mouth spread. 

I kind of see it in my mind like a set of scales. When we start out the scale is weighed completely against us. We are a completely unknown element. It does not matter how talented we are or aren't. The more people know about us as artists the more the scales start tipping in the opposite direction.

Using the @ not just the # (Twitter Science For Artists)

If you google the term "twitter tips" you will see in almost every article tips on using hashtags #. Hashtags increase your exposure, gain you a bigger viewing audience and allow you to zero in on a target area. 

What the experts don't talk about as much is the use of the other big symbol on twitter. The @ symbol. 

Critiquing Art

I get asked to attend a lot of shows and to review a lot of portfolios from other artists. No review of work is complete if you are only telling the artist that their work is good or their work sucks. I like to look at a critical evaluation of a piece of art like the building of a wall. One brick doesn't make a building. Many bricks do. Saying "good" or "bad" is the equivalent of one brick. 

I also feel like I need to make sure I am applying the same set standards to each piece of work I look at and give it as objective a review as I can manage. I feel sometimes that art critics and gallery owners do not use as impartial a set of standards as they should. I've seen professionals in the art world apply very personal standards and biases and I think this hurts the art world. Because all art is subjective. Its all the eye of the beholder whether they like a piece or not. So professionals should hold themselves to a higher set of rules and guidelines.

Artists Challenge - Shadows of Perfection (UPDATED 1--05-16)

Artists Challenge

Shadows of Perfection

This challenge involves reducing your available light by 75% while creating a work of art. The only rule is that you don't bring the lights up till you've completed it. If it takes you several days, then cover it over or hide it before you bring the lights back up. This will teach you how much we rely on our eyes and give your other senses a chance to come forward and take charge.

All finished pieces will be shown on the Immortal Artist site. When completed email a photo of your piece and some brief thoughts on how you felt the challenge went and whether you learned anything about relying on other senses and not just your eyes to create art.

Emails to: gcsartno@aol.com

Wall Vision Art Galleries (ART IDEAS)

Art Ideas is a series of conceptual ideas for changing how we operate as artists and how the art world functions as a whole. All ideas are freely given and welcome to anyone who might be able to pursue them. The Revolution Begins With Beauty.

One of the problems that a gallery owner faces is that they get inundated with artists asking to be seen yet there are only so many days in the year and only so much wall space to utilize. If you consider the average gallery may do twelve shows a year that does not leave much leeway to host a large volume of artists.

There is a hell of a lot of work that goes into showing a new artist. A gallery must, out of necessity, show that artist for at least a months period of time if they wish to have the work seen and the buyers become interested.

Mastering Symmetry in Art

One of the biggest problems I find that face people that want to become artists is symmetry. I spend a lot of time looking at other peoples art, evaluating it, discussing why one piece works while another one doesn't. And most often a bad piece of art is deemed bad not because the colors are off or the composition is unclear, but because there is no symmetry. 

There is a natural flow to a perfect piece of art. Lets look at the classic Mona Lisa.

No Photo is a Bad Photo

In this day and age, it is so easy to snap a photo that we forget the value of them. For the amateur any given photo means it is pretty much disposable, to a professional photographer the best images are precious and to be taken care of. To an artist who is also a photographer every photo should have meaning, whether poorly shot, hard to see or blurry.

I see more and more people calling themselves fine art photographers, but they think with a professional or even amateurish point of view. I teach to students and interns that no image is valueless unless it is nothing but one solid color. 

Protests and Activism as an Art Form (ART IDEAS)

Art Ideas is a series of conceptual ideas for changing how we operate as artists and how the art world functions as a whole. All ideas are freely given and welcome to anyone who might be able to pursue them. The Revolution Begins With Beauty.

In today's world there seems to be a protest about something almost every day. Most have valid reasons for doing so. Believe me, I think protests are one of the most important forms of public expression we have. 

But what I think what is missing is the form of the protest. A mob milling around shouting just incites more violence rather than less. It often seems that this form of protest ends up having its message totally lost in the maelstrom of emotions. 

Travel Stipend Grants for Artists (ART IDEAS)

Art Ideas is a series of conceptual ideas for changing how we operate as artists and how the art world functions as a whole. All ideas are freely given and welcome to anyone who might be able to pursue them. The Revolution Begins With Beauty.

There are a lot of great opportunities out there for artists. But many of them come with the stipulation that you get yourself and your art to the place its being shown at your own cost. 

Art residencies are good about making sure the artists travel costs are taken into consideration. But say you want to enter a piece of art in a juried competition that is a thousand miles from where you live. Even if you are well suited to enter that competition, the cost may be past what you can afford.

The Elder Gods Saga - Learning to Match Art to Verse

There is something very magical to me about using the written word in art. I would hazard to say that anytime one creative discipline is merged with another, that it becomes something new and amazing. 

The Elder Gods was my first attempt at matching written verse to art. There were five pieces of art created first and then I made an attempt to create a poetic saga, that merged the five pieces into one ongoing story. 

The First Burning Man I Ever Attended as an Artist, I Wasn't At

When I was in my teens (I'm 51 now) I became a coordinator for Hands Across America. For all you young ones, this was a one-day event that tried to create a people chain, holding hands from one side of the United States to the other. My role was to organize and coordinate people going from Lansing Michigan to the staging area in Peru, Indiana. We had one mile to fill, and even though I was only 18 at the time, I pursued it with gusto. And you know, we did it. Our mile of that thousands of miles of people had no gaps and stretched out through Peru into an Indiana cornfield and beyond. 

I couldn't tell you how many people we brought down there and I recall very few of the details of the event now. But there is one thing that sticks with me to this day; the hours right after the event ended. We'd all worked so hard and so long to bring it about, and we'd all become very close. And we just didn't want that feeling to end. 

Sort of Understanding the Assimilation Art Movement

This page is an accumulation of notes and concepts regarding Assimilation Art. Because its a work in progress it may take me years to put it together, but as I devise a working set of parameters I will add them here. Check back often for new information and I truly welcome your comments and participation in this emerging art form.

~Grey~

Assimilation Art - Is the merging of two or more distinct art forms into one or more new forms. In some ways it is similar to mixed media art. Assimilation art may yield multiple end products where mixed media usually results in one piece of finished art. Assimilation art may produce multiple finished art pieces spawned from the same original work that are all different. Assimilation art may also take one art form and morph it into something new. For example, the artist creates a photo series that morphs into a painting based on that photo series that again morphs into a sculpture, etc etc.

The technical Greek definition of morphology means "the study of shape". At its very basic definition this is assimilation art. You are studying the shape and how it changes over time and how it can take on new shapes and forms.

What is the Purpose? When Artists Are Compelled to Create

I create just because I am compelled to do so. A friend asked me a simple question one day regarding a project I was working on. It really made me think. He simply asked "what is the purpose?" Was I creating them for a specific reason? Like a show or an auction? 

I thought about it a moment and responded "I create them because I have no choice". There was no better answer. I was not creating for a show. There was no grander purpose in mind for anything I was making. I just felt compelled to create and as always an urgency to not stop.

Wood Preparation for Deadwood Sculpting - Tutorial

If there is one thing that is plentiful in this world its bits and pieces of deadwood. It is a great source of material for art that is cheap and relatively easy to find. My primary source is driftwood, but there are many more. 

I often talk about the the later phases of building deadwood sculptures, but I don't often talk about preparation. Preparation is the most time consuming part of deadwood sculpting. The steps are numerous depending on the type of wood and the desiccation of that wood.

Cathedral of My Dreams - The Sanctity of the Artists Studio

My studio is a sacred space to me. I expect anyone entering it to treat it with no less dignity than they would treat a church or holy place.

I am as far from a religious person as anyone could possibly get. My view of religion is that its similar to a library with one book in it where you go in read the wisdom in the book and then turn around to find the door to the library locked and barred with a big sign reading YOU MAY NOT LEAVE! You've eliminated all the wisdom this universe holds because you may only read from that one book for the rest of your life.

Developing a Steady Hand as an Artist

One area in which new artists in particular have a hard time with is developing a steady hand. This was an area I struggled with for some time when I first became an artist. I tried different techniques but I found that working with a stylus was one of the most effective ways for me to gain a steady hand. Unlike a brush, there is little room for messing up when doing stylus work. Its precision taught me a lot.

Unfortunately there are not a lot of art projects that require a stylus unless you are a calligrapher or a mapmaker or something that takes precision. In those cases you probably already have a steady hand. I turned to an area of stylus art that is sometimes overlooked to help me with steadiness. The art of "illumination". 

The Lost & Found Indian - Creating An International Artists Database (ART IDEAS)

In 2014, before I began the Immortal Artist blog, I wrote a short piece on Facebook about lost artists. I've reposted it here before I discuss a follow up to it.

Being an obscure artist, it always bothers me to find art whose creator is lost in the mists of time. On our bathroom walls hang two such artists and I sometimes take a moment to google different search patterns to find out a little of who they were. With only a last name as signatures, I am usually fruitless in my searches. But today I stumbled on the right combination of words to find one of the two artists and at least give myself peace as to who they were. I hope someone will do the same for me some day in the distant future. I am guessing that my mother knew her, as they lived in the same town and had some of the same interests. Here is the artists obituary and the beautiful painting done by her hand. I'll keep working on who the other artist was

#Hashtag Art - Artists Learning the Power of Hashtags

Recently in an online chat we discussed the benefits of hashtags for promoting art. The whole hashtag system can seem perplexing. Why should we bother with them? Isn't it just cluttering up anything I am posting online? 

The answer is "NO". It can in fact push awareness of your art to a much higher level. 

Consider this. When I make a post on Twitter without a hashtag I can expect typically about 120 impressions with that post in the first few hours. This means the number of people that potentially viewed the post are 120. Now if I add a hashtag to that same post the numbers change. 200 impressions in the first few hours is easily achievable. Hashtags allow us a much broader audience who may interact with us. If you are posting your art then you want as high an interaction as you can get with potential viewers. 

A Message in a Bottle - The Art of the Secret Message in Art

Having been born on an island, the stories of messages in bottles thrown from an ancient ship or perhaps a lonely castaway on a desert island has always set my imagination on fire.

As I grew older the concept of secret messages, cyphers and hidden clues in meaningless objects was a constant thrill. 

Art has always been a great medium for this. DaVinci was well known for sticking hidden meaning in much of his work. 

Fighting Apathy - The Artists Worst Nightmare

As an artist, getting people to pay attention to my work is perhaps one of the greatest frustrations for me. I don't mind negative criticism towards my work as long as its done with some amount of diplomacy. "That's fucked up man" is neither criticism nor constructive. 

But worse than that for me is apathy in the viewer.  The feeling that no one cares. The sound of silence while your singing to the heavens about a new piece of art you spent months creating can be the most agonizing thing possible for any creative. Whats it all for? Sometimes we just want to cry out in anguish when we create and no one acknowledges that creation.

Image of the Day - Oberonus Cirque (Oberon's Crown)

Oberonus Cirque (Oberon's Crown) 
50% Complete
Size: 13" x 13" x 21"

This will be the 9th sculpture in the Deadwood series. This piece was extremely difficult to clean and cure. It was very easy to snap off parts of it during cleaning and it had to be worked at very slowly. It was mounted last night on its base and has gone through its first coloration. It will have at least two more blended coats before it will be ready to move on to its polyurethane coats. When its complete it will become a companion piece to Oberonus Scepterus (Oberon's Sceptre) which was completed a few days ago (see below)

The Game of Knowledge - Artists Thriving in the Social Media Universe

Social Networks to me are like playing a game using real knowledge and information. It took me years to grasp that the secret to social networking is to play it like a game, and that the game can be won by the intellectual capital (information) that an individual user brings to the table. 

Confusing? It was for me at first -- until I realized that the most important players on the Twitter board were the ones who interacted with knowledge and information, sometimes their own, sometimes from others.

Their are thousands of people on Twitters whose feed is nothing but quotes famous people. Many do nothing but retweet news articles and links. These are examples of playing the game using a viable information source readily available to each user, and it gets effects. These users have plenty of followers even though the information is readily available in a thousand other ways. I think of these folks as "base information users."

One step up from the base users are the "genre-specific information users". These folks take a subject such as art, music, or sports and spend a great deal of time retweeting specific information to other people. These users have made a science of finding out about their specific genre of information and moving it back out to others. Unlike the "base info users," who don't have to put a lot of energy into cutting and pasting links and quotes, the "genre-specific users" are dedicated to their task and put a lot more time and energy into their endeavor. In return they usually have a higher follower rate than a "base user" does. 

Both types of users are using information as their tool of trade. You may ask, "what about all the users who are just there to interact with friends?" What are they interacting with? Usually personal information about their lives, shared back and forth. We'll call these the "life users." They play a part, but their following is usually quite small and isolated to their friends, family. Their posts are usually about restaurants, life events, favorite hobbies, etc. I've noticed these users rarely let outsiders onto their followers list. They also rarely survive on Twitter. Life users will find a much more fulfilling social environment on Facebook.

Now we take a step up to the "power users." These folks don't only share information from others but create their own information flow in the forms of blogs, websites, original insights, etc. "Power Users" are truly the power players. They use information as a commodity, sharing it out, bringing people in, selling and buying in whatever subject they are working closely with. "Power users" are usually influential online even if not in the real world. They hold sway over public opinion and can often move those opinions with their commentaries. Their follower numbers range from 10,000 to hundreds of thousands.

Finally, at the top of the hierarchy, are the "celebrity users." These are people who just by their mere presence are a dominant force. They may only tweet out once a month, but their words are watched carefully both by fans and news sources. Celebs don't have to bother following anyone else, but those who follow them are in the hundreds of thousands and more. The interesting thing about celebs is that they've already paid with their intellectual capital far before they came online. The musicians, actors, writers made their mark and now they are reaping the benefits of it. We get jealous sometimes of how easy it seems for the "celeb users" to sell just about anything to others, but we forget that they already paid the price for admission with a lot of hard work in their area of expertise. 

What these types all have in common is that they are trading in intellectual capital. They may be there solely to sell a product in real life, but what many fail to realize is that when you're here in the cyber universe, information has to be your starting economy. If you sell tractors, you can't plan to come on and get a hundred thousand followers and keep their attention just by offering your tractor deal of the week. 

If that's why you're here, you may get a few followers just because they like your products, but if you want to keep them around, you must put some time and energy into your intellectual capital. You may need to offer expertise on tractor maintenance and repair, free advice on ways to use your tractor, even online classes. Most important, you have to show you're a real person behind your tractor business, not just some bot tossing out information hourly without ever interacting with your followers. 

In other words, you have to play the game just like the smallest player on the board. You may have more resources and cash to put into your intellectual capital, but we've all seen huge companies who never grasp a social network because they haven't learned to play it like a game and to use the information they have at hand. 

I am using Twitter as the example for this article, but its really no different on any social network. What is different are the social rules by which you play the game. Every social network has its rules that make the game unique to it. Google+, Instagram and a host of others all work the same but have fundamentally different social rules for how you spend your intellectual capital. 

As I said at the beginning, it took me years to grasp Twitter and I am not even sure how I did it. It was more intuitive for me than anything I read or researched. Once I got the hang of it, I could maintain at that "genre specific" level almost immediately. But it was not until I began to consider what I have already outlined above that I suddenly went from a "genre user" to a "power user".

I finally understood and did so well with it because first I stopped looking at it as a business tool and started looking at it as worldwide game of strategy and intricacy that rivals any damned video game ever created. And second I was playing with the one resource I had in abundance. My brain! I may be a poor struggling artist, but the one thing I have is knowledge, information, learning from a thousand directions, and a life full of experience. When I coupled those things with what I do best, "creating art," I suddenly had the keys to make this work for me.

In the end everything around us is built from information. Ideas, products, even social interactions in a bar, are built from tiny bits of information that we use to interact. We do it so naturally that we don't even realize we are doing it. Think about the last conversation you had with someone. What was it composed of? Dd it involve tell the other person about your day? Perhaps how work went? Or how crappy life is? All of that is information tinged with emotion. But when you break it down to the fundamentals, everything we share is information that we've gained and then spewed back out. 

Jackson Browne put it well in the song "For a Dancer" when he said:

Just do the steps that you've been shownBy everyone you've ever knownUntil the dance becomes your very own
Into a dancer you have grown from a seed somebody else has thrownGo on ahead and throw some seeds of your ownAnd somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you goMay lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know


This is true of everything we do. We start out learning from everyone around us then apply that information towards our own path. And if we are lucky we start to create new information to augment the old. 

Are you playing the game with your own intellectual capital? If not, you may get to the level of the game of being a "genre specific user," but until you start using what you naturally have and not just playing with other people's intellectual capital (e.g. retweeting other people's work), you will never attain the level of "power user." So think carefully about it and observe how the social networking game is played. By changing your perspective you may change how you play. 

Photographic Anomalies - What the Camera May See

When I am teaching about photography I am always quick to bring up that the camera captures details we often don't see or notice with the naked eye. The cameras ability to see everything is one of the reasons that its such a satisfying art form. 

When I have this discussion with students, I am rarely talking about the camera seeing things that don't make sense. But there are other things that defy explanation. I often run across the occasional image that doesn't make logical sense to me. With well over a million photos taken in my 20+ years behind a camera I think I have a fairly good understanding of light refraction. I see it all the time when working with night photography. But rarely do I see photos with light anomalies that I can't explain. 

In fact I can think of only a handful of photos that challenged my perceptions. Now I am not claiming the camera is capturing ghosts or spirits or UFO's. What I am claiming is that I can't explain the occasional anomaly that I come across. 

Image of the Day - Pandora's Bones and the Dead Wood Sculpture Series

The concept of the Dead Wood series is finally taking shape with this piece. I've got several other pieces that are technically part of this emerging series but I was grouping them in my driftwood series. What makes the dead wood series difference is that all the wood was obtained in local New Orleans cemeteries. So the theme of Life & Death in Sacred Ground fits it well because the life of a tree is born and dies in the sacred ground of a burial place. 

In the case of Pandora's Bones, I chose the name because the piece of wood seemed more like a fragile piece of bone to me than wood. Its unique shape feels otherworldly. The piece is very small but very detailed. I may create a reliquary for it later but want to consider it further. 

There are already four other pieces in process for this series so more to come.

You can view the companion Driftwood sculpture series by clicking here

The Art of Displaying Art Part 2 - Online Presentation

I wrote an article awhile back on the Art of Displaying Art. The premise of the article was that how your art is seen in public is as important as the art itself. Taking time to curate the piece first and display it artfully for your customers will make people return to buy more.

The same thing applies online. The appearance of your art to others who may see it on the internet is equally if not more important because you are reaching a far larger audience. 

I take a lot of time in the preparation of art to be seen online. The photo at the top of the article is an example. This digital art could have been displayed alone, which In fact is how most art is shown online.

The Art of Displaying Art Part 1 - Live Displays (Updated 07-15-16)

Properly displaying your art for others to see is an art form all by itself. We often rush to show our work not considering the way its seen for the first time. That crucial first impression makes all the difference. 

If a client is coming into the studio to pick up work, I make sure all pieces are first cleaned and dusted, touched up and that certificates of authenticity are printed for each. Then as the final step I moved the art into a display area with proper lighting so that when a customer comes to pick them up, there is a first impression made.

Where Rules Can Backfire on Social Media - Artists Thriving across Social Networks (Updated 07-13-16)

We've seen it time and again where a social networking site will impose rules that while on the surface may look wise but end up causing them to lose members rather than gain them. I don't think we mind following rules that are well thought out and and are applied to make the communities better, but often a rule that has no wiggle room ends up causing damage to the network. 

Take for example  Instagrams shutting down of artist websites due to what they consider pornographic materials. One artist posted a shoot taken of a woman breastfeeding their infant. It was not meant in a pornographic way and the artist stated that it was a study in bonding and posted with the permission of the women involved. Yet instagram shut the artist down. 

The Hyper-Creative & The Hobbyist

I am convinced that we all need creativity in our lives. I come across a ton of people who say "I wish I could do what you do, but I'm not creative". But this is a false impression most people have about themselves. In reality what you perceive as an artist being creative, is in actuality "hyper-creativity". 

We all have our creative sides. But what most lack is the ability to express it. For the hyper-creative, we express it in a thousand different ways. The Hyper-creative tend to explore beyond just one area of creativity.

The Visitor - Dead Wood Sculpture

The Visitor is the third sculpture made from dead wood. The wood was collected in Holt Cemetery in New Orleans and came from a Live Oak that we call the Aware Tree due to the fact that he is guardian to the graves in the center of the cemetery. He takes his job seriously and does not like visitors. I was fortunate that he was willing to give up a part of himself for this sculpture.

This unique piece of wood had several faces in it. I settled on this aspect because it reminded me of a visitor from another dimension. It is set in natural clay and foaming glue on a tile base with metallic acrylics for the color and then polyurethane to coat the wood and seal it. 

He comes with a certificate of authenticity, signed, dated and finger printed by the artist and verifies that he is the third sculpture in this series. 

This fellow is only available through the studio. For information on making him a part of your art collection contact us at gcsartno@aol.com

The Vase - A Light Study for #Artists & #Photographers

We often take light for granted in art and photography. We do not think about the angles, the shades, the colors, etc. But understanding light angles can be crucial to a great composition. 

We recently did a light study in the studio. I took a simple broken red glass vase and set it on a pedestal and had my intern Jackson sit in front of it and photograph it over and over again. Each photo was taken with the light at a slightly different angle. The settings on the camera varied between using the flash, not using the flash and using a low light setting. 

Image of the Day - The Oracle of the Scarab

Click to Enlarge

The Oracle of the Scarab is made from a very fragile piece of driftwood. The wood was cured and sealed to keep it from disintegrating using a special experimental technique developed by me. Its difficult to find wood that has a great pattern but is not too deeply decayed that it becomes unusable. But when I am lucky enough to find one it always becomes something precious. It is 6" wide by 18" tall. 

It is 80% complete. I will post further photos when its done.

Stress is the Ultimate Creativity Killer

I see a lot of articles on what makes us more creative and what steps we can take to make ourselves as creative as possible. I see a fewer on what stops us from being creative. What advice is available is usually in the form of diet advice for thinking more clearly or how to avoid work place distractions.

So what really causes us to lose our creativity. There are a lot of reasonable answers to the question. But at the top of the list has to be "stress". In fact it may be surprising at how many of the other reasons for losing ones creativity could be reverted back to stress as the root cause.

Seeing Past the Mundane - An Artists Most Important Skill

Its funny how something you've looked at a dozen times and remained blind to, can suddenly create ideas for art. I was working on a portfolio tonight from a photo shoot done at Holt Cemetery last February. I've used the 200+ photos in this set several times for different projects. The photo above was one of those. Doesn't look like much. Its a pile of wood near some graves. In fact I can't honestly tell you why I took the photo in the first place and it had never been used for anything specific.

But tonight I stopped and realized that I wasn't looking at a pile of wood. I was looking in fact at raw material for sculptures. I usually work with driftwood for a lot of my sculpture work, but a chance encounter a few months back with some dried juniper wood in another cemetery made me realize the value of extremely aged and dried wood.

Siddhārtha's Garden - Terrarium Sculpture Tutorial (Updated 06-27-16)

One of the area of art that has always fascinated me has been artistic terrariums. I use a lot of moss in my sculpture work but I've only attempted to use live plants once a year ago. Unfortunately the piece was huge and involved a lot of work that at the time would have been difficult to achieve. But I still have the hanging plant that I purchased for the project. His name is Charlie and he hangs in the studio to this day.

So I've decided to experiment with this area on a much reduced scale. Since this is both experiment and tutorial, I'll trust you to understand if things change as I proceed with the design.

Getting To Know the Artists Mind - Question of the Week (06-27-16)

Answer today's "artists mind" question and become eligible to win a free interview and promotional package through Immortal Artist! Please answer in the Disqus box below.

How is your art tied to your belief structure?

HEY WORLD I'M AN ARTIST AND I'M HERE! Getting Noticed in Today's Art Market

As artists, we do a lot of complaining about the lack of opportunities for us to show our work and be acknowledged in our field. Believe me, I was one of them and still am to a certain extent.

I live in the third biggest arts city in the United States. Logically you would think this means that there are tons of opportunities for unknown artists to get seen. Sadly exactly the opposite applies. I speak to a lot of artists who say the same things about how insular the arts community is here. If you don't know someone who knows someone then your an unknown locked out from interacting with the inner sanctum of the accomplished art world.

Artists Using Craigslist

I think that Craigslist is one of the most under used internet tools an artist can come in contact with. Most people think that Craigslist is on its way out. Its considered outdated and a bit mundane. But it is still the widest used and read classified tool out there. Artists especially are missing the boat by not using this tool to its fullest capacity. 

Tell me what other free tool is available right now on the internet that puts you directly in touch for no cost with your local art community? There are a few other sites and some miscellaneous facebook pages. You could use hashtags for your local community but a whole lot of other people are posting there also. Craigslist is reliable for two things. It has several artists and art categories and it targets locally.

So what would I use it for? 

The Art of the Mind

A dear friend of mine had a birthday recently. We were concerned for her because her cat who she was deeply attached to was dying from cancer and this would probably be his last few weeks on earth. A melancholy birthday to say the least.

I wanted to create something special for her and I announced my intentions to my partner to create a sculpture of the cat. The day before the birthday came and I still had not started it and my partner in his subtle way said "were you still going to do that sculpture". In other words, your almost out of time dumb ass, get on the ball.

Artists Avoiding Click Bait Habits

Most who use the internet these days knows what "click bait" is. It is the title of a story where the title lures you in to a pretty crappy article. For example "I Couldn't Take My Eyes of These Great Photos". This also works with photos that have absolutely nothing to do with the story its attached to.

Artists have their own unique click bate words that they use to attract viewers to their work. Some of those include "I'm the next Picasso" and "this is the best thing I've ever created".  But the worst is "this is totally unlike anything else"

The LGBT Emerging Artists Conservatory - Spring 2019 Internships

Interns work in studio once a week for 2-4 hours. The internship lasts approximately 4 months. Interns work directly on studio projects, shows and events and learns hands on how an independent artist studio functions and grows its business.

Studies include work in painting, sculpting, photography and body art. 

There is no cost to apply or participate but there is also no monetary compensation for being an intern. The objective is not to teach you technique and mentor you in becoming a functioning and successful artist in your future. 

Artist interviews can be obtained by sending examples of your work and a brief bio of your art background to: GCSARTNO@AOL.COM

We will contact you via email to set up your interview. You may also use the email above for questions or comments. 

Please note that we are only able to take two interns per season, so don't delay in setting up your interview!