An Artist’s Life

4 March, 2019

Introspection can be a workout.

beckarahn2019-03-04T19:32:59-06:00An Artist's Life|Comments Off on Introspection can be a workout.

In the last week, I have had two grant applications, a scholarship application and an exhibition application all due. That’s not only a lot a writing, but that’s a lot of thinking.

I hope that some of those applications are successful and that I get to do some of those things I applied to. When you spend a whole lot of hours thinking and writing about something, you get pretty invested in it. I am excited about these projects and that makes the waiting all that much harder.

But as I was thinking about it, I really got a lot just out of the process of writing them. Explaining “your artistic vision, your body of work, and your professional goals. This section may be very similar to an artist statement, but should emphasize a self-reflection of your artistic and professional accomplishments to date, particularly as they relate to a clearly defined path towards the future” is a pretty major task, especially when you have to do it in only 4000 characters. To put it in perspective, that’s about 1 page or 500 words. This blog post is already 1120 characters when you get to the period at the end of this sentence.

I tend to use a lot of adjectives, so my personal method for writing these things is to just get it down and not pay attention to the character count on the first draft. Wil Wheaton refers to this as the “puke draft”, where you just get it all out. Gross maybe, but descriptive. Once I get it down, then I start again at the top and start cutting. I always write more than I need. My first draft of the answer to that example question was about 8200 characters. First I delete adjectives. I put in lots of “very” and “somewhat” and “really” which don’t need to be there.

The next pass is where you start having to make decisions about what is really telling the story and what is not. And that takes a lot of reflection. I had a whole section describing my artistic practice and the sometimes dysfunctional relationship I see between fiber art and technology. This is something I think a lot about and I respond to in my work often. I finally realized that even though that was something important to me, it wasn’t actually serving the narrative. The jurors weren’t going to get anything out of those sentences that would help them understand my work or my project. More importantly, the project I was proposing didn’t actually have anything to do with that theme specifically. Even though I wanted them to understand everything about what I do, the reality was that I needed to focus their lens. That was a couple hundred characters that could go away and only I would miss them.

I re-wrote my artist statement as part of this process. I pasted it in to answer that first question and realized that it took up half a page all by itself and I didn’t have room to get the rest of the answer in there. I rewrite my artist statement about once a year, although I am not sure that is really planned. A year seems to be about the amount of time that goes by before I read it one day and suddenly think “That’s dumb, that’s not what I do at all.” I reworked this one just a few months ago for another application, but now it was too long. So I had to look at it critically once more and figure out how to distill it down into 4 sentences instead of 16. Artist statements are hard. That’s a whole other post. But I will say that I hired my friend Judi, who is a professional writer, to work on mine with me a few years ago and it was super valuable to have totally fresh eyes on it. I have changed it since then, but it was eye-opening to watch someone else take my words and present them back to me in a new way.

I worked for a bunch of years as an arts admin. I know a lot of artists who love to make art, but really don’t like to talk about it. And I know gallery-type people who think that work should “speak for itself” and not have anything written to go with it. I have to disagree. I think I learn the most about my own work when I have to talk about it and most importantly explain it to an audience who don’t know anything at all about what I do. For this particular grant application, the jurors won’t even see photos of my work unless I make it to the semi-finals. So my words have to tell the whole story.

I got the applications done, I turned them in and I feel good. It forced me to make a plan for the near future. I had to let go of some stuff that wasn’t serving the narrative. I had to distill it down into only what was important and say why it was important. I had to be positive and proactive. You have to sell yourself in a grant or scholarship application. It’s like a job interview; you have to make sure you leave the impression that they would be a fool not to hire you. And it had a deadline so I had to get it done.

I probably won’t get all of these things I applied to. That’s how it works. But I feel like I already got a little payoff from just doing the work. I tell my students that I feel the same way about participating in Spoonflower’s weekly design challenge. It makes me do the work and meet the deadline. I’ve never hit the top ten or won a prize, but do I have a huge body of diverse work that I wouldn’t otherwise. I rarely suffer from a lack of motivation; I am always working on something. But the challenges make me do the hard work of designing things out of my comfort zone and using themes that I don’t find personally inspiring. I feel kind of the same thing about my rowing machine. I don’t like doing the workout, but it’s good for me and it makes me feel good.

26 November, 2018

No Bah-Humbugs here.

beckarahn2018-11-26T11:00:46-06:00An Artist's Life, Gallery Exhibitions|Comments Off on No Bah-Humbugs here.

One of the most fun partnerships I work on is designing pieces for the Guthrie Theater Store. Last year I did a whole series inspired by Sunday in the Park with George. I have made designs inspired by the Guthrie itself. The photo above shows one of those Guthrie-inspired designs in an ad in the program and one featuring some new designs in another program.

This year they asked me to do designs for their annual production of A Christmas Carol. I know the story, but I hadn’t seen their production, so they sent me photos from last year’s production. Such fun to study all of the details and colors! Several themes or scenes jumped out at me right away:

Time is a big element in the story and there are clocks prominent in several of the scenes.
In a number of scenes I noticed actors writing with white feather pens.
In one scene of people singing carols around a piano I noticed the wine glasses lined up on the piano.
Bright streetlamps and a tiny bit of snow.

We decided to go for something that was “seasonal” without being holiday specific, so I chose rich vintage-inspired colors and bigger ideas from the story. All of the designs are made from cut paper illustrations using recycled paper.

I started with a design I called Timeless. It is made up of pocketwatches and watch chains. The colors are all soft twilight shades. The chains are also an echo of the chains on the “Ghost of Christmas Past” from the show. The papers I used for this illustration were primarily colored art paper, but “grunged up” with some alcohol ink spray to give them a more weathered texture. The background of the design is a scanned piece of hand-marbled paper, which is also a visual theme I used throughout.

Next, I designed Quills. Quills refers to the feather quill pens you see throughout the show, but is also a little nod to Charles Dickens, the author. The pens and inkwells are all made from recycled paper from vintage issues of Hennepin History Magazine. Hennepin History Museum last year gave away copies from the 50s-80s that were excess in their collection. I also gave these some texture with alcohol ink spatters and a little wash of paint to obscure the text a little bit. I cut the feathers on the diagonal, so the lines of the text on the pages gave the texture to the feathers. The background of this design is a piece of marbled fabric I made and scanned. I chose marbling because that is very often used as the endpapers in old books and I felt like it was a nice fit with my writing theme.

Mistletoe and Forget-Me-Nots started as just a little zipper bag. But Kay (the shop manager) and I decided that we liked it so well that I went back and reworked it into a repeating pattern at two different scales, so that I could make bow ties and larger zipper bags as well. In the Victorian “language of flowers” mistletoe and forget-me-nots symbolize fond memories and a connection that lasts through time, which are strong themes in the story. This illustration is all cut paper overlaid with snow made from spattered paint.

We also wanted a couple of tea towels because those make great gifts, so I pulled two quotes from A Christmas Carol that I thought were great messages for gifts you might want to give. Singing Carols and Lamplight are the two tea towel designs.

The piano keyboard is all made from more history museum magazines and the pattern from the inside of a security envelope (like the kind you get bank statements in). The wine glasses are made from tracing paper, so they had some translucency. The snow is more paint spatter. The woodgrain on the piano is more marbled paper.

It is really fun and exciting to put together a collection like this based on a theme, especially when you have such a rich story to draw from. All of these designs are available exclusively at the Guthrie Shop for the holiday season, both in the theater shop and in their online shop. The collection includes three sizes of zipper bags (velvet), clutch purses (velvet), neckties and bow ties (twill and crepe), and tea towels (linen-cotton).

5 October, 2018

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics (or putting your stats in context)

beckarahn2018-10-07T22:35:19-05:00An Artist's Life|7 Comments

Yes, I know that the title of this blog post is not going to get me any Google ranking or search engine traffic. I went to that webinar.

But people search for things like tutorials on “can I dye a towel with food coloring?” and “reviews of babylock sewing machines”. (The answers are “no” and “Mine was a lemon” if you got here from Google. Welcome.) So I am not sure that search engine optimization is what this post really needs.

I was looking at stats and search terms the other day. Everything gives you stats now, whether you want them or not. How many people like your post? How many people visit your page? How many people engage with your photo? I am not sure what I was looking for really, but I noticed that everything is down right now compared to last year. Etsy shop sales are down 22%. My blog viewership is down 25%. I posted a picture on instagram and Facebook yesterday of a piece of mine that I am really proud of and only 42 people have so far reacted to it. (About 4% of my audience at those two venues) The thing I shared about someone else’s machine knitted star map has more than double that. My newsletter subscribers have remained pretty steady, but it’s still only about 49% of subscribers that even open the email I send. I didn’t even send one out in August. That makes a real dent in your stats. Sigh.

And then I was reading a post in a forum about marketing and market testing to your Facebook followers. It’s a craft business group I belong to and often it has great questions and advice from members. Someone asked a question about using Facebook groups and the only people who chimed in responded with stories about how it was so easy to just market directly to their 12,000 or 18,000 member Facebook group followers and make XYZ happen. “A breeze” “So manageable” “Low effort”. I almost just quit the group right then. I am sure it is easy to market something when you have an audience of 18,000. I have 500. That’s not just unrelatable; that’s a different planet.

(Edited to add: I wanted to add a comment here and say how much I love all of my FB, IG and newsletter communities. You all comment and respond to my newsletter emails and I get to have real conversations with you. I LOVE THAT. I don’t have fake followers, I have real wonderful interesting people who talk to me and ask questions. I just want to keep making sure that people like you are finding and connecting with me.)

I am not looking for pity party or a pep talk, don’t worry. I’m writing about all of this because I know far more artists and I teach so many beginner classes to people whose stats look a whole lot more like mine than they do the “experts” that were chiming in on that Facebook post. And nobody talks to that group; the group you and I belong to. I spent part of the summer trying to take some classes. I don’t have a boss to send me to professional development workshops, so I sent myself. I did a couple of webinars about search engine optimization. I worked through a whole facebook/instagram advertising tutorial (oh my gosh that is complicated). I learned some new things about Google Analytics. I joined a weekly SEO seminar. The problem with all of these is that they were either aimed at total beginners (ie I just started my Instagram account 5 minutes ago) or they talked about all of the cool things you can do when you have 1,000 or 10,000 followers on XYZ platform. I am in neither of those groups.

At first I looked at those stats and thought, I am totally failing. How is everything down when I am doing all the things?! Why can I not get to the magic numbers that unlock the cool stuff like the people on that forum?

That’s the problem with statistics. All of the numbers. None of the context.

After I felt sorry for myself, I stepped back and looked at the stats a little more. Surely I could find some useful information here. They always provide nice charts and I can see where the line dipped down: May.

A few things happened in May. I joined the executive committee of a board of directors for a non-profit. I was already on the executive committee of another board of directors. Some things happened. The who, what and why of those isn’t important to this discussion. But the me part of it is very relevant. Because I suddenly found myself with two other part-time jobs without really acknowledging that to myself. Sometimes that’s what happens with volunteer gigs. I had a lot of new meetings and new things to read and research. I had things to think about and things that made me frustrated and distracted. I was doing a lot of work. Just somewhere else.

I don’t have anything bad to say about either of these groups. On the contrary. I would only do the kind of work that I do for them because I love the organizations and I believe that non-profit staff and public school teachers have the hardest working and most under recognized staff members in the business. I will do anything I can to support them because that’s my way of giving back. I’m not good at lobbying or protesting, but I am good at this.

“That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” — Rose Tico, The Last Jedi

So when I thought about those stats a little more, I realized that I was lying to myself a little bit. I was still doing all the stuff. I just wasn’t doing all the stuff the way I thought I was.

I was still publishing blog posts this year, but I have only posted about 20. Last year was double that. On Instagram I was posting about once a day at the beginning of the year, and now it’s about twice a week. On a good week. Maybe. Facebook is just mystifying. Yesterday it told me that my post had 0 views and 0 engagements but 8 people had liked the post (which means that they both saw and engaged with it). So I am not even sure what to make of that information (or any of the historical data). I am actually being really consistent about posting my Spoonflower design challenge entries (I have participated for 38 weeks in a row so far this year), but there isn’t a lot of variety in those posts. If you aren’t interested in those, there isn’t a lot else for you showing up in my feed. I posted a few more updates and renewals and new stuff every month in my Etsy shop last year. Long story short was that last year I was doing it too, just more of it.

So here is my lesson for you, those of us not in the 10,000 Followers Club. Consistency is important for momentum.

I can see the stats drop off when I know, due to other circumstances in my life, that I was busy and not able to put the attention in to these platforms. The audience that I was building has wandered away a little bit. And I can see it in the numbers. It makes me feel a little better to put some context to those numbers. My views are down because there was substantially less to view. I can wrap my head around that.

So what to do about that? I think understanding and taking some time to think about it is the important part. I am not able to keep up right now with where I want to be. Maybe I need to change some priorities or set some boundaries. I’ve been thinking about limiting some of those volunteer things to just 1 day a week as much as possible. Maybe I just needed a reminder. Hey, you wanted to do this and it’s important to you so don’t put it off. I don’t know the answer yet. But at least I have a better idea of the problem I want to solve. Maybe I need to start just capturing some statistics of my own. How many hours a day am I spending doing this volunteer stuff? Today it was about 4 1/2 hours. Which is why I am posting this at 8:30 pm on a Friday night. Which I am pretty sure that webinar said was the least ideal time to post something. (You can’t win them all.)

4 October, 2018

Faking It.

beckarahn2018-10-07T22:36:03-05:00An Artist's Life, Gallery Exhibitions, Out & About, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|4 Comments

I was invited to show three pieces in an exhibition called Fiber Art in the Digital Age at the WI Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts. The theme of the show is fiber art that incorporates innovations of the “digital age”. I created three pieces that include digitally printed fabrics and laser cut wood and acrylic. This is the first in a series of posts talking about those pieces.

Faking It
Sometimes a comment about your work sticks with you for years. One of the first digitally printed fabric garments I made was a dress that I wore to an art gallery opening. Two visitors came up to me and struck up a conversation about the dress, asking if the fabric was made using batik. When I explained with excitement that it was actually digitally printed photographs of ice, they looked at me and said “Digitally printed? That’s cheating!”

I have discovered that the relationship between fiber art and computers is often misunderstood. There is an assumption that if you use a computer, that it does all of the work; you just press a key and Photoshop magically creates art. Because I used a computer to create part of my piece these commenters, and several others throughout the years, decided that it wasn’t real art.

So, I decided to make Faking It a celebration of “fake” art made by computers. I started by creating imitation mosaics from recycled magazine paper with images of computers and technology: an iPhone, charging cables and even a vintage floppy disk signed with my initials. I surrounded the mosaic tiles with a border of ransom note style words that all are synonyms for fake: false, swindle, hoax, hokum, spoof, flim flam, bogus and so on. The background is made from tiny strips of paint chips in colors titled “pixel white” and “high speed access”. I scanned all of this paper art and the design was then printed on to polyester faux suede fabric. The button on the coat is a costume jewel made from a recycled circuit board embedded in resin. And finally, the dress and coat were made using a commercial knock-off pattern of a couture designer dress worn by Melania Trump at the 2018 presidential inauguration.

Digitally printed faux suede.

Here are some detail shots of the fabric design. Each one is made from pages of magazines and catalogues. You can see a video about how I made one of the mosaics for this piece in this post.

Many thanks to my friends and fans on Facebook who helped me come up with the “fake” word list that makes one of the borders on this print. I posted something asking for help thinking of alternate words for “fake” and they came up with awesome suggestions.

The button on the coat was made for me by Amanda at Circuit Breaker Labs. This isn’t a super sharp picture of it because I forgot to take detail shots before I shipped this piece off for the exhibition, but check out her Etsy shop to see how cool these are. (She made this one for me as a custom request, usually she offers them as pendants, earrings, keychains and more.) It was the perfect addition to this piece.

A little secret that you can’t tell by looking at this piece. There is actually an extra seam on the back of the jacket because I ran out of fabric. Spoonflower discontinued this faux suede just days after I ordered the fabric for this dress. When I realized that I needed a little more, I went back and they were sold out. Even though I knew it was going to be discontinued soon, I really wanted to use the faux suede in keeping with my fake theme, so this dress really is one of a kind and almost zero waste. I used every scrap I could.

I love this piece. I worked on it for months and I really enjoyed every bit of it. All three of the pieces I made for this exhibition have good stories – things I wanted to talk about, things I had been thinking about and conversations that I wanted to have with people. It felt really good to make pieces that weren’t just about pretty or fun or design challenges, but pieces that were talking about something.

Do you have a comment about your work that has stuck with you? Something that people often misunderstand about what you do? Have you ever been accused of “cheating”? Tell me your stories!

3 August, 2018

This weekend at the Bell Museum: Me!

beckarahn2018-08-03T18:39:08-05:00An Artist's Life, Classes & Teaching, Out & About|Comments Off on This weekend at the Bell Museum: Me!

I will be at the brand new Bell Museum this weekend as an artist-in-residence in their #SolutionStudio Lab. The exhibit in this space talks about how sometimes the things you need to do your work aren’t things found in stores and how artists and scientists have to sometimes make the tools that they need. I am going to talk about how I use recycled paper all the time when I make my work and then we will be making containers from recycled papers: pieces of origami art that you can use to hold things like art materials or your rock collection. I will even show you how to make a paper cup that holds water. My sister and I used to make these all the time and thought it was super fun to drink out of them. Saturday & Sunday August 4&5, 1-4 pm.

Hope to see you there!

18 July, 2018

You’re not doing art wrong.

beckarahn2018-08-01T15:19:14-05:00An Artist's Life, Everything Else|7 Comments

A couple of years ago I joined an art organization and went to a monthly meeting with about 20 people. I was excited to be part of a group and to talk about art related things. On the agenda for the meeting was to have a discussion and show-and-tell about our sketchbooks. It sounded like it could be interesting hearing about other people’s process (and it was) but I don’t keep a sketchbook. That’s not a part of my process; I’m not a sketcher. So we went around the room and people talked about how they organize ideas for pieces or make lists of tasks to do. Some made more journal type books with beautiful complex works of art on each page. Some used theirs as a mood board or inspiration source where they created a collage for pieces they were thinking about. All cool ideas and interesting to hear them talk about each version. But when my turn came around the circle, I didn’t have anything to show and it was at that point where, unfortunately, I stopped enjoying the meeting.

I do sketch things. Like that little dog up above. I printed out the circle on a piece of card stock and made a sketch and then I scanned it and used it as a guide to draw the version on the right in Illustrator. I am a lot looser when I draw things on paper, so I often do a little rough sketch of characters especially and use that to help me with proportions and placement when I get into the computer. It’s a process that works well for me. But this little sketch is probably going right into the recycle bin. I don’t usually hang on to them after I have scanned them. I don’t need to. It was a sketch that did a job for me and once that’s done it’s no longer useful. It’s like basting in sewing. Super helpful when you need it, but once you are past that step it’s pulled right out.

I also have a notebook where I do math. Because I make garments and I often draft or adapt my own patterns, there is a lot of math involved. I am figuring out how much yardage I need or how big a repeat I need to make when I design my fabrics. I need to write those things down because I know I will not remember why or how I got to the numbers by the time I have ordered the fabric and it gets to me. So I make a lot of notes and diagrams so I remember how I intended to lay something out or make it fit on the fabric. I keep these in a notebook because I lose scraps of paper; it’s much harder to lose a notebook. It’s very practical.

Neither of those things make for compelling show-and-tell.

I rarely make sketches of what I think finished pieces will look like because that’s just not the way I work. I always know what a piece is going to look like, but it’s all in my head. I don’t need to see it on paper. I don’t get any value from that. I’d rather be working on the piece than thinking about the piece, if that makes sense.

So when I explained this to the group with the sketchbook show-and-tell, I got a lot of pushback and questions. People mostly thought I was just being too self conscious to share my sketchbook. They asked maybe if my inspiration mood boards were just in a different format and I was being too literal about the idea of sketchbook. There was some skepticism that I really could work the way I said I did. There was a little teasing: we showed off our things and you aren’t playing along.

Guess how many more meetings I went to? (spoiler alert: not a single one) A friend, sitting next to me at that meeting, was also a non-sketchbook kind of artist and she made me feel better with a little snark about being the rebels in the group.

I thought about this story recently as I was reading up on a grant opportunity. It’s a program for artists to help advance their careers in some way and in addition to a cash award, there are a number of other “benefits” associated with the grant: a series of studio visits, critiques with unspecified experts in the field, a catalog produced of your work. Which is all great. But I don’t want any of that.

We talked about no sketchbook; I also don’t have a studio. I don’t need one. But, wow, I get asked about this so often.

Much of my work is done on a computer. I draft patterns, I design fabrics, I have a whole business of making and selling work and teaching online classes. It’s pretty computer intensive. I have a nice Mac with a really big monitor. I can look at an entire fat quarter fabric design at actual size. That’s really handy for what I do. I also have a laptop and sometimes I work from the kitchen table or even the back yard if it’s a nice day. Sometimes I write from a coffee shop. I have a sewing machine and a serger. None of these things require anything special. Just a desk and some good wifi. Once in a while it’s really handy to have a large table to work on. I don’t have one, but I have a space I can borrow on the weekends with big tables and great light. I don’t need a special space to motivate me to work.

My work isn’t about the space it’s being made in.

I’m not sure what value a studio visit is supposed to get me, but I really don’t think that benefit had my kitchen table, with some dogs under foot, in mind. I like that I can work anywhere basically. I like being at home with my dogs and my tea and not having to have a special place that is required to make art in. Or feeling the pressure that if I am in the studio, I should be producing. The lack of a studio is not holding me back in any way. But I have had to pretend that I have one to match the “this makes you an artist” definition.

I love this shot of me, but it’s a fake studio made from apple boxes and foam core in my basement. I had a great opportunity for something but one of the photos that they needed was a photo of me working in my studio. So I made one up.

And what about those critiques from the grant opportunity?

I belong to a group of artists that meet on a semi-regular basis. Nominally we are a critique group, but really we are an artistic problem solving group. We often bring projects when we are stuck and need some creative help to get past a particular block. We brainstorm, we ask questions, we look at things upside down and backwards and we throw out crazy ideas. We work in different media, so sometimes the great idea to move forward on something is inspired by an art form different than our own. It’s a great group. But we don’t actually critique each other’s work if you look at that definition. Why not? Because I think we get more value out of the collaborating than we do from analyzing.

I just searched and read a bunch of how-to articles and opinions about “why you should have someone critique your art work” and I feel like this comment kind of sums up what I found:

The only way to know if it’s good is to have someone else rate it based on some arbitrary criteria (ie line, balance, did the artist convey their meaning)? And I should make changes based on that person’s opinion?

I don’t think so.

For me, great art is the kind that makes you have a reaction. Love, hate, joy, sadness or even makes you want to gag. But you looked at it, listened to it, or read it and it caused a reaction. It made you smile or remember something or think of a friend or want to buy-it-right-now-so-you-can-have-that-experience-as-part-of-your-life-every-day. You made a connection. The piece that I make a connection to, isn’t going to be the same one that you make a connection to and it won’t be in the same way. Because connections take two people: the artist and the viewer. And as much meaning and message as I bring to a piece, you’re going to bring your own meanings too.

I don’t really care if an “expert in the field” tells me that I am doing something wrong or not accomplishing a certain criteria because that person is just one person. With one connection. As a wise man once said “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” One person’s interpretation is certainly fascinating, but I am not sure it’s enough to make me want to change my work to match their opinion.

So when I look back at that grant application, I don’t really want to apply. As much as I’d like the money to help fund some new pieces or get me some space to exhibit them in (who wouldn’t?), the other parts of the grant are not valuable to me. In fact, when I read those benefits, they made me feel like I am art-ing wrong. I’m not doing it right and I shouldn’t apply for that opportunity because I don’t fit the spec. I was discouraged.

And do you know what? That’s total garbage.

There’s not a wrong way to make art or enjoy art.

(I give you that story as a screenshot and not a link because the full article is behind a subscription wall.) I saw this when LMM tweeted it. I might have actually reacted to it out loud as I was reading it.

I wanted to write this post as a pep talk because sometimes you just need to hear someone else say it. You aren’t doing it wrong. Neither am I. You don’t need to have a sketchbook. You don’t have to sketchbook a certain way. You don’t need a studio. Or maybe that is something that is really valuable to you and you do need it. That’s up to you. You don’t need someone to tell you that you are making great art for it to be great. It’s going to connect in amazing ways with some people and fizzle with others. That’s what great art does.