Praxis Center for Aesthetic Studies

Hi I’m Brainard Carey. I’m an educator, an author and an artist. I’ve written three books for artists – one was called Making It in The Art World, the other was called New Markets for Artists and the last is called The Art World Demystified. I’ve also shown work at the Whitney Biennial, having a show now in New York, different places, and also, I host the Yale University radio series called Lives of the Artists. I’ve interviewed over 700 artists, architects, curators, writers, about their world and how they navigate it. And today I’m going to tell you a little bit about social media training for artists. A basic strategy for social media for artists – how to use blogs, and an email list as well as various social media out there. So, to begin with here are the steps. Number one, start a blog. Whether you have one or not what I would suggest is using a blog attached to your website. So, if you have a WordPress website, you could easily attach a blog. If you have a Squarespace website or many other template-based website, which is primarily what websites are now, you should be able to attach a blog or at least link a page to it. I think it’s good to have a blog on your website. What you do on that blog and how do you use that blog? Essentially, this is how it works: You write something once a week in your blog, on Fridays, and it could be, and ideally is, anecdotal. Not necessarily about your art, but more about what you’re doing – went to a movie, got a new dog, you traveled, anything. But write a little bit about what you’re doing and with an image. So, you put an image in your blog and maybe just a few paragraphs. If you’re not really a writer, just a few paragraphs and an image from where you were. Again, it could be a book review, a movie you saw, how you feel about current events, whatever it is. But write something that’s small and points toward your art. You know, you could be talking about what you’re doing in the studio, what you’re exploring lately, but it shouldn’t always be by your art. It should be about things that you think about, that you’re interested in. So, you do this blog post let’s say once a week of 500 words or less. And then that blog post has a link that goes directly to it. So, you go to Facebook, if you’re on Facebook, and say something. Say, “This week I’ve been thinking about your dogs and cats, and I saw this movie, take a look at what I’ve written here,” and then you put a link to your blog post. That same thing could be done on twitter and other social media platforms. That could also be done on Instagram. With Instagram it would be slightly different – you’d upload the photo and then you would either put a link in the comments or have your profile link on Instagram go directly to your blog. So, this is how you share the blog. This is step one, in other words, is starting a blog, open one up writing, it once a week. Step two is sharing it to social media. And step three is how you share it to your mailing list. The way you have a mailing list is you tickle your contacts rather than just sending them all out in one email with a BCC or CC. What you should have if you have a mailing list greater than 10, is an e-marketing program. MailChimp is one of them, so is Aweber. Aweber’s what I use as I contact. I’ve used a lot of different ones – I think Aweber is a great one. MailChimp is free for the first 500. Aweber costs $20 or something like that a month. So, what you do with this service is very important. You put your emails in there, your email contacts. And it’s important for them to all be in this because when you send out an email through, an e-marketing service which you’re in control of everything, people have the chance to subscribe or unsubscribe. They can subscribe to it through your website even – which I’ll talk about in in another installment of the series. But essentially, this is the this is the last step. You send out a letter once a month to your contacts and you tell them that you’ve been writing about so-and-so. It’s friendly. It’s plain text. There’s no images in this letter you’re sending out through your newsletter service or e-marketing service – which is again MailChimp, or Aweber or similar. And you just act a little chatty, write a little, a few words that are chatting about what it is that you’re doing and then have a link to your blog. That’s the last step. And the reason you’re being chatty and sending a link to your blog is, you’re giving them content. You’re not just saying this is my new work or waiting for something to happen like a show or something big. You can write about your work and of course link to it and send that to them. But the idea is that everybody that subscribes to by email, everybody that’s interested in you in social media, and even the people who don’t know you on social media now become interested because you’re writing about interesting things that they like. They like your voice. And that drives traffic to your website, because your blog is on your website so people have a reason to look at your art every single week. That’s the strategy. To summarize, number one, open a blog on your website. This should be one page in your website. Number two, post that link to your blog post at least once a week, on your various social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and similar. Then number three, using an e-marketing service to send out emails to your list once a month, and you should be slowly collecting more and more names which I’ll talk about in another episode. But send out a letter once a month, be chatty and give a link to your blog. This is the whole story with social media strategy initially in terms of getting the word out there. I’ll talk about more steps and more advanced steps in the following episodes. I wish you the best with your art and your studio practice. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here.

Hello my name is Brainard Carey and today I’m going to present a short talk – a video for you on how to price your work or price your paintings or other visual art. I’m an artist and an author. I’ve written this book New Markets for Artists, which came out in 2012. And I’ve written this book, which is the best seller Making It in The Art World which came out in 2011. Both books are designed to help artists build their professional careers, whatever that means, in the visual arts. And in the case of the book what that means is doing what you need to do in order to be a professional artist. It has (it means) different things to different artists because artists have all kinds of mediums and ways of working in different parts of the world. But essentially it means, for the purpose of the book, developing your professional career – doing what it takes to be a professional artist. Today we’re talking about how to price your paintings, how to price your artwork. To begin with, if this is a question for you, not knowing how to price or where to begin pricing it, then most likely you haven’t sold very much artwork. If you haven’t sold very much artwork and one of the questions that you’re having if you’re involved in open studio or an art fair or any process – like people coming into your studio where they may be interested in purchasing work. If you need to price work now, what you have to keep in mind is that what’s very important is that you sell the work. It’s important to come up with the right price – not too high or too low ideally. But essentially, you’re an artist that wants to sell work and this is the time when you’re trying to figure out what prices should be so that it will sell well. So, one way to figure this out is to look at what other artists are selling their work for. If you’re showing work, let’s say, in an open studio or a cooperative gallery or some situation like that, you can look at what other people are selling work for. And that’s a barometer of the general range that your work should be in. Also, it’s okay to bargain with people somebody comes into your studio and they’re interested in your work or they’re interested in commissioning a work from you. What you have to do is decide how much it is that you want for it, ideally, and I would go high. Let’s say he looked around other artists who are selling work like yours and have the same history as you, same history of sales, then perhaps you can go a little bit higher than that. And tell the person in your studio who wants to commission something or buying something that this is the price. It’s $5000. If they gawk at that and say that’s a little too much for me, then the way to get a sale is to either lower or say to them, “Look for $200 this is yours.” And they’ll say “For $200? What do you mean?” “For $200 down – as a down payment you can own this work and we can work out payments however you want. If you want to pay me a $100 a month, whatever it is.” You give them the painting or commission when it’s done. So that’s one way to manage a sale. It’s to start high. If people are surprised by it, sell it to and offer to sell it to them in time, over the course of time. And ask for a very small down payment to begin with. Another way to think about selling your work is developing a real market for it. And you know the old saying is always whatever the market bears, you know, whatever people would pay for your work is what it’s worth. It’s what it should be sold at. So how do we know what the market will bear – what that means is what have you sold work for before. If through your studio you sold a few paintings for $500, then that’s what the market will bear. Another way to find that out, in a very real sense, is by artists like Abby Ryan and others who are selling work on eBay all the time. I talk about this a lot in my book. I’m not saying eBay is for everybody but it is a very real market. So, she would put up painting every day at D-Day – very small painting, 4×4 inches, for sale. The first year, first several months, some would sell, some wouldn’t. And it would sell for very little, under $100. As it grew and she kept posting every day – this is like over two, three hundred postings a year – which is pretty impressive, what happened is, people started buying them. And when people started buying them and the cost went up and they were spending $200 or $300 on a painting that was the market value. And the reason that was a very real market value is because other people started spending $300 for paintings or $400 – it would stay that value. So, every day she put up a painting, it would be for that price. Eventually what happened with her is, after two or three years the paintings started selling for $700 or $800. And to this day that’s about their market price. That’s what they all sell for every day. Because she’s established a real market on eBay. So, in conclusion how to price your work, it’s something that is very individual. But there is a real economy out there. And there are real buyers out there. So, if you’re about to have a show whether it’s a cooperative gallery, regular gallery or non-profit space, your studio, studio tour or anything like that, look at what other people are selling work for. Not what they’re asking for. Have they sold work before for that price? And in general, bring people into your studio, ask for more and see if they’re interested. The line to use is, “Would you like to own this work?” If people are interested, if they say “Yeah, but I can’t afford it,” say, “Well I’ll work something out with you.” The piece is $2000, but you can have it for $200.” Again, as I was saying, you offer them a payment plan of $200 down. That’s the other way to resolve pricing issues and whether or not people can afford it. Thank you for listening today. You can ask questions if you like. You can like the Facebook page that’s down below and ask questions on there. My name is Brainard Carey and thank you for listening today. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here.

In Summary Let’s summarize how I prepared for the MONA project on Kickstarter. I made a simple MONA website with a small text block and a few widgets. I also revamped my regular artist website with a similar look of minimal text, a few links, and the “like” and “tweet” buttons. Free from advertising and other clutter, my pages were clean and easy to navigate. My primary goal was not to share content, but to get many “likes” on Facebook, and most of all, gather more email addresses. The email signup form is incredibly important, especially if you keep it simple so subscribers need only provide their email addresses and hit Submit. Having this kind of email marketing service is very helpful. It allows all persons interested in your work to receive updated information from you in a single email blast. That is the basic skeleton and summary of what I did online, but of course to be successful I also had to consider the content of the MONA project and recruit James Franco. There are many steps to making a project like this successful and the best it can be, and we knew we wanted to broadcast it inside and out of the art world. James Franco was essential in achieving that goal because of his popular appeal, and his mind for art. He has a way of thinking and working with art that is similar to ours, and we knew he would communicate to casual and main- stream art observers as well as those outside the world of art. We were so happy that he liked our idea, and his contribution fit perfectly with our project, just as we thought it would. The Final Statistics The Kickstarter project for MONA ended on August 31, 2011. By the end it had raised $16,000, had 1,012 new subscribers on the email list, got 2,780 Facebook “likes,” and got 165 project backers. Those are pretty incredible statistics for a ninety-day project. It also generated over forty articles in the press and James Franco promoted the museum on Jimmy Kimmel Live! The MONA idea was a good one, of course, but tools for generating that kind of success are clearly laid out in this book for anyone to replicate. I am grateful my project created with my wife worked so well, and that I could use it as an example in this book! To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Networking All of Your Media To summarize what I have said so far pertaining to networking, there are three things to keep in mind for your artist webpage. The first is the “like” and “send” buttons from Facebook and Twitter. The second is a signup form for your mailing list that you will get when you subscribe to a paid e-marketing service like icontact (which is what I use) or mailchimp, constant contact, patronmail or another, they are all the same more or less. The third is widgets that will stream information from your Facebook and Twitter accounts, providing your page with constant updates. And, of course, you have to decide how to handle the text and image layout on your website. If you really want a lot of images on it, I would suggest embedding a slide show that you can easily update and doesn’t unnecessarily clutter the page. Try to keep your text brief, and embed active links to essential information about you or your work. All You Need Is Updates That is really all you need to connect and automate your website to your social platforms. You can change the text on your website every now and then to reflect current news, but for most part the website will update itself using your widgets. There are several other sites which let you share and post information and you can always add new widgets to your website to include these as well, but I like a minimal look, as it makes content and aesthetic easier to maintain. Clean and Simple Single Page Website Pages that have minimal clickable buttons and links are nice because they are easy to navigate. Think of the Google homepage. It really only has one box, the Search Bar, that a user can interact with. I believe we all want our pages to be that elegant. Google is a good example of how less can be more on a website. I say this because I think that part of my project’s success was due to how easy it was to share online. Our art website was not just minimal, it was easy to read, and because it was also interesting, people “liked it,” shared it, and tweeted it. News Media Design on the Web Your webpage should have a similar design as that of an online news article. If you look at an article from the Huffington Post, or any other major online news publication, it only includes the article and relevant links embedded into the text, a few select photos, and “like” and “tweet” buttons at the top. Sometimes the all-inclusive “add this” button pops up to let you conveniently select which of the growing supply of networks you want to share the article on. The point is that these news sites are designed to be read and shared, and that’s how your site should be as well. You want people to understand who you are, what your project is, and what things they need to click on your page in less than a minute. The simplicity of this model means there’s actually less for you to do when you make your page. The hard part is having the restraint to not include unnecessary pictures and links. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

What We Want from Our Website There are three things we want from our website viewers. We want their email addresses so that we can keep in touch and let them know about future projects; we want their financial support; and we want them to spread the word about our project on Facebook and Twitter. To help facilitate these activities, we made new webpages. One was for MONA, and the other was for Praxis, our general art page. Then we opened new Twitter and Facebook pages for Praxis. The next thing we needed was an e-marketing program. E-marketing  Program E-marketing programs, of which there are many, are used to create signup forms on your website so people can join your mailing list. When they do this, their information is stored in a database and they will be included in future newsletters and updates. These programs are very important because you want to be able to collect contact information from potential customers who visit your site. Artists’ websites are usually a bit of a mess, with lots of old work, and typically a homepage that hasn’t been updated in a while. I have an idea to solve this problem, a kind of web 2.0 artist homepage for the 3.0 world. And it’s really much easier than current website models. New Web Design with “Like” Buttons The MONA website that I designed with my wife is very simple. There is some brief text describing the museum, and above are two widgets and a simple graphic of the acronym MONA. One is a Facebook widget that allows other people to “like” and share the website on their Facebook page.  The other is a Twitter widget that lets them tweet about your website directly.  The page also has a  sign-up form which  I keep extremely simple so that subscribers only have to enter their email and click the “Submit” button. Additional things like email verification and more personal information is unnecessary, and may discourage people from signing up. Simple Signup Form The sign-up form is super simple, even elegant, and there are no other photos on the site—just a link to the Kickstarter project. The website’s simplicity is important because there is little to navigate, and just a few elements for sharing , so it works perfectly. People can read the entire page in less than a minute and they can post, like and tweet it without leaving the page. The only other thing they can do, also without leaving the page, is sign up for the email list. You can still see the site by going to thenonvisiblemuseum.com. However, at the time of this reading, the site has been redesigned by the Saatchi & Saatchi, who did it for me pro bono, and incorporates much of what I just said above. A New Artist Website, Too Another similar site focuses on all the work I do with my wife (twobodies.com). You may already have your own site or are thinking of building one soon. Twobodies and MONA have similar web designs—few to no pictures, the same “like” and “tweet” buttons, a sign-up form, and some descriptive text—but the big difference with Twobodies was four large live-feed widgets which constantly update and displayed portions of my Facebook page. On Twobodies, these four rectangular widgets sit next to each other on the bottom of the page showing new information all the time. One of the widgets is a Kickstarter widget tracking the progress of the project, and others are for Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Now, whenever I post something new to my social networking ac- counts, my Twobodies homepage updates automatically. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

James Franco We thought James Franco would be good, as he has done some very high-concept artwork himself. We decided to email him a short note inviting him to be in our video. The email was very brief, and there were no images or website link. We simply asked him if he would talk to us about being in our project. After a few days he wrote back, saying that his assistant would set up a meeting. Arranging a Meeting That meeting took over a month to plan, but he was and is a very busy actor and artist. Finally, we had a lunchtime meeting with him at a small cafe. He was dressed very casually and so were we. We only had about thirty minutes of his time, so after initial pleasantries, we told him our idea. We explained that if someone bought a piece of art, they would actually get a card in the mail with a description on it, which they could then put on their wall. If someone asked, or if the new art owner wanted to show the work, he or she could use the description on the card to talk about the art. James understood the idea and liked it. He told us that it made him think of film projects he has wanted to do, and maybe we could use those for our museum promotion. We liked that idea, and he told us about a film he wanted to make that never happened for several reasons. He agreed to make a five-minute video describing our museum and his movie project for our Kickstarter promotion. We were super excited. Making the Video After he made the video of himself describing the work, we edited it and submitted it to Kickstarter. A word of caution here: Kickstarter is not YouTube, and when you propose a project to them they can accept or reject it. If your proposal gets rejected, as our first one (before MONA) did, don’t lose heart. Try again and make your rewards more interesting. When MONA was accepted, we began writing out our descriptions of the museum for our rewards. The following things we did to prepare the project for launch are things you need to consider for your own work, even if you are not fundraising or selling at the moment. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

All-or-Nothing Funding Let’s say you are a musician and you want to make a CD, that will cost about $4,000 dollars to produce. Your Kickstarter video might be some creative form of you talking about your music and maybe playing a song. You are allowed ninety days or less to raise money. If at the end of ninety days only $3,500 is pledged, the project’s financial goal has not been reached and you will get nothing. The reason funding is all or nothing is so that the project actually gets done well. It also ensures that the donors’ money will only be spent on successful projects. The key to any project on Kickstarter is to create interesting rewards for those who donate larger amounts of money. For example, all donors will receive a personalized thank you email from you; or those who donate $5 will receive an mp3 of one of your songs, $10 will earn them a copy of your CD, and $15 gets them tickets to one of your shows. The more creative and enticing your rewards are, the more likely people are to donate. You as a Philanthropist The easiest way to see how Kickstarter works is by exploring the website. You will see that most projects never get funded, but the ones that do get funded all have promotional angles and good rewards that make them special.  Try funding a few projects for a dollar to see how it works. In the case of non-visible art, we wanted the rewards to be the art itself. We thought we could make a video describing the museum and raise $5,000. The rewards would be descriptions of the non-visible art. For a certain donation amount, we might describe a painting of a horse in a field. That is what we wanted to do, but the challenge was deciding how to make the videos and promote the project. Promoting the Project The reason project promotion is so important is because if you just post something on Kickstarter and wait for pledges to come in, usually nothing happens. You have to tell your friends on your various social networks what you are doing. And if you are trying to raise a significant sum like $5,000 or more, you may even have to make calls. Promotion is something you must tackle and manage well. In our case, we began with deciding how to make our video. Since we didn’t actually have anything to show we thought we should both talk about the museum. As we discussed that possibility, we also thought it would help to have someone else in the video who understands what we were planning to do. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Having a Child We developed different shows and exhibits over the next few years, but we also had a child and caring for him took a great deal of our time, because we also decided to homeschool him ourselves. Being able to spend so much time with our child was magical, and it influenced our work, adding a new sense of humor and playfulness. In 2010, our child was almost ten years old and could handle more things on his own. That gave my wife and I time to launch a major new project. A New Museum The project was almost like the non-visible wounds we were kissing before,  but this time we decided to make a museum that was not visible by describing how it would look. In other words, imagine someone is giving you a tour of a museum, only you are standing outside and there are no displays or walls with art on them. The tour guide gestures to the open air, or a  blank wall, and talks about art that isn’t there, and you have to picture what the tour guide is describing in your mind. But instead of doing a performance, we wanted to talk about visual art, like paintings, sculptures or installations, so this idea grew into a tour of a non-visible art museum. The more we thought about it, the more we liked it, because we realized the art that we described would not be limited by space or material concerns of any kind. We could describe giant sculptures that were astronomically expensive or physically impossible to build. There were no limits. Sales  Strategy We liked the idea but there was the issue of sales—how could we sell art that didn’t physically exist? We wanted to sell our ideas about the visual art in such a way that people focused on the art, rather than the tour of the museum. The next step in our thinking process was to develop a way to sell the art without the actual physical product. The solution we arrived at was to use the previously mentioned kickstarter.com because it is the largest funding platform for the arts in the world. Similar to YouTube in its layout, Kickstarter allows you to upload videos describing the projects you want funding for, and viewers can pledge their donations. The catch is that you do not get these donations unless you achieve the goals stated in your video. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Art Has No Limits Artists can do all the traditional things like dance, sing, and paint, but they can also work, for example, with biologists or architects to enhance their work with new views and sensibilities. Everything influences an artist’s work, and that includes modes of exchange and commerce. Artists can have a personal impact on this as well. Especially now, with the web at their disposal, artists can use social networking media for their own agendas. The MONA story illustrates how many of these tools can be used for our artistic purposes, and how you can use them, too. Non-Visible  Wounds When we were giving out free hugs, we also gave out bandages for what we called non-visible wounds. We would ask people if they had any non-visible wounds of any kind and they would typically say no, or that they had headaches, stomachaches, heartaches, or other internal wounds of some kind. For those with heartache, we put Band-Aids on or near their hearts and give them motherly kisses on the bandage itself. Community Looking back on it now, those Saturday offerings were a great way of meeting people and sharing art. Everyone who came into our small 200-square-foot storefront for a hug or bandage was also exposed to the art decorating our walls. Artists do all kinds of things to get people into their studios (like having a party and giving away food and drink), but whatever you do, getting new visitors helps you grow. If you are not meeting new people whenever possible, there will be fewer new opportunities presenting themselves. The beginning of the Museum of Non-Visible Art story has its seeds in our first event that brought people into our studio for the non-visible bandage. Thanks to having good visibility in our storefront, we made many friends new friends this way. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

How We Did It The story I am going to tell is about an idea my wife and I had for a non-visible museum. We not only sold a lot of art, but we improved our art careers dramatically and got international and national media coverage. You, too, can try many of the things we did to promote this project. This chapter assumes that you understand the basics of social networks, and if you do not know how to build web pages and manipulate HTML code a bit, you will have to talk to your web designer to understand some of what I’ll be describing. The Beginning The idea of a non-visible museum was conceived in 1999 and 2000 when my wife and I met. We were artists living illegally in a storefront in the East. We had begun a project where we gave out free hugs, foot washings, and bandages for non-visible wounds to the public. We opened the storefront every Saturday and offered those services. People liked our services and asked why we were providing them, and we always replied that it was because we were artists who wanted to do this. That was the truth. As an artist, you can really do whatever you want. When we told people who we were they seemed to understand. People assume that artists have ideas and motives that they may not understand and give you what has become known as an “artistic license.” Artistic License Clearly, my wife and I were taking artistic license by offering hugs to people. Of course, the hugs were not the only art we were creating; we also made paintings, drawings, and whatever else we wanted to experiment with. For starters, knowing you have artistic license to do anything you want will help you succeed. It’s incredible how much latitude you have as an artist. My wife and I once interviewed Vito Acconci, a great artist and very interesting thinker, who told us that art, unlike science or math, is the only field of interest that is non-field, meaning that it can incorporate anything. In other fields, there are limits to what can be brought in to study and influence things within the field, but art is limitless. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Ideas Are Needed I am not saying you need to be a software developer, but any idea you may have that could change the way we communicate through art can be game changing if you take it seriously. The art world is small compared to something like the world of health care or academia. There is usually very little funding for the arts. Look at a visionary project like Kickstarter.com. That was a game-changing idea. It was simple: make a pitch, give different “rewards” like artwork to investors, and hope you get enough interest to fund your dream. The New Funding Paradigm Incredibly, they started in 2009, and as of 2010, they were already the largest funding platform for artists in the world. Kickstarter.com is a wonderful place to go to look for more visionary ideas, and is also a wonderful example of how to creatively build a business that helps artists share their work and raises money for them. Even if you do not con- sider yourself an entrepreneur, you’ve probably had ideas before that you thought could be profitable. Your ideas are not selfish or crass or not possible or long-shots, just look at Kickstarter.com and you’ll see that a good business idea can help everyone. The Non-Visible Museum / the Kickstarter Project I Did with My Wife In 2011, my wife and I started an art project called MONA, the Non-Visible Museum of Art. My wife and I do all our work together and the projects are usually high-concept art. For the purposes of this book, the story of how I raised over $10,000 in a week with an online art presentation will be both a course in how social media is used, and a course in the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) movement in art. What I describe may sound unusual or impractical to some, and you might have a hard time imagining how your artwork fits into this model, but you can use it to share your art with the world. Social networking, for all its pros and cons, is at the very least a giant game of show and tell, and as an artist, showing your work and telling a bit about it is what this book is a guide for. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Chapter 14 New Frontiers: The Non-Visible Museum New methods of online communication keep emerging, and you can also invent one yourself. The current forms of communication continue to undergo revisions that are often necessary, and we are all challenged to use these updated versions. Learn the Code This is a last word on social networks in the Art World’s final frontier; a hyper-complex world of algorithms that determine how we communicate online, changing based on which services we use, or news sources we read. Understanding how new systems are written is the code, like in The Matrix. We must all learn how to speak this new language and adapt along with it if we do not want the systems to rule us. If you are reading this book, you are aware of online social networks and may be using them. They are part of your language now, and that language will be used more and more. I am sure that parts of what I’ve said in this book are dated already because things on the Internet change so fast. There will be new online games, new ways of sharing information, new apps for your smart phone, and much more that will effect how your work is communicated to the public. You can develop a stance on many of these new ideas, such as being a student forever, or being opposed to new forms, or limiting your time on new formats or even being an entrepreneur or pioneer in the field. Micro-Entrepreneurs Of course I fall on the side of being a type of entrepreneur, or the path of the Do-It-Yourself artists, but this is wide open territory. A project I did with my wife that describes one new frontier, is coming up. Online business practices are constantly being revised and will most likely continue to do so. That means you are on the frontline as a creative person and an artist with the chance to do something potentially amazing and historic. From creating new applications that can work on smart phones and tablets, to new ways for the millions of online consumers to see and buy your artwork, the way the world connects through the Internet continues to evolve. The people who create these new systems are pioneers because we all want better ways to share and communicate. Ironically, it seems an interactive touchscreen is one of the best ways to accomplish that. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

How the Museum Used the Statement How the museum uses the statement is also important. In my case, they presented it in catalog text, which provided a way to talk about the work that had some humor, and also explained that the work is about changing the way we feel and how we function. You can see from this example how a curator uses and interprets a statement for their own reasons. This is why it is important to have a piece of writing they can draw from. The Application Process Statements also help with your applications. They are often necessary when submitting images to a juried show or for a prize, though in this case, their function is slightly different. Here’s how a jury works, in case you’ve ever wondered. First, all the artist’s work is organized in a projected display that the jury views in a dark room. Generally, there is a moderator in charge of organizing the images and identifying the artist to the jury. The Jury Waits for You Before the next artist’s images are projected, the moderator hands out copies of the artist’s application to the jury and verbally introduces the artist, saying something like, “The next artist is X, and I will read his/her statement.” Then the moderator reads the artist’s statement. This is an important scene to visualize and understand because at this moment the jury isn’t looking at the images yet and will be solely focused on the statement. After hearing the statement, the jury will already have a preconceived notion about what they are going to see, and a bias for or against that artist. That is how powerful the statement is in juries. Your Statement is 90 Percent of the Excitement Where juries are concerned, it may be better to have no statement at all instead of a mediocre one that risks making a bad first impression. After your statement is read, you want them to feel excited to see your work, not confused about what your art is. Therefore, your statement should be very clear and enticing, the same way the beginning of a good article or book will draw in the reader. If you can elicit a feeling of, “Wow, that sounds beautiful,” or, “That sounds scary and intense, I hope I can handle it!,” you’ve done a good job. You are simply trying to get them to look forward to your images. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Why That Statement Works You can probably see what is happening here. Instead of talking about love, we are talking about our systems or bodies, and using terms like shareware and viruses to talk about our art. We are also not saying exactly why we are giving hugs and foot-washings, other than to remove the viruses in other systems. This is, of course, all a way to say we are trying to make the world a happier place one person at a time through hugs and foot-washings. Myth Making and Being Sincere This type of statement is similar to Joseph Beuys’s. It is an analogy for how we work. You could write a statement like this no matter what your technique or medium is. Try using other terminology, like gaming slang, or anything else with its own special vocabulary. What is also interesting is that when a curator reads the statement or prints it for an event, they have to put it in their own words. The next section demon- strates how a curator used our statement to explain our work during our show at the Whitney Museum Biennial. How a Curator Uses the Statement The curator Debra Singer wrote the following in the museum catalog: For the three years, Delia Bajo and Brainard Carey, who form the two-person art and performance collaborative, Praxis, have used their storefront East Village studio in New York City to stage weekly afternoon events.  As part of their  New Economy project, this husband-and-wife team has offered every  Saturday a menu of four free services from which visitors and passersby may choose: foot washes, hugs, Band-Aid applications to help heal visible or non-visible wounds, and gifts of one-dollar bills. Using the rhetoric of systems management, Praxis describes itself as a “software development team” that uses the bodies of Bajo and Carey as hosts to test their operating systems. By receiving the benefits of The New Economy Project, participants become a part of Praxis’s performance, and so choose to “download” the “shareware” created by Bajo and Carey, thereby integrating the altruistic spirit of Praxis into their own “systems.” Though Praxis’s language is contemporary, the character of its project draws on strategies from experimental performance art of the 1960s and ‘70s. Through direct, yet intimate interactions with the public, for example, the New Economy project recalls the activities of Fluxus, the radical network of visionary artists who sought to change political, social, as well as aesthetic perception through performances that were often  absurd  and shocking in appearance, yet historically pivotal  at the same time. It also recalls the ideas of the art- ist and influential teacher Joseph Beuys, whose notion of “social sculpture” substituted the traditional understanding of sculpture, and art more generally, as fixed material objects for the definition of ephemeral actions and processes that could transform everyday lives. In analogous ways, Praxis, through their interactive, nurturing performances, offers alternative modes of economic and social exchange that serve as a comforting antidote to the potentially alienating effects of today’s world that is often dominated by technology and consumerism. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

My First Statement When my wife and I first began working together, our idea was to give out hugs through our storefront in the East Village in New York City. When we applied to shows we also needed an artist statement, and since we had just fallen in love and were using art to share that love, we considered using love or spirituality in the statement. Ultimately though, we decided not to use “love” or “spirituality,” not because they didn’t apply, but because the words are overused, are too nonspecific, and would probably not help the viewer understand what we were doing. Instead, we made up an analogy, using the language of software developers, which served our purpose. Here is the statement my wife and I wrote about our art work which involved giving out hugs and washing feet, in the third person: Manifesto/Statement of Praxis Praxis Software Development Team Similar to the synapses occurring throughout our brains, the spaces between the neurons where nerve impulses are transmitted, the software team creates the synthetic equivalent of the chemical substance serotonin, which bridges those gaps. It is the mechanism that creates the spark and connection that lets us log-on, so to speak, with our limbs and higher functions. It is not the acts or performances that are central, but the software that is created by the practice and ongoing quality of the documented exchanges. The software that they manufacture is designed to make new paths for our own hardwired hardware within our systems which seek additional programming for smoother, faster, and more elegant operation. Software Development Designing a new operating system; Praxis OS 33.1 Through weekly demonstrations at the Tenth Street Studio, the software is revealed, so that others can download the shareware or integrate the program into their own operating systems, which is the well-known and popular central nervous system. Once it has been installed successfully, it quickly becomes a beneficial virus that multiplies and begins an overhaul of current systems creating a new parallel operating system within the old one, which is more flexible and can share information with enhanced ability. As a software development team, they use their own systems as experimental guides when inventing or altering their new OS. Developers Bajo and Carey found, through connecting their systems, a new virus-like activity which was beneficial to both systems, and soon they began deleting all other programming that previously assisted them, such as dairy products, alcohol, tobacco, drugs and caffeine. Their goal is to create an OS that will rival Windows or Mac X. This new system is built on a more organic model that incorporates artificial intelligence into our systems which, combined with the original and genuine model, creates a performance that runs extremely smooth with little or no crashes, and only a few bugs. When fully engaged, this OS will act as a fast igniter and stimulator so the human CNS will have an easier time encountering other systems with various programs and viruses that sometimes makes exchanges of information awkward, violent, and prone to crashes and disappointment. With Praxis OS 33.1, crashes are welcome, and in most cases, automatically self-repairing. As this new OS replicates itself all over the world, centers will be set up where new and old users can update, download, and log on.   To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Survival and Trauma As an artist, Beuys often used materials like felt and animal fat. To interpret what he was trying to say with his work was not easy,  but after reading this story, stacks of felt, a chair with animal fat, and a sled, suddenly have a very clear meaning about life, death, and the experience of being saved. Looking back at his career and life, we can see he was actually creating a sort of mythology around who he was. That would not be very interesting if he wasn’t also doing work that challenged our sensibilities and made us think. What Will You Write? Your artist statement could be like either of the ones I just mentioned, or it could be something completely different. The main thing to keep in mind is that it must be easy to understand and exciting. If your writing skills aren’t great, you would be wise to have a writer help you. Even writers need editors to help them present their ideas in the best way possible, so if you want a good statement and are struggling on your own, ask for help. Have a writer read this chapter and then discuss different possibilities with them. It is very important to have a great statement because, as a former gallery owner, I have seen how this first impression can make or break an artist’s proposal. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Write with Intrigue and Mystery Here is a statement by artist Joseph Beuys: Had it not been for the Tartars I would not be alive today. They were the nomads of the Crimea, in what was then no man’s land between the Russian and German fronts, and favored neither side. I had already struck up a good relationship with them, and often wandered off to sit with them. ‘Du nix njemcky’ they would say, ‘du Tartar,’ and try to persuade me to join their clan. Their nomadic ways attracted me of course, although by that time their movements had been restricted.  Yet it was they who discovered me in the snow after the crash, when the German search parties had given up. I was still unconscious then and only came round completely after twelve days or so, and by then I was back in a German field hospital. So the memories I have of that time are images that penetrated my consciousness. The last thing I remember was that it was too late to jump, too late for the parachutes to open. That must have been a couple of seconds before hitting the ground.  Luckily,  I was not strapped in – I always preferred free movement to safety belts . . . My friend was strapped in and he was atomized on impact—there was almost nothing to be found of him afterwards. But I must have shot through the wind- screen as it flew back at the same speed as the plane hit the ground, and that saved me, though I had bad skull and jaw injuries. Then the tail flipped over and I was completely buried in the snow. That’s how the Tartars found me days later. I remember voices saying ‘Voda’ (Water), then the felt of their tents, and the dense pungent smell of cheese, fat and milk. They covered my body in fat to help it regenerate warmth, and wrapped it in felt as an insulator to keep warmth in. —Joseph Beuys Why Is That a Good Statement? The first sentence is about life and death. When I read the statement aloud during lectures, there are usually audible gasps when I read the part about the copilot being atomized on impact. Current research says that the copilot actually lived, and there were no Tartars in the region at that time, but in a dramatic piece of writing like this, no one is interested in the truth, they want to be entertained. Notice also, how the artist doesn’t describe the art itself. The story stands on its own as a memorable narrative about a transformative experience. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Write with Humor There is another artist whose statement I read recently, a Brooklynite named William Powhida. His work is often very political and narrative, and he pokes fun at the art world by pointing out hypocrisy and art scandals similar to insider trading. He is an artist and art critic at the same time. He recently had a print for sale on the website 20×200, a place where artists can sell prints. When artists submit their work, it must be accompanied by a short statement as well. The print he was selling had the word “fuck” written in different styles and colors all over it, maybe 200 times. His artist statement read: “It would make a good shower curtain too.” His sense of humor, like Marlene Dumas’, is refreshing. Reading Is Different Now We are living in an age where people scan the Internet. Unlike traditional reading, people tend to scan Internet pages quick- ly, looking for pertinent information and facts, and then move on. Your online artist statement has to be either very brief and memorable, or an extremely compelling story (whether it is fact or fiction does not matter). But like a good article or novel, the first sentence should pull the reader in. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Write Less, Write Sincerely Many artists think their statement has to be a manifesto of some kind, or a grand declaration about their work, but that is not the case. One of the best-selling artists in the world is Marlene Dumas, a contemporary painter whose work is mostly figurative. Much has been written about her work and what it means. Her well-known artist’s statement is very simple: “I paint because I am a dirty woman.” It is a wonderful statement because she is showing a sense of humor and also being slightly erotic. If you saw her images and liked them, you might read her statement and smile a bit, but it would probably not turn you off. If I were evaluating her work and read that statement, I would think she has a sense of humor and might be fun to talk with. The work itself shows how serious she is, and the statement shows her wit and hints at her personality without feeling arrogant or pretentious. However, her statement is actually much longer, closer to a poem and that was just one line in one of the most powerful statements I have ever read. The statement in its entirety is below. Woman and painting By Marlene Dumas, painter I paint because I am a woman. (It’s a logical necessity.) If painting is female and insanity is a female malady, then all women painters are mad and all male painters are women. I paint because I am an artificial blonde woman. (Brunettes have no excuse.) If all good painting is about color then bad painting is about having the wrong color. But bad things can be good excuses. As Sharon Stone said,  “Being blonde is a great excuse. When you’re having a bad day you can say, I can’t help it, I’m just feeling very blonde today.” I paint because I am a country girl. (Clever, talented big-city girls don’t paint.) I grew up on a wine farm in Southern Africa. When I was a child I drew bikini girls for male guests on the back of their cigarette packs. Now I am a mother and I live in another place that reminds me a lot of a farm – Amsterdam. (It’s a good place for painters.) Come to think about it, I’m still busy with those types of images and imagination. I paint because I am a religious woman. (I believe in eternity.) Painting doesn’t freeze time. It circulates and recycles time like a wheel that turns. Those who were first might well be last. Painting is a very slow art. It doesn’t travel with the speed of light. That’s why dead painters shine so bright. It’s okay to be the second sex. It’s okay to be second best. Painting is not a progressive activity. I paint because I am an old-fashioned woman. (I believe in witchcraft.) I don’t have Freudian hang-ups. A brush does not remind me of a phallic symbol. If anything, the domestic aspect of a painter’s studio (being “locked up” in a room) reminds me a bit of the housewife with her broom. If you’re a witch you will still know how to use it. Otherwise it is obvious that you’ll prefer the vacuum cleaner. I paint because I am a dirty woman. (Painting is a messy business.) It cannot ever be a pure conceptual medium. The more “conceptual” or cleaner the art, the more the head can be separated from the body, and the more the labor can be done by others. Painting is the only manual labor I do. I paint because I like to be bought and sold. Painting is about the trace of the human touch. It is about the skin of a surface. A painting is not a postcard. The content of a painting cannot be separated from the feel of its surface. Therefore, in spite of every- thing, Cézanne is more than vegetation and Picasso is more than an anus and Matisse is not a pimp. —Marlene Dumas 1993 To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.

Chapter 13 The Artist Statement It is necessary for you to have a biography and personal statement for your applications, but there are ways around the form’s rigid structures so you can write something truer to your own voice that is easier to understand. Artist Statements Artist statements are perhaps the biggest stumbling block, and one of the most misunderstood pieces of writing. I owned a gallery for several years and received a lot of letters from artists with images and artist statements. I am, and presumably, so are most people in this business, a visual person, and when I got materials that looked good to me—in other words, that the images were compelling somehow—I was excited. However, many artists lost my interest with poorly written artist statements. When I see art, I know if I am attracted to it or not. I may not know why, but like anyone, I can point and say, “I like that one the best.” It is hard for people to put into words. The cliché is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I think it is probably more than that. There are so many responses we have to an image on a conscious and unconscious level that it can be almost impossible to understand all the reasons we are attracted to it. So when an artist’s statement tries to explain an image, it can be like artlessly explaining a poem, which removes all its beauty. Bad Statements Can Be an Artist’s Undoing When I was a gallery director, I noticed that many times after reading an artist’s statement, the work that I was initially attracted to was no longer appealing. I remember one statement from an abstract painter who described his work as “lyrical abstract surrealism.” It was an awkward phrase, and the statement about how he was creating a new genre was even worse. He would have been better off saying nothing. Although I liked the work, I decided not to show it or continue the correspondence because I didn’t think I would enjoy talking to this artist whose statement was pretentious and unnecessary. To learn more about Brainard Carey and his services for artists, or to take a class from him, click here.  To join one of his free weekly webinars, click here. To download the workbook mentioned in this series, click here.