William Rossoto, Artist, Author, Residential Designer, Photgrapher,

Showing posts with label art audience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art audience. Show all posts

Friday, February 25, 2011

Art Reps & Art

Amazing how much time has elapsed since my last post. A lot of transition, introspection, and new opportunities have taken place in recent months. Essentially reinventing my marketing approach, art work, and having a more flexible attitude about possible art venues has helped to create new prospects for expanding in the art world.

I have been in search of representation for my art work for quite some time, hoping to find a person who is genuinely interested in me as a person, who had a fondness for my art, not just the business side of art representation, and could produce results. I researched the online art reps, and gallery owners I had worked with thinking that this might be the most direct route to meeting my goal. The majority of online art reps left left me wondering what they actually do to market the art they have, and if I would even get noticed, as there was an unusually large number of artist being carried under their art roof. I'm sure that some artist do well with these online reps, but for me it seemed impersonal and a cookie cutter way to present my art. Most of the galleries I had worked with were great on putting together show openings, but follow up, advertising, and having the right audience for my work was yet to be found, so I chose not to look for my art rep through a gallery (at least for the time being).

Fortunately an unusual suspect arrived that is trustworthy, reliable, and has true admiration for me and my artwork. Over the last several years I have been approached by many people who were interested in representing me, but ended up fizzling out after a short period of time. Serious art representation requires fortitude, determination, and savvy. The art rep helped me to put together a full marketing package (pics, bio, cd's, cd covers, letterhead, cards, logo, website, etc.) and knows a lot of people that are the right sort of audience for my art work. Seeing the total presentation package put together and then following that up with meetings, send outs, phone calls, email campaigns, and social marketing has given me a sense of confidence about putting myself out in the world for all to see, not to mention the warm fuzzy feeling I get knowing my rep is working to promote and sell my art.

Audience!!!! I c
an almost laugh at myself now about never really paying attention to who my audience was and what sort of audience I wanted. I thought if I got a good turn out for my art openings that I must have something great going on, people like my stuff, and I'm attracting a following. Truth is, a lot of people go to art openings to socialize, drink free wine, and eat cheap hors d'oeurves, and occasionally buy some art. What I failed to see is that while having your friends and a ton people to your opening is a great thing, it has very little to do with selling art. I mean doing an art show isn't all about selling art, but I know I like to sell my art and not have it sitting in a storage unit where nobody gets to appreciate it. In order to get the work sold you have to have the right audience.


Currently I am doing a new series of equestrian work centered around Polo. There are only about 5000 Polo players in the U.S., so if I want to sell to Polo players I have to reach them by another means that just hanging art in the gallery. This is where a good art representative comes into play, and can market the art work world wide to a very specific audience. I have to say that I think it's pretty funny that I never focused on many of the fundamental aspects of selling my art. Of course all this talk about selling is not the reason I do art, however it is a way to sustain a life style I enjoy so that I can do more art, having the time to experiment and grow conceptually.

This is simply my abbreviated take on my life in art, and should be taken with a grain of salt as we all have our individual ways of creating art, marketing, and finding our own paths through the myriad of possibilities.