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Art Fanatics Thread of Visual Dominance


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On 5/12/2023 at 4:37 PM, RDCanecutter said:

Latest adventures have been masses of shows, some of them bill-payers, others more social events. Past couple of weekends I came to understand why ancient people considered the wind a god.

Found a professional photographer/printer to make small 5 x 7 prints out of my big paintings. I stick them in a clear bag with mat board behind them, 3 prints for 40, they move like tamales outside a jam-band festival.

Possible drama: I am on some print-on-demand sites, and recently had 4 of my designs yanked because an anime conglomerate said I violated their rights. I was unaware of their existence and my style is pretty non-anime, so it's probably a web-crawler misidentifying something. I could have let it drop, those designs barely sell, but I figured if I fail to dispute it, it might bite me later on, like not defending a trademark or something. So as part of disputing, I had to agree to possibly appear in Federal Court. Guess I better sell some prints.

I've been thinking about finding a print on demand site to sell photo prints of my birds and nature photos, where I don't have to do anything but upload images. But looking around at the options is tireless. They are either a pain in the ass or you get virtually no profit out of your cut. Do you know any that might be a good option for me?

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32 minutes ago, DougO said:

I've been thinking about finding a print on demand site to sell photo prints of my birds and nature photos, where I don't have to do anything but upload images. But looking around at the options is tireless. They are either a pain in the ass or you get virtually no profit out of your cut. Do you know any that might be a good option for me?

I use Society6 and Redbubble. Redbubble is easier to upload to, but I may sell slightly more on Society6 for all its fiddliness. By "sell" I mean "make beer money," like, three four dollars once in a while, of BANG maybe 20 bucks once or twice a year.

I don't promote it like I should. The whole point to me is to have your work available in case a C4 (Compulsive Customer with Credit Card) goes on a binge.

They were useful back when I was ordering stickers of my own work for about $1.20 and selling them on my show table for three bucks. But there are so many better things you could put on limited table space.

All that said, they are free to upload to. Why not roll the dice?

Edited by RDCanecutter
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  • 2 weeks later...

My very dear friend “Give Up” has a new book coming out documenting his 25 year long art/street art/graffiti work. Several of my photos appear in the book. I am honored to be part of it. If you are I. Austin or Houston, you likely have seen his work over the years. Most recently him painting his wife’s name, Alex, who has battled brain cancer. This is punk, metal, graffiti, fine art all wrapped up in a massive book.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Csr_donAMW3/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

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75e49341643b3be4d1fe48eb01964e40.jpg
I posted this Texas artist Adele Brunet still life earlier in this thread. My wife wants to send it to auction at David Dyke Fine Art in Dallas. They specialize in Texas and have sold several of her pieces.

If anyone here is interested in it let me know. Truly beautiful piece but we have no place for it. Dyke estimates 1K to 2K range. Not trying to”eBay” it but would just as soon let someone from here have it.

35d2b00b179bb6991ece256e15125d2f.jpg
0c32d9abc1bc33af88c4755ed5a2c041.jpg

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Art Show Plan 2023 is rolling along. Basically after Pandemic and health scare lost time, I decided to hit the 4 major metros of Alabama, as well as at least one show in each neighboring state. So far I've done Birmingham and Montgomery multiple times, and am set to hawk my Space Apes etc in Huntsville this Saturday.

An unexpected impediment to out-of-state shows is the surprising number of good shows in Birmingham that happen the same time as things in, say, Nashville or Atlanta. I have made some contacts though so maybe I'll swing something before long.

I have been avoiding the overnight events. I go to one-day shows where I can wake up at oh-dark thirty and avoid the hotel gouge. I try to get set up an hour or two before a show opens so I get extra time to sell to other vendors and random people. 

The heavy hitters are paintings of various sizes, and photographic prints about 5 x 7". The prints ought to be illegal, it's like taking a bunch of five-dollar bills and selling them for fifteen dollars each. Block prints and drawings have been kind of anemic, though I did a block-print run of Pride flags and folks snatched at them like piranhas eating a cow. 

Huntsville is a weird mash-up of Star Trek and Squidbillies, so I look forward to exciting interactions there.

Every weekend I'm at some show, it's my gym routine tossing around tables and boxes. Then I come home, sleep a day, then work the rest of the week to replace what sold. It's stalled my commission work, sorry about that.

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3 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

Art Show Plan 2023 is rolling along. Basically after Pandemic and health scare lost time, I decided to hit the 4 major metros of Alabama, as well as at least one show in each neighboring state. So far I've done Birmingham and Montgomery multiple times, and am set to hawk my Space Apes etc in Huntsville this Saturday.

An unexpected impediment to out-of-state shows is the surprising number of good shows in Birmingham that happen the same time as things in, say, Nashville or Atlanta. I have made some contacts though so maybe I'll swing something before long.

I have been avoiding the overnight events. I go to one-day shows where I can wake up at oh-dark thirty and avoid the hotel gouge. I try to get set up an hour or two before a show opens so I get extra time to sell to other vendors and random people. 

The heavy hitters are paintings of various sizes, and photographic prints about 5 x 7". The prints ought to be illegal, it's like taking a bunch of five-dollar bills and selling them for fifteen dollars each. Block prints and drawings have been kind of anemic, though I did a block-print run of Pride flags and folks snatched at them like piranhas eating a cow. 

Huntsville is a weird mash-up of Star Trek and Squidbillies, so I look forward to exciting interactions there.

Every weekend I'm at some show, it's my gym routine tossing around tables and boxes. Then I come home, sleep a day, then work the rest of the week to replace what sold. It's stalled my commission work, sorry about that.

My studio mate is that same exact way.  Just grinds daily through all the little things: stickers, patches, t-shirts, cards, etc.  A human sweat shop that probably clears just over enough to continue doing what she's doing, pay rent on a studio/mortgage on a houseboat, and travel to places she needs to for weddings, personal, and markets.  Full respect.      

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1 hour ago, Mdhorn said:

My studio mate is that same exact way.  Just grinds daily through all the little things: stickers, patches, t-shirts, cards, etc.  A human sweat shop that probably clears just over enough to continue doing what she's doing, pay rent on a studio/mortgage on a houseboat, and travel to places she needs to for weddings, personal, and markets.  Full respect.      

Yeah, I try to expand it so it's not just me doing the selling, but it's frustrating. I mean, I am having fun and paying bills, just trying to expand beyond the one-man-band.

Galleries are duds. I have work in three places, one of them averages maybe $30 profit/month, I'm talkin 1 George Washington Dollar per day, and she is actually going above and beyond in a crappy area. The slowest one is in a cute little money-rich area, and they sell about that much in a year. Third place is somewhere in the middle.

I constantly want to go raving in there and make them watch the Always Be Closing clip from Glengarry Glenross, and then yank all my work. But then I think, it's free to show the work at two of those places, and the "profitable" one charges a small fee for my space. OK, let's figure how to increase sales an order of magnitude, it's been done before... maybe do some "artist at work" exhibits there.

As for internet sales, that's the barren Mad Max desert I grew up in. Used to do thousands of pieces to sell about 1/7th of the listings per year. (Live shows move about 3/4 stock in that time.) I keep the Etsy store open because I already made the listings and hey why not.

@cactusflinthead has rightfully instructed me that I should promote my print-on-demand stores which are purely automatic, but I never do because I want to be a self-destructive artist but am too much of a pussy to cut off my ear. but here goes:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/WalterMoore/shop?asc=u&ref=account-nav-dropdown

https://society6.com/waltermoore

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  • 2 weeks later...
4 hours ago, TexPx said:

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Off to auction for the Brunet. Wife somewhat verklempt cause it was her Mother’s.

Dikes specializes in Texas artists. Some other pieces at his gallery:04eaec8810997a7f6a75c7fc1b8bf8d5.jpg
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ad887360b7b13265ab42e7086bb50d36.jpg
dc8336b419c9856dbc117d0f89dfb9b6.jpg

 

Are you familiar with another Texas landscape scene artist named Palmer Chrisman? I have one my Dad bought at an auction a couple of decades ago, a bluebonnet scene. They were colleagues together in the medical field. 

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Are you familiar with another Texas landscape scene artist named Palmer Chrisman? I have one my Dad bought at an auction a couple of decades ago, a bluebonnet scene. They were colleagues together in the medical field. 

No, but looks like his auction items for larger pieces go in the 1800 to 2800 range. Bluebonnets seem to always add to the price.
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I just pulled this thing out of a closet. It's a test sculpture of just some random dude I started years ago to try out a batch of Monster Clay I ordered to see what it was like. It wasn't stabile enough to hold itself up at that size and weight with no armature underneath, and I had no plan for it, it was just riffing to get the feel of it. Maybe I should figure out what it's doing and finish it somehow, even though it's a little gritty from storage in that dirtyass closet. I keep trying to get myself to do some more stuff, but I suck at motivation.

monsterclaydude.jpg

 

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13 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

And you do have those colors a-poppin just like I like em. I expect riots at the exhibition.

ha, i actually did this painting with my 9 year old daughter.  trying to get her interested.  she did the fruit in the bowl at the top left, as well as the green apple in the front center.  anyway, we went pretty vivid with the blues relative to cezanne but we were making it a bit more fun.  we need to work on some depth and three dimensionality but it was a fun project and she's improving.

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[Rant, possibly not purely artistic follows. Maybe skip. :) ] A few years ago I got tapped to be President of an art club of mostly retired women, my job is largely ceremonial as well as to get arrested if somebody runs off with the club money.

They were happy having one over-wrought show a year with judges and prizes and various frippery. Cool. Nice hobby.

So the past year I've been going chainsaw-murderer on weekend shows not connected to this club, where folks show up at various places (often big breweries) and sell art as if that were their job, because it is. I made friends with lots of good younger artists, which is what my Old Lady Club needs, and occasionally encourage someone to join.

On the other hand, I talked the Old Lady Club into trying one of these brewery shows, stripped of extras, just show up and sell sell sell. They actually got into it, and we've attracted some younger people as well to become new members.

So I wake up to a chain email of Old Lady Club Officers discussing the threat of Dark Powers and Witchcraft. I mean, the only people I know who act like a witches' coven are our club officers, but apparently a new woman, about 30, probably invited by me, has applied to join. She does animal prints and portraits and Dali-esque melting object paintings. But they have decided she is Dark and a Witch and maybe that goes against club policies

I don't give a rat's ass what she believes. She shows art in one of those boring little shops full of incense and pentagrams, not exactly tied into anything deep. And the people critiquing her include some lying cheating bitches who believe any conspiracy that brushes their eardrums.

My first reaction was TGTFOutta there. But my baby, the brewery show I talked them into doing, is Sept. 16th and I wanna go there and make some fuckin money. So I limited my response to "I can't believe y'all are scared of [alleged witch of Endor.]" Then I guess if September 17th comes and this batshittery is still bubbling by then, peace out. [/Rant]

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23 minutes ago, DougO said:

Seems like it's not a real art group without at least a little bit of the cray element.

 

Hay mucho, mucho, muchisimo cray.

Some members blow up at each other and quit dramatically, others just fade off. When I stumble upon an artist who is in the Goldilocks zone of being pretty good and relatively innoffensive to the Grammaws, I invite them to join, and the vicious crones find some reason to trash the application. About the third time this has happened. First time they went back to 1623 for reasons why.

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Update:

After two days of bullshit blathering, I sent out a new email to club officers saying that this witch, excuse me, this girl convicted in The 2023 Alabama Witch Trial, had in fact passed all our artist requirements and as President I declared her IN and give her a space at the show.

Allied officer agreed with me, Queen Bee meddler who started all the witch shit did not.

Then wishy-washy officer sounded in and wishy-washed.

My plan was to force them to outvote me so I could quit the fucking club. I waited for the final show chair officer to weigh in against the witch, and I'd be free.

Meanwhile Queen Bee messaged me about how I was so Wrong! Because I wanted to tell witch she was out personally instead of letting some bitch like Queen Bee gloat-pity her. I told Queen Bee if our witch got shot down I was gonna tell her exactly how it happened.

This was on purpose because Queen Bee is so looped-out gullible she probably does fear the witches coming after her.

Then Show Chair (played by Kate McKinnon in the movie) roars in and dresses ME down for getting out of her lane, that it's not up to me if witch gets in the show, it's up to her, and SHE says witch is IN THE SHOW.

I apologize online while cackling maniacally IRL.

-----

But it's not over. Queen Bee was put in a box, cut off from her followers, but she did not rest. Instead she has attempted to talk smack to me via personal messages. This is like bullfighting vs your grammama. I don't want to hurt her, but it's like she doesn't even have 1994 smack-talking skills. It's the e-communication equivalent of holding a 5-year old's head and letting them swing at you.

After several exchanges, she has calmed down to where I asked her if she'd just rather talk on the phone. If she does, I'll just let her scream herself to sleep.

Edited by RDCanecutter
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It took until Friday but I finally got some paint on the brush this week.

Commissions for a guy's lake house. Once the abstract backgrounds dry I'll goof em up with some cartoon Apes.

Halfway through the vertical one I ran out of blue, and tried to eke it out with some other colors that produced a pond scum look. Got more blue at the store, then savagely attacked it again.

Ethan1.JPG

Ethan2.JPG

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15 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

Slapped those pics on my Instagram and immediately drew the attention of an NFT connoisseur and Crypto wizard. I used to avoid these accounts because they're scambots, but I just have a good feeling so I replied:

 

Screen Shot 2023-08-25 at 9.45.25 PM.png

Screen Shot 2023-08-25 at 9.49.55 PM.png

Pics of live farm animals?

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2023 was a pretty good year. I planned to make my living only by art, hit shows in the 4 main metros of Alabama, plus at least one show each in the 4 surrounding states.

As for execution, I did stay solvent doing art. Wasn't Lamborghini money, but all bills got paid. An order of magnitude better than a few years ago when I was existing via online sales only.

Made it to 3 of the 4 metros. Didn't hit a single show out of state. Partially that's because there were enough good shows in Birmingham, that I'd commit to one then find out there'd be a great one the same weekend in Nashville or Atlanta.

Barely got things rolling at my print-on-demand sites. Did some commissions, though I'm slow as hell as some of y'all know.

Goal for 2024 is to go to the same amount of shows, but bigger, better ones. There's a whole snooty level of shows I'd avoided because they want things like "resumes" and yo like I'm a pirate, but if that is where the gold-laden galleons anchor, lo there shall we raid. Will require investments in much nicer booth space gear, but so be it. I'll need to get after it and produce more large works. Hope to keep doing some big brewery shows, and maybe drop the smaller more arts and craft ones.

As for Geographic Conquests, probably more reasonable just to aim at possible day-trips to Atlanta and Nashville, get to know people in those circuits.

Selling merch online via print-on-demand seems like the best way to scale up exponentially without the time-consuming costs of Etsy. They sell and ship it and I get my mailbox money without touching it. It's mailbox beer-money so far. Artists dream of selling $1,000+ a month via these site, and I doubt most do. Maybe I should date Taylor Swift.

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  • 2 months later...

Today I was clearing off years of coral-reef-like accretions on a studio shelf, and found $300 worth of perfectly good art that had been sitting there buried for 6 years.

Most of it was prints that I had buried on purpose, because I ordered them from a print-on-demand place who packed them poorly, and they arrived bent. I had deliberately covered them with weight to flatten them out. Then, like a squirrel burying too many acorns, I forgot they were there.

Back then I was mostly selling online, and shipping prints involved lots of packing and postage, probably adding to my ease of forgetting them. Now I mostly sell face to face so they are good to go (the years + weight flattened them back out.) 

It's like a Robert Earl Keen song, with art.

 

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On 1/9/2024 at 7:31 PM, RDCanecutter said:

2023 was a pretty good year. I planned to make my living only by art, hit shows in the 4 main metros of Alabama, plus at least one show each in the 4 surrounding states.

As for execution, I did stay solvent doing art. Wasn't Lamborghini money, but all bills got paid. An order of magnitude better than a few years ago when I was existing via online sales only.

Made it to 3 of the 4 metros. Didn't hit a single show out of state. Partially that's because there were enough good shows in Birmingham, that I'd commit to one then find out there'd be a great one the same weekend in Nashville or Atlanta.

Barely got things rolling at my print-on-demand sites. Did some commissions, though I'm slow as hell as some of y'all know.

Goal for 2024 is to go to the same amount of shows, but bigger, better ones. There's a whole snooty level of shows I'd avoided because they want things like "resumes" and yo like I'm a pirate, but if that is where the gold-laden galleons anchor, lo there shall we raid. Will require investments in much nicer booth space gear, but so be it. I'll need to get after it and produce more large works. Hope to keep doing some big brewery shows, and maybe drop the smaller more arts and craft ones.

As for Geographic Conquests, probably more reasonable just to aim at possible day-trips to Atlanta and Nashville, get to know people in those circuits.

Selling merch online via print-on-demand seems like the best way to scale up exponentially without the time-consuming costs of Etsy. They sell and ship it and I get my mailbox money without touching it. It's mailbox beer-money so far. Artists dream of selling $1,000+ a month via these site, and I doubt most do. Maybe I should date Taylor Swift.

How is this all going for FY25?

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50 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

How is this all going for FY25?

Pretty slow so far to be honest. I expected the cold months to be show-less and focused on production and living off savings. March is starting to loosen up with two shows in the bag so far. I am trying to set up a double-header for the coming weekend. April is mostly booked.

Bills are getting paid, just not by the margins I'd like. It seems worse than it is because I have been paying vendor fees for shows that are two months out, plus the new art mostly has not had time to sell yet. Last year was the same about this time.

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3 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

Pretty slow so far to be honest. I expected the cold months to be show-less and focused on production and living off savings. March is starting to loosen up with two shows in the bag so far. I am trying to set up a double-header for the coming weekend. April is mostly booked.

Bills are getting paid, just not by the margins I'd like. It seems worse than it is because I have been paying vendor fees for shows that are two months out, plus the new art mostly has not had time to sell yet. Last year was the same about this time.

Post your venmo and I'll send you $100 as your micro-patron for the month of March.

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1 minute ago, BeardIP said:

Post your venmo and I'll send you $100 as your micro-patron for the month of March.

Thanks! No worries. I'll sell you $100 worth of art if you'd like some. We got paintings, drawings, and prints. 

https://www.facebook.com/TheWalterMooreApeSeries

Records of past years tell me to expect 3/4 of new art to sell per year at shows so I am calm about it. The ghetto life was back when I was selling online and had to produce 7 pieces to sell 1 per year. That was good for building art muscles.

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1 hour ago, RDCanecutter said:

Thanks! No worries. I'll sell you $100 worth of art if you'd like some. We got paintings, drawings, and prints. 

https://www.facebook.com/TheWalterMooreApeSeries

Records of past years tell me to expect 3/4 of new art to sell per year at shows so I am calm about it. The ghetto life was back when I was selling online and had to produce 7 pieces to sell 1 per year. That was good for building art muscles.

I don't have a facebook account so I get paywalled of sorts when I click that link. Why don't I buy $100 of art and you can donate it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Richard Serra, sculptor of massive steel curves that looked like pieces of ships under construction, passed away recently.

In 1981, Serra was on a flight from NYC to Madrid to oversee an installation. I was on that same flight. I was his neighbor on the starboard side.

At the time I was in peak Jethro Bodine please-pass-the-jelly mode, 20-going-on-14, no doubt annoying the living shit out of a famously grumpy man. "HI I'M RDCANECUTTER FROM SOGGY BOTTOM ALABAMMY." "Yeah I'm Richard Serra." (zero knowledge of who that was.) "HI MR. SERRA THIS IS MY FIRST AIRPLANE RIDE CAN I SWAP TO THE WINDOW SEAT WHILE WE TAKE OFF?" "No."

We actually got along after I settled down, and looking back, knowing how he could be, I realize he was being really nice to me.

"Mr. Serra I wanna be an artist too."

"Really? What kind of artist?"

"I'm studying graphic design."

"You're never gonna be an artist. Graphic Design isn't art. That's like studying Journalism and calling yourself a writer."

"But but but I need to pay my bills..."

"Pay your bills with any old job and do real art after work. Me, I drove a truck for years. I didn't do Graphic Design."

That morning we were coming in low over the fields outside Madrid. He said that central Spain always reminded him of Iowa.

 

Months later when I was back at school, I told another art professor I'd met Richard Serra.

"Richard Serra! One of his pieces fell over and killed a man!"

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