Torso:  Athena, and other works hung at Deja vu Salon and Spa, with Stephanie Riggs, shop receptionist.  Artwork by Tammy Vitale.

Here’s my press shot for the release I’m doing about affiliating with Deja vu Salon on Spa. 

Re today’s title:  look how close "scared" and "sacred" are as words.  Isn’t that interesting?!

As mentioned in my last post, my business/marketing plan has changed significantly and I won’t be going after this type of shop in the future.  I am concentrating on wholesale shops, who will buy directly from me and then sell in their shops.  But I am thinking hard that I should probably "grandmother" (as oppose to "grandfather") in those spaces that have been selling for me in the past.  The thing is, I don’t plan on making small works any more, and most of them sell only the smaller items.  I will have small items left over, I’m sure, so I guess I can supply them until I’m out.

This is what I notice:  all sorts of things change as I shift and tighten down the kind of work I’m going to do and how/where I’m going to sell it.  I have to plan to pick up work from shops where I’ve been hanging just to get the work out.  I have to contact all my shops that aren’t wholesale and chat with them about this change.  I probably wouldn’t have spent all the money I just spent joining networks locally since I’m not sure how many, if any of them, have contact with my targeted audience.  In other words, figuring out who your best client is, is truly the foundation from which everything else flows.  And when that changes, so does everything else. 

My studio space can be smaller and more efficient.  I need x-size containers for my work, not whatever I can find.  Each torso will have her own container and I know which size fits them all perfectly.  Same for the masks.  I’m thinking that I will probably move more and more toward raku because of it’s uniqueness of end product.  That means a whole different supply of clay (it’s more expensive) – not that I plan on wasting the 800 pounds or so I still have of the clay I regularly use now.  But I can contract much of what is spread out all over the place into a more confined area and take some of my tables out into the shed (once we move stuff around out there – you know how it goes).

And I was thinking that after the first year, I could put a book together of the torsos and their stories and sell that, probably self-published (print on demand).  I understand there are methods out there for "coffee table" books that only print when you need them.

And I was also thinking about how much time this frees up for me.  X amount of work.  More time to do experimental play with whatever I want to play with, and to rest, and to meditate and exercise and keep myself healthy instead of on some treadmill that is no different than working for the "real" world.  That’s not how I envisioned being an artist.  So I’m going to start being the artist I envisioned right now.

I just have to get this all lined up and the people to help me lined up.  That’s all. 

I fell very excited about all of this.  And very scared.  About the right mixture of both.  Makes me feel like I’m most definitely on the right track!

Meanwhile, here’s a great new blog, Passion for Painting, by Christine, whom I met and work with in Alyson Stanfield’s art marketing class.  Go visit and say "hi."  New bloggers always need comments to keep them going (and enjoy her art while you’re there).  Her website is here.  Love that turtle painting!

thought for the day:  When we work only to do, we most often find ourselves helplessly doing again without having placed the first doing in any context.  When doing is followed immediately on doing it can seem impossible or indulgent to celebrate any accomplishment…Without an appreciation of the hours of life, we are simply a target for our own incoming death…constant busyness has no absence in it, no openness to the arrival of any new season, no birdsong at the start of its day.     David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea:  work as a Pilgrimage of Identity.