Creating Art Archives - Page 6 of 18 - Donald S. Kolberg Visual Artist and Sculptor

Art, Coffee, Tea and Blogs

This year has started off busy for me. My sculpture Blue Boy is being exhibited at the Marjorie Morrison Sculpture Biennial in La.

I am part of a group show at the Casements, the Rockefeller House, Ormond Beach Fl. The opening reception is February 5th. You can see the catalog for the show at http://bit.ly/1OHP0gv

I’ve launched a new web site Monoprint-Monotype.com dedicated to this unique mark making.

It is linked to my new on-line magazine Monoprint-Monotype and can be seen at

http://issuu.com/dskolberg/docs/monowinter2015

That’s it for now. I’ll be back with blogs and information in my next post so remember;

Imagination is never still. The marks we make are Verbs

I received a wonderful email from Robert Cook about wanting to buy one of my works for his wife. I sell on line so at first the email sounded legitimate BUT THEN… I noticed some grammar mistakes and was suddenly uneasy. I did some research and found a web site http://stopartscams.blogspot.com/ and another site with scammer names, http://kathleenmcmahon.com/info/scammer-names.html

Apparently these scammers are preying on the fact that as artist, we would love to say we sold a piece of work. Its amazing on how many people get these emails. Tell your friends, check out the web site exposing the scams and remember if it seems to good to be true IT IS!

Coffee, Tea, Art and Blogs

Another weekend made for drinking coffee, sipping tea and reading blogs (at least during the morning). This week I tended to wander a bit and came across a few interesting blogs. One of them helped to provide a title for a piece of art I’m working on. So lets go to that first

https://timeandtimeless.wordpress.com/tag/piceras/

While this may be a science subject blog I found it inspirational. The 7 Towers of PICERAS have provided me with the title Piceras 4 Energy.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698908003039

I try not to read this blog to early in the morning. Sometimes it leans a little to much toward academic and general high brow stuff. But it does get the brain working in new ways.

Here’s a continuation of science that can be used for the arts. I ended up on this site (wandering) and as a sculptor I was intrigued. What do do think?

http://www.core77.com/posts/16562/transparent-concrete-and-cement-at-world-expo-16562

One more thing before I go, there’s a weekly art paper that I think is interesting so I’ll post a link here
Its called Contemporary Artist and Art check it out.

That’s it for this week. And remember

Imagination is never still. The marks we make are Verbs!

A Secret Society on the Web

There is a sorta secret society on the web that actually is accessed outside the web. It’s a place where originality and creativity work hand in hand with community and networking. The shows are constantly in Flux (an inside joke). And the artist tend to laugh a lot. And while many of the exhibitions are created around themes just as many are un-juried. These are artists that promote interaction outside of the normal approval systems of galleries.

Okay I’m talking about mail art. And as Ray Johnson who is considered the first mail artist called it, Correspondance Art. As the name implies it is based on sending small scale original work through the mail usually to a network of other mail artists. Or like I do at times, just send pieces to people I meet in my daily life.

The artwork can consist of collage elements, rubber or artist created stamps, found objects, recycled objects, paint and just about anything that can fit in an envelope or be attached to a postcard. To the artists once its sent it is then mail art. As a precursor to cyber communities these virtual communities also span the world.

From its start in the late 50’s to the establishment of Ray’s New York Correspondance School, to the schools death on April 5, 1973 as written in Ray’s unpublished letter to the Obituary Department of the New York Times and still now throughout the world, mail art is thriving. Anyone with a mailbox and the cost of postage can participate in circumventing the commercial art market.

As Published in Wikipedia; The mail art philosophy of openness and inclusion is exemplified by the “rules” included in invitations (calls) to postal projects: a mail art show has no jury, no entry fee, there is no censorship and all works are exhibited. The original contributions are not to be returned and remain the property of the organizers, but a catalog or documentation is sent free to all the participants in exchange for their works. Although these rules are sometimes stretched, they have generally held up for four decades.

One of the most popular sites for mail artists is the International Union of Mail-Artist, IUOMA. Its variety of groups covers just about any interest. But if there’s one missing feel free to start your own group. Either way you are guarenteed to meet some of the most fascinating people on the web through Mail-Art.

Remember; Imagination is never still. The marks we make are verbs!

Don’t Loose Your Artwork to the Studio Mess

This past week I was with some friends at a local coffee shop, all right it was Panera’s, and we got on the subject of how much inventory artists have. This of course led to how do you keep track of the stuff. Not surprising most artist don’t keep track of their art or they hope their spouse or partner will magically do it for them. Personally I run about 50 50 when it comes to keeping track. At least I did until the beginning of this year. That’s when I was surprised by multiple sales of sculpture and paintings from the gallery that represents me, and while this was a great thing, I realized I didn’t have a clue as to which ones sold. I know that sounds silly but somewhere along the line the gallery and I had different names for the works. It took weeks of searching through computer files to match up the sculptures. It was then I decided that this was NOT going to happen again.

So I devised a plan to inventory my work in a coherent fashion that would not be labor intensive. After all I’m an artist and my mind tends to wander to more creative endeavors, meaning art marketing overwhelms me. You can make up a spreadsheet for this but I don’t keep a computer in my studio. Besides I thought a basic handwritten log would be a good starting point. My laptop is way to distracting. However I do try to transfer this information periodically to an Excel sheet which I’ll go over at another time.

I created a naming convention that works for me. Year-Month-Number, which looks like this 15-o6-001, (2015, June, first piece)
I place this number on the back of a work in the bottom right corner WHEN I START IT! Wherever you put it be consistent.
Now for the really hard part. Copy the number in a cheap composition book. You can add more information later.

I need to interject a small note here. YOU WILL MESS UP THE ORDER OF NUMBERS ON THE BACK OF ARTWORK. So what, its your reference, you don’t get marked on it. I wrote the same number on 3 separate works and had to go back and change them. No one laughed at me. So if it makes you feel better go ahead and list a bunch of numbers in the book now but skip a line between them. That way you can jump to the rest of the information you need to record. Let’s look at that now.

Weekly I go back to the book and next to the art works matching number I add the medium, (acrylic, oil, watercolor, etc)
Next I list the substructure, (canvas, art board, watercolor paper, etc) You can make up your own abbreviations, just be consistent.
Then I list the size which is about the last known piece of information.
I leave the title and description for last because you know the work can change overnight.
Once the work is done I write the title and size on the back.

It takes a little work but if you start now with any new work you can go back and tackle all that other stuff laying around. Remember these do not need to be in sequential order. This list is for you to inventory your work. It will be important later!

Let me know how you keep track

Imagination is never still. The marks we make are verbs!

Category: Creating Art