I Am Now 36

Coming upon my 36th year walking this earth is pretty exciting. I was one of them dirty kids you wouldn’t expect to live pass 20 and if you did you would think I would do it living in jail. Well I made it though with only a few scars, no kids and a lot of memories. A hell of a lot of memories.

I myself didn’t think I would make it this long, I never thought about what I would be doing if I got this old. I am glad I have a beautiful wife and we own a pretty decent business. We get to travel the country making and selling art. We get to see all the sites. I’m still running around like a teenager and having fun.

But ever since I hit about 25 or 27 I vowed to be as productive as I can so my time spent here on earth would make sense. I work insane hours trying to leave my mark on this world. Every waking minute is spent thinking about how I can better myself and better my career. I don’t know how much more time I am going to be given but I’m not stopping till they pry that pencil from my cold dead hands.

I joked about finally being able to date a girl who’s half my age but when I say it people tend to look at me like there’s no way I could ever land an 18 year old. But it makes me wonder how many other guys out there think the same thing as they hit the big 3-6. So here’s to all the 36 years olds, here’s to the ones that have escaped childhood and made it to grownup status, here’s to all those living the life they want to live, cheers…

Art Austin At The Domain

Four words for you, beautiful women, sexy heels, that pretty much sums up the weekend. If I died and went to heaven The Domain would be that heaven. Its an outdoor mall, nothing really special, Macy’s, Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret, oh and residences, but somehow good looking people with amazing taste gather there. This show was right up there with one of the best we have ever done and with it being the first of the season it sets the bar pretty high for 2012. Best part about this show is that we proved to the fine women of Blue Lotus that we are worth having around. Which means we get to see a little more behind the scenes of how a show is run, however, I get to move more stuff around. But fair is fair.

We started out on Thursday at about 2pm with measuring out the booth spaces, pretty easy since it was only 87 artists. Then we built up our gallery, right in front of a jumping restaurant called “NoRTH” which has a really good burger and potato fried things that were to kill for. We were at the end of a long walk from the parking garage so people had a good 2 to 3 minutes of starring at my pieces before getting into the rest of the show (note to self: request same spot in October). Then we set up the artists check-in and talked to all the artists as they came in, set-up was from 9pm to 11pm. This part was really cool since I got to speak to almost every artist at the show, which is something I only do at really slow and bad shows.

Friday, more check-in, from about 7am to 10am and since I was part of the helping crew (or more like the moving crew), I got to move more already built tents than I ever have in my 10 years of being an artist. It was all worth it though, I love to help my people. So in the middle of running around yelling at artists about where to set-up, where to park and where to move their vehicles, we got our own gallery up and running. And just in time for the games to begin.

The weekend was good, lots of sales, lots of great conversations, we met tons of great new people who love my art and had a few people from San Antonio that supported my career from the get go stop by since they now lived in Austin. It was great to see everyone doing so well. The only down side was that we couldn’t park overnight at the mall, but it was ok since the artist parking area was by a loud train and had a mocking bird tweeting more than me (twitter joke) all night. But a near by Wal-Mart held the refugee of us and another couple traveling in their RV.

Stand out moments at this show? One couple sneaking up the backside, which was a flower bed with more dog poop then you could shake a stick at, to see the huge piece we had, then coming in and quickly picking up 2 pieces inside. Another couple wanted me to prove to them I could really draw my circles freehand before leaving with a piece. Then 2 really crazy ones, a lady came in, only looked at the sign the show provides and says “Comfort, Texas, I love Comfort” then “’I’m gonna buy this piece, this piece annnnnnnd this piece” then she went on and on about how she loved Comfort. Then a lady walks by and touches a piece and says “I love this one” then walks away and her boyfriend or husband yells “you touched it, you bought it” pulls the piece off the wall and whips out enough cash to choke a horse.

Then after it was all said and done (and 975 people came into our space), I went around picking up all the duct tape we placed on the street to mark the spaces. We pulled in to load up our stuff and answered questions about our so-called amazing van (this happens everywhere we go). So lets see how the rest of the year goes, but we jumped out of the gate with a great start. Lets see how good Austin is to us when we show downtown in 3 weeks.

First Line Of Defense

First Sting, A-Team, Starters, whatever you want to call them, but they are the best of the best, cream of the crop and what we have done is no different than what everybody else does. We thought long and hard about which pieces we have that are the best of the best of the best, both in our minds and what seems to be the talk of the town in every town we go.

First of all, if we had to put all our money down on one style or series we would put it all down on our landscapes. Since we are still traveling, still on the road and still making art pieces from all the places we go (well, once we are all said and done with our kids book) we still got a Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota all ready to put circles on.

Next up is all the Polyptychs we have been trying to bust out, while also working on this book at the same time. What we did was re-do all the other landscapes we already had, except larger, and drawn on multiple canvases with empty marker.

Then we made more prints, postcards and necklaces than you can shake a stick at. The big plan is to bring people in with the big pieces, sticker shock em and bam sell them a print. Although the big pieces aren’t too expensive so a few should move too. Only time will tell and you will be able to read about it all here.

Any Advice For A New Artist?

First and foremost, I feel, as an artist, one must really love to do what they are doing. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to do. I see some people out here really trying hard for the art community to like them. They are always asking for the approval of everyone they meet and ask what needs to be changed and how they can make better art. Although if you're doing realism, or some other kind of art, and you need someone to teach you how to make your water look more "real", that’s something different.

I’m talking to the artists out there who experiment with the abstract and are in a never ending quest to make something new and original. We must always have fun, the age of the tortured soul is long gone. No one cares if you cut of your ear anymore. But on the other hand, you can be "too happy" to where it becomes a drag on people who have to put up with you.

Art is real life and real life comes with its ups and downs, you can’t run away from that, but if you're one of those people who find it hard to work or will make any excuse not to produce art, like saying “I really want to draw but I don’t have the right tools”. If its at all hard to make art, maybe art's not for you.

If you have a job and you can’t do your job, they will let you go. If you're at work and you sit there being blocked, sooner or later someone will notice and they will fire your ass. So if you can’t sit down and make art, its not because you're blocked or that you need to buy new fancier paper, no its because you need to stop and go find something else to do. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Don’t be sad, not everyone can be an artist. Its a lot of work. That’s one more thing - don’t become an artist so you can have an excuse not to work and sit around drinking all day and asking people why you can’t sell art. I have seen it way too many times. Everyone wants to blame someone or something else, but it's you my friend.

Unlimited Reproductions Rant

So one thing that has puzzled me over and over is talk about prints and reproductions and how you can’t provide an unlimited amount of them. No, you must have a limited amount or they cheapen your work. Although it always seems like its other artists who are the only ones who care or, if not artists, then teachers who like to boss around artists since they cant find a way to make a living off only their art. Oh, and I hear gallery owners do the same thing, but I have no idea because I don’t work with any gallery owners who tell their artists what to do.

Yup, you heard it all before “you gotta only have 10 prints made” or whatever. Who came up with this idea? Does it really bring value to your pieces to only provide a limited amount of prints? Why wouldn’t you want to share your pieces with as many people as you can? I would hate to have to tell someone they couldn’t buy a print because they were sold out. Does providing a print, reproduction or posters really “cheapen” your art? I see tons of posters of Starry Night being sold (I bet there are billions) and I doubt the original is ever going to be cheap enough for me to buy.

Its just one of those things that artists have done for many years and no one has questioned it. I’m sure an artist wasn’t behind the idea, it was probably some gallery or agent who wanted to say these are worth more, give me money then once they are done, they are done with the artist and they are on to the next thing. I can see that. I think as long as you like a picture you should buy it, it doesn’t de-value the original at all.

Think about a movie star or sports star, does a signature lose any value or meaning according to how many they sign? Should they only do a limited amount of signatures just to make them worth more? What about musicians who produce one song and sell it millions upon millions of times? Nope, no one looks down on them, nope they are getting silver, gold and platinum records, hell if they sell 10 million they get a diamond record (whatever the hell that means). I don’t see an artist getting a platinum reproduction of a piece any time soon.

I don’t know where this idea of art being any different than any other thing people can sell came about. How did it become that some people out there would look down upon an artist for selling their wares? Who made these stupid rules? Why is it looked down on for making a piece of art people would like?

More More Pre-Season

I have been telling people that on average we speak to about a 1000 people on any given weekend, you know, give or take. But I wanted to be sure of the numbers I speak of so I got a clicker/counter thing to count the people that come into our gallery. Since getting it a few weeks ago I haven’t talked to too many people but I’m still clicking every time I do, just to see the difference in showing and not showing.

Training huh? That’s right we are hitting some of the 27 miles of trails out here on the ranch to build up stamina to do outdoor festivals. If you have never done one of these shows, its hard work. Standing around takes a lot outta the body, many shows we do are anywhere from 10 to 12 hours, 3 or 4 days, which make for long weekends.

Now for what you came to see, another nemoptych, a large format re-do of  my Oklahoma piece.

Say Si

First event of the season is done. And what a great event to start off with, Say Si has a special place in my heart. Here’s what I wrote about it last year and my feelings are pretty much the same.

So with that said here are a few pictures I took. Hope to do it all again next year.

Here I am with award winners Linda Hardberger (who commissioned prints as gifts for Japanese dignitaries on behalf of the City of San Antonio when her husband was mayor) and former Mayor Hon. Phil Hardberger!