The ArtBiz101 Blog

Seeing the whole forest in spite of all the trees

mkregel — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:34:01 +0000

Most of you have heard the term “can’t see the forest for the trees”. What that means is that sometimes you can be too close to a problem to see the entire picture. If you are in the middle of the forest, you can’t grasp the size of the forest for all the trees blocking your view. The same holds true in many life situations whether it is business, family or personal relationships. Sometimes, in order to understand a problem, you must step way back to see all the angles. It may help to have input from friends who see the “picture” from a different point of view.
Here is a fun excercise that you can share with your kids, students, or employees in order conceptualize the “forest” and why it sometimes takes a team to see the entire picture. This works great with a small group of 5 to 6 people, but you can adapt the idea to any number. First off, you will need a large picture…a really, really LARGE picture. A wall mural or a large picture painted on butcher paper would work. Mount the picture on a wall with the middle of the picture “Nose Height” to one of the team members. Choose one of the team members to be the “lost person” in the forest. Before letting that person see the image, put a blind-fold on him/her and lead them to the wall. Have them place the tip of their nose on the picture, then remove the blindfold. Tell the “lost person” that he/she can look with their eyes, but they cannot turn their head or remove their nose from the picture. How much of the picture can they see? Can they tell what the subject of the picture actually is?
Next, allow each team member to describe 1 single point on the picture and let this continue until the person with their nose to the wall guesses the correct subject of the picture.
This excercise teaches several different things:
1. Sometimes you can be too closely involved to see that a problem exists
2. Sometimes you can be too close to a problem to understand the scope of the issue
3. Sometimes it takes a team to solve a problem. This can be family, friends or co-workers
4. Good communication skills are necessary for the team to help the “lost person” finally guess what the picture is all about

Communication skills are important to artists.

Good communication skills are hugely important in business (as well as all aspects of life) but especially where money is concerned. When a customer approaches you and asks you to make them a “blue vase”, what you see in your mind is going to be totally different from what the customer is expecting. You may be thinking a tall slender vase made for long-stem roses while your potential customer may actually be thinking about something they can put their pens and pencils into while it sits on their desk. How you both arrive at the exact same mental image requires very good communication skills.

Here is a fun excercise that we used to do in our office many years ago that helped teach us better communication skills. We had 2 identical sets of blocks. All the blocks in each set were different colors and sizes but the blocks in set 1 exactly matched the blocks in set 2. Then, two of us sat back to back with each of us having a set of blocks in front of us. One of us built a “random” structure with the blocks and tried to describe each step to the person sitting to our back. When all the blocks had been used, we got up from our desks and looked to see how closely the 2 structures resembled each other. You can quickly see how important communication is here. It was difficult to get both structures to look the same.

The same excercise can be done with pen and paper. One person draws a picture using geometric figures placed randomly on the page and tries to explain their drawing to the person sitting behind them. After 3 minutes, the pictures were placed side by side and compared.

Marshall Kregel, Dec. 2010

Oh, the joys of working for yourself

mkregel — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:34:59 +0000

So, I spent the weekend working in the pottery studio making new pieces for Christmas and Spring shows. Have about 24 hours of film editing still to do on various interviews, and have a huge stack of materials that need to be packaged and mailed out. Oh, the joys of working for yourself. You may have to work 18 hours / day, but you get to choose which 18! Plus, TGIF has a brand new meaning to the self-employed. It means there are only 2 days left in the work week.
Got new wareshelves put up next to the kilns so we can start loading the kilns, firing, and unloading this week. Have a huge backlog of firing to do and we’re really anxious to see how some of our color combinations will turn out.
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Lots of great shows coming up in Dallas and North Texas area over the next month. Am taking the camera and heading out to see how some of the artists are doing. Hope to get a few “5 minute” interviews to put on the website but I hate to bug an artist in the middle of a show. We’ll see how this works.
Each interview I do, I give the artist a copy of all the video so they can use it in their marketing or advertising. Plus, they get a copy of the completed video clips that appear on the website. They can use the same video clips and post on YouTube or whereever they feel.
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The Twitter and Facebook experiment is coming on strong. In the past month, I’ve picked up over 200 followers on Twitter and I’m following about 350 good artists and publications. Facebook is a little slower for me. At least with Twitter, I only have to punch in 140 characters. With Facebook, I feel like I need to write something more substantial.
I do know this though…I wish a lot of my phone calls were “Twitterized” down to 140 characters.

Some great artists on White Rock Studio Tour

mkregel — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:56:30 +0000

Visited great artists today – White Rock Studio Tour – http://www.martyruiz.com/ http://www.scottrent.com/ http://bothhandsstudio.com/

Connie and I went to dinner with Sue and Doug Jochum after the tour ended for the day. They are great clay artists. Their website is: http://www.jochumpottery.com

The White Rock Studio Tour continues on Sunday, Oct. 18th. Visit Scott Trent’s website (above) for map and participating artists.

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.~ Oscar Levant

Working with kids and clays takes a special patience

mkregel — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:25:07 +0000

So, I filled in for a couple of mornings at Quiggly’s Clayhouse (www.quigglys.com) to help Kirby with some students from one of the local elementary schools. Each morning, 40+ kids would show up and Kirby would work with them (in shifts) on the pottery wheels and let them make something. I gotta tell you, it takes a special person with lots of patience to work with crowds of kids this young (6 or 7 years old) and I enjoyed watching Kirby work with this crowd. It’s also fun to see him center clay on 2 wheels at THE SAME TIME, with a hand on each wheel. Then, he would help 2 kids, again at the same time, on separate wheels. Kinda like playing the piano, but with 2 keyboards side by side.
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Lots of art activities coming up this month. The White Rock Studio Tour is this coming weekend (17th and 18th) and you can find more information here: www.scottrent.com .
Scott is a contributing author to the ArtBiz101 website and a very cool metal artist.
The following weekend is the Texas Clay Fest down in Greune (pronounced GREEN), Texas. If you want to see some of the best clay artists in Texas, you gotta be there. Lots of great restaurants within the small town limits, antique shops, coffee shops, and lots of art galleries too. The clay festival is held in a large field in the middle of town.
It’s a juried show….best of the best.

New Interviews coming up…

mkregel — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:31:15 +0000

This week, I’m interviewing Kirby Carmichael, who along with his wife Kristi, built a successful ceramics business in Dallas called Quiggly’s Clayhouse. I’ve watched them struggle with the business over the past few years but they have made some great marketing and business decisions and are getting ready to open their second location in Allen, Texas. Kirby is going to sit down and talk about good and bad decisions and what they had to do to make their start-up work. It will be a great story.
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We’re shooting to have 50 or 60 artist interviews on ArtBiz101 before opening the website to any artists wishing to post video and pix of their work. It will be a busy Fall.
See you at the art shows!
Marshall

New Twitter stuff added

mkregel — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:21:14 +0000

Ok, so I broke down and got a Twitter account. Scott Trent strongly suggested I do this so I blame him. Ha! Actually, I have been reading around the web about the marketing prospects that twitter offers the artists and small business professionals. It truly is a world-wide phenomena.
With the pressure to conform to all the latest social networking opportunities, I signed up for a twitter account and waited. Oh yea, you have to write something. I said “I’m Here!”. No response. I got my wife to follow me and Scott humbly agreed to be my second follower. My sister-in-law was my third follower but I think they were “pity followers”. Smile! Just keeping me company on-line.
So, I started investigating all the artists who twitter. Hundreds of thousands! Do a twitter search for “artist”, “pottery”, “photographer” etc. and you’ll find lots of people to follow. Next, I searched out art galleries and looked at who THEY followed, and found some good artists to follow. In the meantime, I wrote and posted some more interesting comments about some of the artists I have interviewed and what was going on with the ArtBiz101 website.
Within 4 days, I had found over 150 cool artists and art organizations to follow, and had over 40 followers myself. (That’s after knocking off a few who were scamming or trying to peddle soft porn to all the new twitter users).
So, 4 days in and I have 40+ good followers and I’m on my way.
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mkregel
We have lots of stuff happening with new artist interviews, cool events, and art news.
Marshall

New interviews added!

mkregel — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:31:41 +0000

For September, I’ve added some additional segments from the Dan Coppersmith interview, plus a new interview from David Henley, Potter. Scott Trent has added a new article and will be writing occasional articles for the ArtBiz101 website. He has a great website for promoting artists and it is in the development stages now, but looks really cool! Check out his new website at: www.artistconsortium.org .

I’ve got some new artists lined up for October plus some great video for classes on Marketing your Art! David Henley will be offering some of his videos through the ArtBiz101 website, and other artist projects are in the works. It’s gonna be an exciting Fall!

Best,
Marshall Kregel, webmaster www.ArtBiz101.com

New Updates by Dan Coppersmith and David Henley

mkregel — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:29:02 +0000

I’ve added some additional video segments to Dan’s section on the website. there are many of Dan’s pictures included in the videos and you will enjoy the story about how he got started as a nature photographer. (He used to write software code for a living).
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Plus, I’ve interviewed David Henley (pottery) and will be adding those segments soon. David is a professional potter with a strong business background. He has built a successful business and does most of his sales out of his studio even though he lives fairly far into the countryside (south east of Dallas). He has a degree in business and philosophy but never really used them as he got interested in the clay arts his senior year in college. The business training has come in handy though, especially the accounting part of it, according to David.
He is an accomplished musician and is pretty handy on a computer, doing his own website and picture work.
Marshall

Great article on Jewelry artists in Fox news series

mkregel — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:45:05 +0000

I ran across a great article about jewelry artists struggling to make a living in today’s tough economy. Here is the link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,546620,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g4:r4:c0.000000:b27558040:z0

I’ve interviewed a couple of jewelry artists as part of my artist interviews project and they have some good marketing tips for getting their artwork out into the public. So far, I have 23 interviews posted on the new website and have several more people lined up in the next week. I think I will have 50 or 60 before the end of the year. At that time, I’ll open up the website to artists who want to post videos about their work and will give each artist their own page on the website. It will make an exciting addition to the project. So far, about a dozen artists have said that they would like help taking videos of their work, and of their techniques to share. There isn’t any reason we can’t have hundreds of videos on the website by this time next year. It’s just a slow process getting everything started.
Marshall, Sept. 2009

New Artist Interviews this Week!

mkregel — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:19:49 +0000

I got a chance to meet 2 new artists this week and get their interviews. Both are full-time and had great stories behind their work.
Larry Pile is a stained glass artist who also makes beautiful furniture. His studio is huge and he offers classes in stained glass. He started working with wood when he began making frames for his stained glass panels. His furniture, and his stained glass artwork sells all over the country.

Dan Coppersmith is a nature photographer and poet who does readings and illustrates his own poems. He is an author and has a recent book where he wrote all the poems and illustrated them with his photography.
Right now, we’re doing about 2 interviews / week and the program promises to get even bigger! By this fall, I’m hoping to have 50 or 60 interviews completed. These artists are willing to share their expertise on what it took to get started in the business of art. There are some great stories here! Check out the interviews at: www.artbiz101.com
Marshall Kregel