Monday, January 17, 2011

New direction

Well it's time for the 2010 barns to go somewhere else and here is the first of them. I want them to become more like canvases and have a more painterly quality and this is sort of where I am right now. I'm sure this will evolve, but I love American flag motifs, I have a bunch of stuff around the house that has the flag pattern and it's a very comforting design for me.
One thing that has me stuck is all of the directions I like to go and how to meld it all together. I like making the pendants and would like to make them into jewelry pieces, I like making raku vases and I like these barns. Somehow the turquoise raku and this new flag pattern don't seem to match. I only notice this problem when I am putting together a CD of images for a show and they ask for three or five images. How can you properly represent who you are as an artist with threee photos!? People that have a very distinct style and only make a few forms have no problem with this I'm sure, but I have a big problem trying to sort it out and show who I am (flaky artist). So I usually just send images of the barns and surprise everyone with raku and pendants. This is an organizing and planning week for me so probably not a lot will get made, we'll see......and that Etsy shop needs attention. I'm not really liking how much time is required to make an Etsy shop work, but I like having it, so on to the tedium.

13 comments:

Hollis Engley said...

Love the red, white and blue barn, Tracey. I love seeing these things evolve. As to your range of work, it's really tough to represent who you are in a few images. I make pots, still make photographs, am an occasional printmaker and I write. Jeez ... most of those things don't seem to go together. So I usually end up representing one side of what I do. If someone's really interested, they'll stick around long enough to see all your sides, if you're willing to show them.

Michèle Hastings said...

love the new barn - the flag motif really lends itself well to the form.
i agree with hollis about representing just one side of your work for a gallery or show app. when i juried into the league of nh craftsmen, i knew that they were looking for a cohesive body of work. it was a face to face jury for ceramics and i could bring 6 to 12 pieces. ceramic beads (by the league standards) are not acceptable to be juried... if you make them into jewelry then you have to go before the jewelry jury. so many rules!
i agree that etsy is an awful lot of work... i often wonder how much time the people with 1200 sales have put in to it!!!

Sister Creek Potter said...

Love the 'spunky' building! Very upbeat!

Dennis Allen said...

Talk about Americana! Very nice.

Judy Shreve said...

love the folk art - this one looks more like a building than a barn -- what size is it?

I look at some artists websites and they have different categories set up in their portfolios to accommodate their different styles of working. It seems you are more of a clay artist than a potter so it doesn't seem odd that you make lots of different stuff. I'm rambling but you know what I mean?

cindy shake said...

oooo I LIKE the Americana Barn! Keep on, keepin' on with the ETSY. Did you give yourself a target date for how long to stick it out with ETSY -might be a good idea so you don't give it up because it becomes a pain in the azz. As for the jury stuff pick your favorites, your deep down favorites and they will present as a body of work. Like the Pear, a favorite barn, one of your vessels with the sculptural heads on it and even a favorite raku pendant... I LOVE all of those pieces and it really shows how you give each piece a real "signature."

Unknown said...

Isn't it weird how our imaginations/plans/inspirations evolve? Can't wait to see what you are dreaming of and how it takes form in clay.
I admire your tenacity to deal with the show circuit. That is one advantage to Etsy,you can control your shop and it all fits!

Laura Farrow said...

That barn looks amazing Tracey! Your inner painter needs no instruction whatsoever. Work it, girl.

Judy Shreve said...

@Cindy -- you said that all so well. I was thinking along those lines -- but celebrated my husbands birthday last night -- and the brain just isn't working so well today -- lol!

cookingwithgas said...

a body of wrk.
Like you I think this is hard.
How do you speak your work in 3 slides?
We have a hard time with this and we were rejected last year for not having a baody of work- hummmmm seems i am in the wrong business.
I am more fond of the barns that have less on them- I like the quiet ones- the one from the salt kiln just talks to me.

John Bauman said...

Sounds like you handle the "too few images to represent" problem quite well.

Best, most distinctive foot forward. It's been my experience that some pots are just more photogenic than others. Try as I may, some pieces just don't translate as well to 2D.

So I just try to send the 3-5 best, most eye-catching images I can put together. Period. An application's images have about 3 seconds on average to catch the attention of the jury.

We'd like to think that the jury stops the procedure at each set of images to puzzle out the nuances. But that's just not the reality. Generally, the images whiz by -- 3 seconds for each set. Then, if some set of images does catch a juror's eye, the procedure will be slowed for questions.

I got an email box full of comments from fellow potters last summer. The occasion was upon several art fairs releasing images of the successful entrants to their shows. And the emails in my box were all amazed, semi-shocked potters, each remarking on how "un-journalistic" the images were that successfully got potters into those shows.

The comments were "I love _____ _____, but those images he sent look nothing like his work. They're beautiful images, but how could the jury possibly know what the pots really looked like from those images?!", and, more sardonically, "So, did ______ _____ enter under pottery or photography *twisterd grin*?"

I've done some interesting experiments in this regard but I've been rambling and this is your blog, not mine.

Sorry.

Paul Jessop said...

I love the new direction, union jack stuff is all the rage over here at the moment, Cushions, Bags, rugs etc: etc:

Anonymous said...

I think your onto something with this one! Looking good!