Ceramic Mask:  Prayer, ceramic torso: Creation, 7.75"t x 6"w and 20.5"t x 10.5" w x 3.5"d respectively, hand made wall sculpture by Tammy Vitale, $110 and $425

Amazing day in the office yesterday.  I was doing research on the "competition" for my torsos.  And it’s out there.  And I’m going to share it with you.  This is what I learned:

1.  When you feed "ceramic torso" into Google, you don’t find any of my art until the 5th page.  So I went back and retitled all of my torsos "ceramic torso:  name" in my photo album and will see if that eventually makes a difference.  I put comments in with the torsos (something I’ve been gonna do with all the albums but haven’t) and discovered just how many I’ve sold.  And I don’t have pictures of all of them.  That made me feel pretty good.

2.  I discovered that Typepad has a "tag" page, new, that is supposed to help get one’s site up and out, along with Google mapping, so I did both of those things.  I noted in my side bar that I take PayPal and charge cards and tried to put in a PayPal button but managed, instead, to mess up my whole site and had to wait for Typepad to get back to me on how to fix it (bless them, they are eternally wonderful in getting me the correct information quickly).

3.  My prices are lower than the one place I found what looks like it could be my main competition, and she is on the West Coast (as best I can tell.  No direct address on her website, and no further info came up when I Googled her name).  And I think my torsos look better – hers are made on real people.  I took one look at how she does it and realized how easily I could do the same thing.  Anyone out there want a torso of their body? 

4.  I think I produce more work than anyone else out there that’s doing this kind of work.  At the very least I have more work showing than anyone else out there.

5.  Discovered a new and exciting way to finish torsos:  ferric chloride.  Ranged all over the place reading about how different folks use it.  It’s highly toxic, but easily available at Radio Shack according to the blogs writing on this particular finishing method.  Can’t wait to try it!  Here’s where I found the idea, on the website of main competitor 1:  Claybite Ceramics.  Go look, she does beautiful work.  All those oranges and yellows?  ferric chloride mixed into water and sprayed on pieces out of the kiln – a form of raku that does not use reduction (smoking in organic materials).  Use goggles and respirator – it’s etching solution and can apparently etch your lungs and windpipe right along with anything else. 

Here’s another site with ferric chloride work, just because it is so beautiful you should see it:  Hannah Brehmer (pots with ferric chloride and horse hair)…I can’t get her website to link, so here’s the page url:  http://www.greatpottery.com/Brehmer_Hannah/brehmer_hannah.html.;

Here are others who are creating torsos:  Monica de Jong Gallery, torsos and masks – am guessing she has one armature she uses ; Margaret Synan:  very nice work very different from my own; Trevor Craggs in the U.K – beautiful pieces and I’d love to know how he’s getting the full piece put back together.  2 armatures:  1 male and 1 female (when you’ve looked at mannequins enough, you can recognize work that’s been done using them.); Ian Pocklington, U.K. not crazy about his work but he’s doing full torsos too (note:  not really comparable since mine are wall hangings and that attracts a different buyer).

And that’s it for what shows up directly on a Google.  I tried glass torsos, since I want to go there, and came up with one site and I wasn’t impressed at all with the work.  I’m sure there are other words (perhaps "torso" by itself) but I was trying to think like a customer and that’s what I came up with.  Nothing that I can tell in my area.  So I do have a unique product and the potential for a niche locally and perhaps nationally.

Meanwhile I got side tracked on glazes, an trying out a new magazine, Fired: Arts and Crafts.  Ordered a sample because from the website it could easily be a how-to for ware from ceramic molds and I’m not interested in that.  And checking out other sculptors I’ve found in my magazines.  And there the day went.

thought for the day:  Keep in mind that generally it takes fifty slide packages of the same body of work to generate one positive response.  A number less than fifty does not even begin to approach an effective market penetration level that justifies any sense of defeat or rejection…Stop putting all of your eggs in one basket.  Submitting one grant application a year or seeing one gallery every six months is only a gesture; strong, affirmative results do not come from gestures.  Create opportunities for things to happen.  Think big and broad.  Make inroads in many directions. What you want are lots of baskets filled with lots of eggs.  Caroll Michels, How To Survive & Prosper as an Artist:  Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul