Alex Alvis Art

Tomorrow Never Came

No.  Really it did.  It was my blog post that didn't happen.  All I can say is, today is another day.

Harmony Hammond-installation view, Alexander Gray Associates (2013)

Harmony Hammond - Bag XI Brooklyn Museum

Going back to talking about the extraordinary artists featured in !Woman Art Revolution film - today I want to talk about Harmony Hammond- a member of the New York feminist art movement and, more specifically, the lesbian feminist art movement.  In her early adulthood she and artist Stephen Clover married.  He struggled with gender identity issues once they were married.  They divorced sometime after arriving in New York when Hammond came out herself after a time.  In New York, Hammond was a good bridge between the hetero and lesbian feminist art movements during the 70's.  There is all sorts of information about that on the internet and you won't have any trouble learning more about that on your own, if you wish to.  What I wanted to highlight today was more about how she speaks about her art.

Harmony Hammond-Speaking Braids (detail) see explanation of this sculpture

In her interview with Lynn Hershman in 2008 she had a wonderful way of describing what she creates and why - here is part of that I have transcribed from that video interview.
Just so you know, at Redline Gallery in Denver, starting Friday October 17th (through December 27) is presenting a major Judy Chicago exhibition titled: Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970–2014  Curated by Simon Zalkind. I know Mark and I will have to go.  Hope you can too.  Redline Gallery also had an exhibition of Harmony Hammond's work not very long ago, and if I had known we would have gone to see that too.

That's all I have for today.  Hope you have been enjoying yours!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Inspiration Sunday

Hope you are having a very artful Sunday...no not awful...ARTful.  :)

It's Inspiration Sunday - and your quotes from the Artist to Artist book are from the sections on Seeing and Perception and Solitude:

A painter should be a solitary.  Solitude is essential to his art.  Alone you belong to yourself only; with even on other person you are only half yourself, and you will be less and less yourself in proportion to the number of companions. ~ Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519

Leonardo da Vinci - Lady With An Ermine

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see.  ~Edgar Degas 1834-1917

Edgar Degas - Dancers in Pink

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotions reveal to him the hidden truths beneath appearances . . . his eye grafted on his heart reads deeply into the bosom of Nature.  That is why the artist has only to trust his eyes.  ~Auguste Rodin 1840-1917

Auguste Rodin - The Three Shades

Try to reduce everything you wee to the utmost simplicity.  That is, let nothing but the things which are of the utmost importance to you have any place . . . there are lots of clever people who can paint 'anything,' but lacking the seeing power, paint nothing worth while . . . . Seeing is not such an easy thing as it is supposed to be.  ~Robert Henri 1865-1929

Robert Henri - Spanish Landscape (1902)

I work alone (I haven't ever found a way of working other than in considerable privacy), and I go to quite considerable lengths to insure that. . . . I don't find it possible to lose myself in the activity if there are other people around.  ~Reg Butler 1913-1981

Reg Butler - Manipulator

Art, to me, is seeing.  I think you have got to use your eyes as well as your emotions, and one without the other just doesn't work.  ~Andrew Wyeth 1917-2009

Andrew Wyeth - Winter 1946

I realized also that the artist is always alone.  Early in life I had thought I needed other people to confirm or approve what I was doing. . . .  It was important for me to learn that what I wanted was really no different from what other artists wanted:  confidence that I could be my own censor, my own audience, my own competition.  ~Beverly Pepper 1924-

Beverly Pepper-Parc de l'Estació del Nord, Barcelona

Sometimes I see it and then paint it.  Other times I paint it and then see it.  ~Jasper Johns 1930-

Jasper Johns - Zero Through Nine (1961)

Actually you see things differently all the time depending on the light, the nature of the day, the way your eyes are focused, the mood you are in.  Your focus keeps changing. f Your head is always moving.  All these things are happening and it is all changing your perception.  ~Janet Fish 1938-

Janet Fish - Black Bowl Red Scarf (2007)

You see, it takes me forever to do a painting, and for that you need peace and quiet. . . .  ~Catherine Murphy 1946-

Catherine Murphy - Persimmon (1991)

Tomorrow we will go back to talking about the women artists featured in the film !Women Art Revolution.

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Miriam Schapiro - Not a Revolution

“The main direction of an artist’s life . . . is to search out identity, to know who they are, where their center is. At least that’s my definition of a serious artist.” Miriam Schapiro, quoted in Nickell and Stanciu, “Creating Beauty: An Interview with Feminist Artist Miriam Schapiro,” Gadfly, September 1997

Miriam Schapiro - Beauty of Summer

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has a lovely YouTube station and on it I found an interview with Miriam Schapiro that is quite wonderful.  She talks about the time in which she was creating art. 
 
In the interview she calls it the "white glove era" because woman would be looked down upon if they were to show up at a restaurant with their husband without wearing white gloves.
 
She says in the video that at the time she went to California and met up with Judy Chicago that "there was no such thing as a (recognized) specific art by women." 
 
"In the fall of 1971, the relocated Feminist Art Program started at California Institute of the Arts with 25 students.  Since the school was still under construction, the Program met in the private residences of the students to plan its first project, Womanhouse, which had bee conceived by Paula Harper, an art historian who had joined the Program's staff." (from By Our Own Hands by Faith Wilding) 
 
As Miriam Schapiro puts it in this interview:  Womanhouse was created "beginning an art course for women to make woman understand that to be artists, they had to find their identity, as well as work hard to create images that came from their belief system."

 She goes on to say in the interview:  "The real core was the idealism.  We haven't had that since.  That's what we experienced together, that's what changed our lives.  The point being that we really felt we could make a revolution. 
 
Actually we did make a revolution - but by an evolutionary process because we never took guns, we never burned our bras.  We never did the things that the media says we were well known for.  What the media doesn't say we were well known for was this incredible level of idealism. 
 
We really had faith.  An in political matters and in social matters you really don't get that all that often - people having faith in something."


Video of images of Miriam's work with "Concerto for Violin And Orchestra in D Major,
Op. 61: Rondo: Allegro" by Philharmonia Slavonica, Jan Czerkow and Alberto Lizzio

Here is an excerpt from another very good interview:

Transcript of Interview with Miriam Schapiro 1992

Suzanne Lacy: We wanted to start w/ your involvement w/in the women's movement, and how or why did you first get involved?

Miriam Schapiro:  . . . . I worked at it. And when I came to California I immediately got involved in consciousness raising groups and met Judy Chicago, and pretty soon the two of us were teaching a feminist art program at the California Institute of the Arts, and subsequently we made the Womanhouse project.
 
And it seemed very natural for me to get involved. Although I know when I tell this story and repeat the fact that I was 48 years old when this began, it serves as some sort of good point for our side, that you can really change your life when you're almost 50 and find new horizons.
 
The woman's movement meant everything to me because it allowed me a kind of freedom in making my art which I never had before. And yet, I was a successful artist. I had a reputation as a good artist, and I was connected with Andre Emmerich (?), which was one of the prestigious galleries in New York. I was there for sixteen years.
 
So, many people feel-what was it I was looking for? Point is, I had been trained in high school and in college, and even from my father, as a small child, to be an artist, and always my experiences were with men.
 
And what I had absorbed was a man's sense of what the truth was, and never really looked into what a woman's truth was. Never really explored, never really understood how important my mother and my aunt and my grandmother were to me.
 
I was an only child, and this was my world, this world of women. And so this gave me a new lens with which to look at my life and with which to make my art, and I threw myself into that. And working with other women as a collective at the California Institute of the Arts, this was enormously supportive to me, who had been very much an isolated woman.
 
Married, with a child, but feeling very isolated. Looking for something but not knowing what it was. Having no language for it, and not finding the words until the advent of the women's movement. And there I could move into a country, as it were, which was my own country. I had found it. And give a voice to that other side of me, which had never been explored before.
 
SL: And what kind of changes did that make in your art?
 
MS: I don't want to make it sound easy, because after all I was a full professional in the way I had worked. And I had learned certain principles of making art, certain directions to go in in art, which I thoroughly felt comfortable with.
 
And actually, unlike women much younger than I, I made a slow transition in my art, from say the man's truth to the woman's truth. Always keeping a good deal of what I had learned. And maybe that's what makes the art interesting. That I represent a sort of transitional figure in that way.
 
But I began to explore women's history and women's culture, and I became very interested in people I called artist makers. These were not trained women.
 
These were women who in fact had their centers were in their homes. They were women who sewed, they were women used the needle, they were the women who made the great quilts, they were the women who made lesser quilts.
 
They were women who tatted and embroidered, and I got really interested in those women and why they did that. And when I discovered why they did that I realized they weren't so different from me.
 
Because the why of it had to do with making beautiful things. With creating works that express a side of oneself which was the roses side of the phrase Bread and Roses. And these women, I figure, late at night after seven children had been put to bed, after all the washing had been done, after all the meals had been cooked, then sat down quietly and alone to work on their art, to express a side of themselves.
 
I think we overlook this. I think it's really important to know that all women have this in common, that they need, they need to make something, which is a release from all of the pesterings of the day, and create something just their own.
 
And I don't think we've given nearly enough emphasis in the history of art to the importance and the value, let's say, of the creativity of the quilts.
 
So, all of this crept into my art. I began to make enormous paintings which was my way of making quilts. I began to make smaller paintings which revolved around handkerchiefs, which bore the tears of women, and aprons, embellished aprons. Or aprons I just found in flea markets all over, which carried the sign of what these women did, despite looking at them as prisoners of their life.
 
I felt we had to look at them also for that aspect of them, which was the search for inner freedom. Because our lives are complex. We are not ever either one or the other. We are not ever totally free, or ever totally imprisoned by our conditions.
 
SL: Could you go back to when it was that you started.
 
MS: I wanted to say that having come to California to begin a new life, as it were, in 1967, I was 48 and so I'm 68 now. And one of the things that I do and the talks I give around the country and so forth, is always I flash my age because I don't think we have role models in this country for the idea of what power an older woman has.
 
We think of an older woman as, whose power has dried up, because we're so critical of the way she looks. Indeed, if she's aged and if she has wrinkles and is no longer number ten or one or whatever it is.
 
We're so into the beauty myth, and we're so concentrating on that all the time in the media, that we lose the idea that a woman might have something to say. Not only that, she might have a life ahead of her, drawing near 70, she might still think of her life as being ahead of her, which in fact I do, because I'm constantly involved with various projects that I do with other people.
 
Also, my life is filled with younger people, including my own son, who keep me alive, who keep me abreast, who tell me what they are reading, what they are looking at, what they are seeing, how they are functioning. And this mix is terribly important in our society.
 
SL: You mentioned that you had a school for feminist art here, or workshops.
 
MS: I have to tell you that since 1967 my life has been out of the studio, devoted to giving workshops, telling the history of feminist art, bringing the news of what happens from this center in New York.
 
Today we have the WAC organization. A few years back we were all talking about the Guerilla Girls.
 
When I go out of town, when I go to Minneapolis or when I go to San Antonio, wherever, I tell the story from the message center. I tell what the women are doing and what they're thinking about.
 
SL: What kind of response do you get when you go around and talk about. . ..
 
MS: You won't believe this, because when we live in New York we get a kind of veil of sophistication which makes us think we're unique, and the only people living in the country.
 
But the truth is when I bring this story of how to do consciousness raising, of how to share inner ideas, intimate ideas, it's as though I'm bringing it for the first time. You'd think not.
 
You think that, Oh, so much has happened in this country, we women are so ahead of where we were years ago. In some ways that is true, and the media misleads us. The media gives us the impression that we're way ahead of ourselves.
 
But, I want to remind you of an image, a single image. This is the image of Pat Schroeder leading a very small group of five or six women up the steps of the Capitol in Washington. Anita Hill has just spoken, the whole Clarence Thomas trial-trial is not the right word. But, the experience is over, and these women are coming to. . .actually it's not over.
 
These women are coming to bring pressure on the senators and the senators won't see them. The story is that the senators won't see them. That these distinguished women, all of them, are in the Congress at the same level as the men and they wish to talk to them, to put forth their point of view, and the men won't see them.
 
And this is humiliating for us, because as we read about this story we identify. So, how far have we come? How empowered are we?
 
SL: Can you bring that even further then, into the lives of say women artists and dealing with the gallery world?
 
MS: The gallery world has a few token women artists who in fact are wonderful. But, it is not the answer to the question because the question is, Who runs the art world?
 
And what is it about this question of making art? And I have to say that in my belief the art world is run for investment. That the kinds of people who have immense power in the art world are people who are collectors.
 
I won't even say dealers, but people who are collectors. And the influence that goes back and forth between collectors and curators and dealers is significant in the direction of greed, in the direction of investment, in direction of building up a portfolio you might say, even though we're talking about works of art.
 
And women are not even in this picture, because, as always, if you read the auction rolls, throughout history, you learn a lot about a society.
 
And if you read the auction roles in terms of contemporary society you'll find that what is exciting to the "artworld" is the manner in which a Julian Schnabel recedes a little in his prices, or advances a little in his prices.
 
But you never hear such talk about women because women don't figure in terms of the top level of power in the investment picture.
 
SL: In light of that really gloomy situation, what do you say to young women artists, or women today who aspire to create and make a living with their work?
 
MS: Well, I say one thing. I've always said it, and I'll continue to say it: Don't become isolated.
 
Don't think that because you read about Rembrandt working alone in his studio that that is the way to function.
 
In fact, the most fearful thing is being isolated, being all the time alone with your canvas, and the antidote to that is to work collaboratively, to work collectively, to be with other people your own age, people who have the same skill as you have, the same interests you have. Work together.

So - this Saturday the word for us artists and us women artists would be Collaborate!
 
Hope you are enjoying your weekend.  I'm going out to the studio now to get some work done.
 
'Til tomorrow!
 
~Alex

Let's Take This One At A Time

I want to just say, before I get into this, that the only two IST's  I am is artIST and humanIST.  I believe I have no other IST in me, or I should say - I want to believe I have no other IST in me. 

I believe that what separates us biologically will become invisible one day in the future.  Already it is happening.  Gender becomes more meaningless as the biologically male or female individual feels more free to be "the self" and, while this "self" may be categorized as behaviorally "female" or behaviorally "male" - (still we use gender terms to describe aspects and energy of spirit...which is so very limiting in an of itself) we will all feel accepted as who we are not as what we look like. 

Skin color is a difference that is becoming less of a negative difference...culture...religion...weight even...social ranking - I believe these are separations among our human family that will not exist one day.  I think the glaciers are melting faster than this is happening so I don't expect this to happen any time soon.  Not in my life time.  But I believe - one day - if we manage to survive our own noose...

Oh - what is my point?  Let's just say that, since I brought up the feminist movement in art yesterday by mentioning the !Women Art Revolution movie, that I do not know that bringing attention to differences is the way to overcome them.  But - perhaps that is how it must start. 

Maybe in the beginning, the group getting overlooked and undervalued by another segment of people - because of their differences - must galvanize somehow and say: - "HEY!  Deal with us.  In all the ways that matter we are really the same." 

In the case of women artists - this movement was saying (among other things) - that women are just as capable of creating great art as men and that contribution is worthy of recognition.   So I feel that it is important to explore these artists one at a time.

Today is Judy Chicago day and last July she turned 75 years young.  What I'd like to say myself about Judy, that I very much admire, is that in the early years of her life she said that when we all grow up there will be no labels...she even changed her last name eventually because she didn't want it associated with a man, be it her father or husband. 

She then became part of the feminist art movement and created what is considered today to be her masterpiece, The Dinner Party. 

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago © Judy Chicago is an icon of feminist art, which represents 1,038 women in history—39 women are represented by place settings and another 999 names are inscribed in the Heritage Floor on which the table rests. This monumental work of art is comprised of a triangular table divided by three wings, each 48 feet long.

She honors the feminine in her next work, the Birth Project.  This from Wikipedia:

From 1980 until 1985, Chicago created The Birth Project. The piece used images of childbirth to celebrate woman's role as mother. The installation reinterpreted the Genesis creation narrative, which focused on the idea that a male god created a male human, Adam, without the involvement of a woman.  Chicago described the piece as revealing a "primordial female self hidden among the recesses of my soul...the birthing woman is part of the dawn of creation." 150 needle workers from the United States, Canada and New Zealand assisted in the project, working on 100 panels, by quilting, macramé, embroidery and other techniques. The size of the piece means it is rarely displayed in its entirety. The majority of the pieces from The Birth Project are held in the collection of the Albuquerque Museum.

The Creation, from Birth Project-Installation MAD Museum © Judy Chicago, 1984, Modified Aubusson Tapestry, 42" x 14', Weaving by Audrey Cowan, Collection: Bob & Audrey Cowan, Santa Monica, CA

While Judy was finishing The Birth Project she started to create a series of monumental works (the largest work is 9' x 22') called Powerplay because she wanted to explore masculinity and re-cast the heroic in a new way.   Specifically exploring, as she herself says in the KUNM interview with Megan Kamerick (for the 2012 Reviewing Powerplay exhibit - shown in Santa Fe at the David Richard Gallery after having not been shown, in its entirety, since 1986) "the way the construct of masculinity affects men."  In the interview, Kamerick says that this body of work seems to be "focusing on men struggling with the feminine within even trying to kill it at times" Chicago's response was:

I think through 'making art' - so I think a lot about my experiences with men and how men act.  And I was able to think my way into an understanding of why they act that way.  So, for an example, there's a painting called Three Faces of Man and there are two public faces on the outside - an angry face and a jocular face - and then in the center, there is the weeping face, the private face.  You know, I started thinking about what it

© Judy Chicago - Three Faces of Man

would be like to be raised not to be able to cry.  What that would do to you?  How much despair you would swallow, internalize?  Internalized despair could easily turn into rage or aggression.  For women it's the opposite - anger turns into depression because it's so unacceptable for women - still - to express anger.  But for men it's the opposite.  It's so unacceptable for them to express weakness, vulnerability.  So 'emotion' has been projected onto the female.  It's the woman who acts out - who expresses.  The stalwart man, the strong silent type...that is a construct that men have been trapped in as women have been trapped in a comparable construct of femininity and what we're 'supposed to be.'  . . . . I think I started out pissed off, you know, I had a lot of really negative experiences with men.  I couldn't stand how men acted in the world . . . . I worked on Powerplay from 1982-1987 and I did think my way out from anger and into empathy.

Ah.  That's some of the magic of art for both the creator and the audience.  A broadening of perspective.

Visit Judy Chicago's website to learn more about this remarkable artist.  Tomorrow I think we'll talk about Miriam Schapiro.

'Til then!

~Alex

W.A.R.

!Women Art Revolution is a documentary film having to do with art history...as this is of course Art History Thursday.  If any of you have seen this film, let me know what you thought of it.  I have not seen it yet myself, but I will.  There is a lot of footage with Judy Chicago who painted this painting called The Three Faces of Man.

© Judy Chicago - Three Faces of Man

Unfortunately - today between construction on the ranch and making time to work, that is all I have for us today.  I hope you have been enjoying your day :)

Tomorrow is Friday!

'Til then!

~Alex

Art Gallery Wednesday

It's October.  I love this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on the passage of time.  It's titled A Psalm of Life.  I have paired it in a photo of the progress of "Magical" to date. 

Today will be a big studio day of working on this sculpture.  I have to wait days in between the applications of clay for it to be dry enough to continue.  So far I have used over $100 worth of clay on this sculpture. 

This sculpture will be an expensive original - one reason why I want to have it scanned to make a foam model for casting.  That way the original won't be destroyed and it will be a special original sculpture in it's own right.

In other news - I took you on a tour of artworks of other artists represented by the galleries representing me.  I did not take you to Beijing, China, however.  And so I wanted you to see some of the other artists Frogman Gallery represents.  If you're ever in Beijing, I hope you will stop by this gallery and say "hello" to my sculpture.


Robert Bissell - The Moonlighters 

John Kotsis - Ying Yang

Michael Parks - book cover

So that's the scoop for this Wednesday.  I hope you visit the Frogman Gallery virtually and experience what my artist profile sounds like translated from Chinese into English with Bing Translator...pretty humorous.  And I hope you have a terrific day today!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Art Marketing Tuesday-Social Media

I realize I have been reposting things of late.  I do research in the mornings for my own career and have been coming across some very good information that I want to share.  Research for me for you too, not too bad!  I hope you find it useful.

Today I have for you 7 Social Media Marketing Tips and, although I haven't done all of these things, I would like to hear from you what you have tried and what has worked for you.  Everyone else reading this would like to know too - so share in the comments section of this blog, if you will, not just in Facebook.

This information, posted on Mashable, is a bit dated too, having been written in 2012.

By Leyl Master Black   2012-11-11 02:43:48 UTC

 This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

According to market research firm First Research, there are about 5,000 art dealers and galleries in the U.S. with combined annual revenue of about $6 billion, and Art Market Monitor estimates the size of the overall global art market to be around $15 billion annually. There are also more than 200,000 fine artists working in the U.S., according to recent research by the National Endowment for the Arts.
But while fine art is big business, there is often a wide chasm between the creative process that makes a great artist or a sophisticated gallery owner, and the marketing process that drives branding and sales.
“For the majority of artists, success will ultimately come down to their effectiveness in marketing,” says Darius Himes, Assistant Director of fine art photography gallery Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. “Artists need to embrace the fact that both their work, and they themselves as artists, are brands that must be marketed.”
So whether you’re an aspiring artist who wants to build an initial following, or a veteran art dealer looking to expand awareness of your brand, it pays to get savvy to new social marketing techniques to help you achieve your objectives. The following are seven strategies for more effective social marketing.

1. Optimize Your Website

A website is now a cost of doing business, and it’s essential for artists to have at least a minimal web presence. But even established artists and galleries with robust websites should consider a refresh, particularly to ensure that the site is optimized for search and mobile.
Himes notes that Fraenkel Gallery recently undertook a full overhaul of its website to incorporate more social, search and web marketing best practices.
“In addition to making a number of aesthetic and navigational enhancements, we also eliminated all of the Flash-based elements that weren’t searchable and that reduced the mobile functionality,” says Himes. “We also made sure that the new website was scalable to any mobile device, and that all pages had unique web addresses which would be easy to feed into social media.”

2. Get Busy Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to get your art or gallery found by the search engines and provides excellent content to fuel your other social marketing activities.
“Blogging is close to necessary at this point when it comes to both SEO and the building of a fan base,” says Greg Heller-LaBelle of web marketing firm DAY Vision Marketing. “The main thing we try to instill in clients is to start thinking of themselves as creators and syndicators of content.”
In addition to posting new work or promoting new shows or openings, your blog can also be a place to offer a behind-the-scenes look at your creative process, share pictures from relevant art events or chronicle your time at a prestigious art auction.
“As an artist myself and owner of a creative company, I'd say my number one tip is to pull back the curtain and show the behind-the-scenes work that takes place,” says Mark Ley, Managing Director at Copper Blue Creative. “Showing how a piece is made, or the location you are shooting photography, all help the fan to feel as if they are a part of the creation.”

3. Maximize Your Facebook Presence

Having a Facebook business page for your artist brand or gallery should be a no-brainer: it’s free, it’s simple to use and it gives you access to more than 1 billion people.
To use Facebook as a vehicle for promotion and awareness-building, first set up your Facebook business page and invite your friends and colleagues to “like” the page and share with their network … then start posting! Many of the same content strategies for your blog also apply to your Facebook page, but make sure to also spend a little bit of time each day engaging with your fans.
“The main reason why artists fail with social media is that they are not providing a value to their connections with any helpful, interesting and relevant content in their comments and posts,” writes John R. Math of Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery. “As artist participants we need to be active, engaged and consistently provide some kind of value.”

4. Be Active on Twitter

Twitter is a great tool for building a following and promoting your art or gallery. The best way to get started is by looking for relevant people or businesses to follow; try digging around a site like Listorious to search for other people's lists by topic. For example, a gallery owner could use Listorious to search on "art” to find lists of prominent tweeters in the art world. Then start tweeting — at a minimum, tweet out all the content that appears on your blog and other relevant news about your art or events. Don’t forget to use hashtags with your tweets to boost the searchability of your content.
You can also follow keywords and hashtags to easily find relevant content to share and people to follow. Set up a running search or column in your social media tool (TweetDeck and HootSuite are great options) on particular terms and hashtags so you can quickly scan for interesting content to retweet and people to engage with.

5. Take Advantage of Pinterest

Use of the visually oriented social site Pinterest has exploded over the past year, and many artists are using Pinterest to share their work beyond Facebook and Twitter.
To get started on Pinterest, first set up a profile that includes keywords and your website address, then start pinning. When you pin your art, don’t forget to add a watermark to protect the image, as well as keywords: Pinterest is searchable, so make sure you describe your pin clearly. You should also customize the link to point back to your website or whatever other page you’re promoting.
You can also get more exposure for your images by including a price for the item into your description. This simple trick will add your pin to the “Gifts” section on Pinterest and will display the price across the front of the image throughout the site.

6. Experiment With Facebook Ads

Many artists and galleries are also using Facebook Ads as a low-cost way to promote upcoming shows and events.
Artlog, a social platform allowing people to connect with the international art scene, uses Facebook Ads to promote events and sell tickets to art events like exhibitions, tours and discussions. For example, 10 days before its Chelsea Art Crawl & Party last summer, Artlog began running Facebook Ads to promote the event and direct people to Artlog’s website in order to purchase tickets. For every $75 Artlog spent on Facebook, it saw $200 in ticket sales.
Facebook also allows you to target different campaigns or events to different people.
“There are specific galleries and museums that we will use in our Likes and Interests targeting because we know that if people are engaging with those galleries, they are more likely to be the right audience,” says Manish Vora, co-founder of Artlog.

7. Use Press Releases for Search

While galleries typically develop and share press releases about upcoming shows with relevant media, they often neglect to distribute their release over the wire, and thus miss out on one of the best low-cost ways to propagate their brand across the internet and drive search results. You can use a low-cost service such as PRWeb to distribute your release for under $100.
To optimize your press release for search, start by making a list of the keywords and phrases that are most relevant to your company, and then cross-check these terms using Google’s keyword tool to assess monthly search volume. Once you have your list of keywords, use them in the headline and subhead of your release as well as throughout the body of the announcement. Avoid repetition by using secondary and tertiary keywords.
For example, if you’re a San Francisco fine art gallery looking to boost your search results on the phrases “fine art photography” and “San Francisco art galleries” — as well as around a particular photographer’s work — you might include the phrase “fine art photography” in the headline, subhead and first paragraph of the release, along with the artist’s name, while including the term “San Francisco art gallery” elsewhere in the release.
Make sure that you attach any hyperlinks back to your website or blog to these keyword phrases rather than your name or generic terms like “art opening.”
You should also consider adding images or video to your press releases: Releases that include an image or a video get shared three times more than text-only releases — and viewers spend up to thirty seconds more with this content.
How are you promoting your art or gallery using social media? Tell us in the comments.

Hope this gives you some great ideas for promoting your art and that you are enjoying your Tuesday, this last day of September.  See you in October!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex