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Chairs, ©2009 Deidre Adams

I have been in Athens, Ohio, all this past week. For three days I taught a Photoshop class, and then for the next three I attended the SAQA conference, where I met some wonderful new friends and listened to some interesting discussions about making and promoting artwork. I also went to the opening of Quilt National 2009. All of this is evidence that as a documentary photographer, I pretty much suck, because I did not get a single photo of any of these things. So instead you see before you a photo of the west side (loading dock?) entrance of the Bromley Hall, a dormitory on the campus of Ohio University, where I’ve been staying this past week. (At least I’m sparing you images of the wildly creepy basement of this place!)

Some thoughts:

Promoting one’s work: Outside of the obvious, there are many ways you can form relationships with people in business to get your work seen. Finding a business that has a symbiotic relationship with your particular work and making connections is one way to start. (From Lisa Chipetine’s Marketing Outside the Box session.) Alyson B. Stanfield also gave a keynote presentation on marketing and promotion, all of which is fantastic advice for artists. These are things I know I should be doing, but at this point in my life I want to pull back and make some work without any distractions. (Er … what was that about not making excuses?) Bottom line here: I will still not be doing the Facebook or the Twitter any time soon.

Pricing and commissions: Pricing is a big hairy conundrum and artists are all very different in their approaches. Carol Taylor surveyed a large number of artists and presented a detailed compilation of information about the methods used for pricing (ranging from very methodical calculation to “gut feeling”) as well as the sales numbers for a few of the artists. Apparently only one person out of all the survey respondents is making what I would call really good money.

Self-Publishing: Carol Ann Waugh presented a session on creating your own book. I found this idea very intriguing. Besides the one-off photo books that are available in many flavors now (blurb.com, shutterfly.com, Apple, etc.), there are also some print-on-demand (POD) options that are considerably less expensive, and the quality of the samples she showed looked pretty good. But then, there’s always a catch: evidently you then have to work your tail off to market and promote the book. (Could not have seen that coming!) Still, the idea has some possibilities for me down the road.

Quilt National: The show was fantastic, quite possibly the best QN ever, in my humble opinion. I didn’t realize that on opening night you are allowed to take pictures, so I didn’t have my camera with me. Went back the next day to get some pictures, but the option had been removed by then. But it is a great show, and many congratulations to all the artists whose work is included. And special congratulations to my friends Sandy Woock, who won a Juror’s Award of Merit, and Pam RuBert, whose quilt is featured in a Wall Street Journal article about the show. (Rant: Seriously people, can you just not ever write an article about art quilts without mentioning Grandmother?)