Category Archives: My Art

Art Making, the Journey #3

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

Currently, as an artist, I struggle with my ambition, my sometimes inadequate knowledge and proficiency, and with increasing problems with my aging body. But these things are to be expected, to be coped with, and will be managed!

Setting these issues aside, I am still have immediate questions to resolve, questions I seem to need help with! I don’t where to start resolving my twofold dilemma:

  • What do I do with all my finished artwork?
  • And how can I best find sufficient rewarding interaction and affirmation around my artwork?

And preferably without hours, days and weeks away from actually making art!

There are many artists who do not have a gallery contract or regular venue to show or market their work, yet they persist in making art. Artist creators who do not have agents, or galleries, or much of an audience. Most visual artists create alone, and do almost all their work alone, without paid assistants, interns, or other helpers. Some of us must share a need to find homes for our work, or to engage with a broader audience.

When I thought my work was ready, I started entering local juried art shows. At first I was delighted to have work accepted. This let me feel successful communicating something in my art: I was evoking a response in others, not just for myself. Also I had hopes of sales: I wanted to at least pay for some art materials & frames. For some years, I entered a 2 or 3 juried shows each year, and was pleased to exhibit a few pieces. But nothing sold. After a bit, I developed a body of work and more self-confidence, so I made the effort to arrange my own shows at local businesses. It is common in town for restaurants, banks and a few professional offices to display the work of local artists on a rotating basis. Generally artists simply self-nominate, and are put on the schedule. I have been lucky enough to have help selecting and displaying my work in this way.

So I have exhibited some work in the past, and sold a few pieces at my own shows, or to friends at other times. I don’t remember ever selling work from a juried show. And yet artists pay fees to enter juried shows, and must meet gallery guidelines for presentation. The fee is usually a small one; a base price plus a bit more for each submission, but framing can be pricey, and the gallery will keep a significant percentage of any sales. After submitting, the artist must wait in some suspense, with the likelihood of rejection. We may submit 3-5 pieces to a particular show, but given the number of entries, we will be lucky to have 1 or 2 accepted. At an exhibit opening, there will a dozen or more artists present, each showing just a few works. Few attendees take time away from their personal friends and from refreshments to engage with unknown artists about their work.

As you may guess, I no longer find it appealing to enter juried shows. Even when work is accepted, the experience is not rewarding. Quite the opposite, in fact. So I have not entered a juried show in several years. Nor have I made the effort to create an exhibit of my work at any of the local business venues.

Port Townsend Studio Tour brochure

Instead, this year, I signed up for the local Studio Tour, an annual Port Townsend event promoted with a brochure and some advertising. Participating in Studio Tour has been an ambition since getting my current studio space in 2011. I am lucky enough to have an excellent, heated, comfortable studio, with enough wall space to actually showcase quite a lot of work, and August is a good time for me to show some outdoor work also. So I finally made the commitment to have my studio and my work on display.

When I show art in an exhibit, I may never hear from viewers, and if something sells, I may never meet or talk to the buyer. And it is difficult for me, as an introvert, to engage with strangers looking at my work. My artwork is always personal, and I, the maker, am vulnerable to criticism even when I am most proud of my achievements. And of course there will be people who do not like my work. I don’t really want to overhear critics who may not try to be tactful.

The occasional sale does communicate something; it tells me that I have reached someone. There has been some sharing, and there is a response, and presumably appreciation! This does help me enjoy making art. I may never know what my work evoked: a sense of mystery, a bit of beauty from a balance of colors and shape, a definable message, or perhaps a personal memory. But some shared response was evoked in the buyer.

Is that enough? It seems that I crave a bit more interaction.

To be continued … in Art Making, the Journey #4

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Art making, the Journey #2

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

As my daily work to create has become a long term practice, a habit of at least 15 years now, I have different questions and new issues with my life as an artist/maker.

A small number of the artworks displayed in my Studio
Just a small % of my collected work!

Firstly, what do I do with all that much loved finished work? Yes, I do still love much of it; it was created with care, attention and love. And it conveys something to others, not just to me; I do know this now.

What do you, the artist, do with your work as it accumulates? Even commercially successful artists, those who market and sell their work regularly, generally have a stockpile of finished work, work they are proud of, but which has not been sold. Only a few artists are so lauded by the commercial art world that they have waiting lists for their work.

I am an introvert. I am happy, most of the time, to work alone. But I am still a social animal, and I do try to communicate with my art, so I do need an audience. How do I get just a little bit more, just enough, interaction and engagement around my artwork?

Secondly, some modest audience for the finished work seems necessary to me, and I have come to want more than I currently have.

I certainly have my friends and family, who will certainly not respond and engage with every piece, but are supportive and often appreciative! I love this. And I especially need and enjoy a few fellow artists I work with regularly, who are willing to engage with me at a meaningful level about my work in progress or finished. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement; we work together one evening a week, and we enjoy and engage with each other over our own work and work by other artists. I see this as very important both to my enjoyment of art, and to my development as an artist. I want to grow, change and improve; engaging in dialogue about art, and about specific works, is very valuable to me.

Photo of my shadow with trees

But I have come to feel this is not enough, I want a little more visibility and more engagement, although I really do not know what that could look like!

I do sell and gift my work to friends and family. But I try not to burden anyone with work they do not love, or have space for, although I am sure that has happened a few times. I have felt great satisfaction from both selling and gifting. It is very pleasing to have my work appreciated and more than that, wanted. To know that someone enjoys work I made enough to hang it in their home, or office is an affirmation. It tells me that I have communicated with someone, and shared something meaningful. It is human nature to want this; we are social animals.

Selling and gifting to friends & acquaintances only accounts for a small percentage of the art I produce! I have my own favorite works hung in my house, and hung much more densely, in my studio. And I have plenty of artworks stashed in layers in my large flat file drawers, filed into multi-page clear sheet portfolios, or only in a digital existence on my computer! I have drawings, hand pulled-prints, and digital prints galore! And I am satisfied and would be happy to share many of them. Of course some are more of a personal record of my own journey toward first calling myself an artist, and then improving my proficiency through practice.

So I am still left with this twofold dilemma: what to do with all that lovely finished work? And how best to get sufficient rewarding interaction and affirmation?

To be continued … in Art Making, the Journey #3

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Art making, the Journey #1

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

What is art? What does it mean to be an artist? Novice artists all have to struggle with self-doubt and many such questions. Some artists continue to consider or even agonize over these and related issues throughout their “careers”. But for many artists a few years of daily work and habit will provide some answers. And for me it comes down to something very simple: it is making art that makes the artist.

Professional artists, collectors, art critics, and others who make money in the art world may deny “amateur” artists the full status, reserving the title, or at least their respect, for those artists who sell their work. But must the “real” artist manage to live off the proceeds of their art? That makes little sense; many “professional” artists, successful or otherwise, are subsidized by family members for years before achieving financial success, or they may start out with independent means. Other artists teach or make much of their income from lectures, workshops, or unrelated occupations. Many loved and respected artists, now dead, never did achieve much financial or critical success in their own lifetimes.

Artworks in a museum or two certainly give artists a level of credibility, even respect. But of course not every artist will have their work noticed, let alone acquired, by a museum, especially during their lifetime! That is neither a measure of quality or a necessity for the definition of an artist. Rather it is a matter of visibility & marketing.

Photo of my shadow on my decorated garage door
My Shadow on My Studio

Art is subjective, personal, and in the eye of the beholder. This is so evident from the wide variety of things and actions that we may classify as art. I am primarily interested in the artist as maker; that is the maker of things, of objects that endure, rather than the maker of performance art and happenings.

And a side note; although I am willing now to say “I am an artist.”, I do still prefer to say that I make things! Too many people have firm prior convictions around what an artist is & does! And of course, these convictions are oh so varied!

As my daily work to create becomes a long term practice, I have new questions and new issues! What to do with all that much loved finished work? Yes, I do still love much of it! And how do I get just a little bit, just enough, interaction and engagement about my artwork?

To be continued … in Art Making, the Journey #2

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Handwork on Prints

P.T. Artist Sandra Stowell Posted on by

“Wooden ships on the water, very free”. Or maybe there is just the one ship, and the one fishing net, there in the top two 3″ x 3″ prints.

I think the double print is quite different. So probably the lower image is not a wooden ship, but a plant; a fern in the ground, with five fronds newly emerging above the surface. And I suppose the upper image is not a fishing net at all, but a sea creature submerged below the surface of the ocean, with delicate tendrils reaching up to find plankton in sunlit layers above it.

OK, despite my own claims sometimes I do have story for my artworks. But generally the stories come after, not before, the making. The images must come first, then the story. If I start out with a story line and a plan, the artwork will likely never be completed, never be satisfying. The joy, the exploration, will probably be absent, and there will be only work and frustration.

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