I have to thank Alyson Stanfield over at the Art Biz Blog for the link to this Wall Street Journal article about “The Lost Art of Writing About Art“.

Apparently the art critics writing about the biennial exhibition of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum weren’t so much criticizing the art as they were criticizing the commentary about the art. I believe the criticism involved the words…”unalloyed gibberish”.

Ouch!

Why is it the fashion to use phrases like “inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion” (an actual excerpt from the exhibition) when it comes to writing about or talking about art? I experienced a lot of this when I was in school. When the professor called on students to make a statement about their work, those budding artists seemed to automatically gear up into this kind of high flown and incomprehensible language to describe a collage made out of paper and a variety artfully arranged found objects.

And I, who much to the disappointment of my professors and fellow students never quite got the knack of inventing such phrases like “invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs” (another actual excerpt), would be at the back of the class rolling my eyes.

And guess what? That’s how most people will react to your artist statement or any kind of description or commentary about your work if you start writing about how your work “is a conflation of art space and work space” (the hits just keep on coming!).

If you’re exhibiting in galleries or museums, if you’re selling at an art or craft show, if you have a brochure or website, sooner or later you’ll be called upon to write about yourself or your work. Your artist bio and artist statement are the things that speak for you and your art when you aren’t there to speak for yourself. Do you want your potential customers to roll their eyes when they are reading your artist statement?

When you’re writing about your work, be natural. Pretend that you’re explaining what you do to your best friend. That doesn’t mean that you should be talking down to people or that you can’t use 50 cent words like “nonsequiturs” if you need to. Just don’t go for the complicated word or phrase when a simpler one will work just as well. And FYI, no one is going to type in “nonsequiturs” when they are Googling your website. So web-wise, writing naturally about your work will not only make your fans and customers happy, it will also make Google happy when they are trying to rank your site in search engine results.

If you’re in the midst of writing an artist statement, artist Deanna Wood wrote a great blog post on how to write an artist statement a while back ago. Check it out for some great ideas. Plus, read a previous post I did on what words to avoid when you’re writing your artist’s bio. I’ll admit that I’ve been guilty of using these words!

If you’re interested in how not to write your artist statement, check out Carol Diehl’s blog, Art Vent. She wrote about the Whitney exhibit and was the source of these interesting tidbits from the show.

I’ve been catching up on my podcast listening for the past few weeks and I’ve recently finished a very interesting episode of CraftSanity. If you’re not familiar with CraftSanity, it’s a weekly interview show where podcaster, Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood interviews some of today’s most well-known crafters and indie designers. In episode #58, Jennifer departs from her usual interview format to record a panel discussion on craft blogging at the 2007 BlogHer conference, which focuses on women who blog. Some of the panelists included Kristen Roach, Amy Sedaris, Leah Peterson, and Kathy Cano Murillo (The Crafty Chica).

I thought that the most interesting part of the podcast was during the age-old discussion about pricing. One attendee said that she suspected that most people thought that her items were over-priced and she asked how she could convey the time, quality, and hard work that goes into her products. One of the panelists pointed out that when they were first starting to sell their work on the web, one of the biggest mistakes they made was trying to make their site look like Macy’s or Nordstroms. There wasn’t a sense that the items were handmade, but rather, it almost looked as though everything on the site came out of factory somewhere. It was only when they started blogging about the creative process, started telling the story about the creation of each item, and including photos of works in progress that they started making more sales. In fact, some of the items that they featured as works in progress on their blogs were often sold almost before they completed it. People became intrigued through watching the process that they couldn’t wait for it to be available.

This is a tip that I’m sorry to say that I don’t use as much as I could on my own blog and website, but I do plan to implement more in the coming year. One indie designer that does this very well is Australian graphic designer, Lara Cameron on her blog Kirin Notebook. Lara designs printed stationary, textiles, and various other things. She’s always blogging about the process of developing her fabric designs, posts some of the loveliest photos of her works in progress, of items made with her fabrics, and every so often she’ll post directions to a craft project that uses her fabrics.

By the time she posts an announcement that her fabrics are on sale in her Etsy store, her readers and fans are just itching to get their hands on them. I’ve seen her sell out of fabric within hours of posting the announcement on her blog.

So what can you do to start telling the story of the work you do? What parts of your creative process do your customers find fascinating? What techniques can you use to start illustrating the story of your work? You can begin by taking more “in-progess” photographs of your work. Get a digital camera to make it easier to take and post photos quickly. While they don’t have to be studio quality photographs, take some time to make them nice. The Storque, Etsy’s blog for buyers and sellers has a nice tutorial on taking photographs for online sales that can give you some tips on how to do this.

Write about how ideas for your work came about. Talk about what was going on in your life or in your career when you were working on a particular piece. Get your customers in on the action. Ask your customers for photos of them displaying, wearing, or using your items and post them on your website or blog. If you have access to a microphone or a video camera start recording audio or video commentary to include on your blog. Use services like Flickr, Slideshare, and YouTube to get these stories out.

It’s easy for all of us to forget that part of what fascinates people about our work are the stories behind it. Use this tip from the ladies from the BlogHer panel to to show what your work is all about.

P.S. Be sure to check out that CraftSanity episode on Jennifer’s site. The discussion about pricing starts at about 35 minutes and 40 seconds into the show, but I suggest listening to the whole thing if you have the time…lots of great info there!

If you have a blog, or you’re putting content up on your web site, you’ll eventually run into some copyright issues, whether it’s someone infringing on your rights or you accidentally infringing on someone else’s rights. What the average person knows about copyright on the web is often misunderstood or just plain wrong. Smashing Magazine has assembled a big list of facts, links, and articles about copyright on the web called Copyright Explained: I May Copy It Right?. Most of the links are geared towards bloggers, but they are easily applicable to artists.

Check it out here:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/07/
copyright-explained-i-may-copy-it-right/

While we’re on the subject of “About Me” pages, I just “StumbledUpon” one that made me go “Wow!”

Check out the “About” page of multimedia designer, Dave Werner. Using a mixture of video and animation, you’re not likely to forget this page…or this artist….

…and the website’s pretty cool too. Now after that introduction, would you hesitate to hire Dave? I wouldn’t.

While I’m not suggesting that we should all make our “About Me” pages into a multimedia production like Dave did, wouldn’t it be great if we could figure ways to make our bio pages and “About Me” pages a little more memorable? That’s one project I’ll be working on for my own websites in the near future.

One of the podcasts I like to listen to on a regular basis is Media Artist Secrets by Franklin McMahon. While his podcasts are more focused towards those in the digital creative field like graphic design, web design, photography, and video, the advice in his episodes are useful for anyone who’s does creative stuff for a living. His podcasts are usually about 15 to 30 minutes long and always makes me want to run into my studio yelling, “Charge!”

Well his most recent podcast made cringe a bit, because he talks about skimpy About Me pages…that web page that lets everyone know who you are and what you do. I must admit that when it comes to an “About Me” page for my own websites, I don’t give it as much attention as I should.

If you haven’t been living in a cave in the last couple weeks, you may have heard about the launch of Apple’s new iPhone. You of course may have seen the ads on TV, in magazines, and all of the news reports about people camping out in front of the Apple Store so they could be the first to buy a new iPhone. But what caused all of this frenzy in the first place? In the Media Artist Secrets podcast, Franklin pointed out that while all of the advertising and media attention was great, it may not have captured nearly as much attention if it wasn’t for the very well designed, detailed video tour of the new iPhone where you got to see all of the cool new features, how they worked, and saw the iPhone in action…before you even got to see one firsthand.

So what does this have to do with skimpy “About Me” pages? Franklin McMahon puts it like this. The iPhone video behaved just like the perfect “About Me” page that everyone who has a website should have. If you were curious about the iPhone, the video told you all about it. And then it went a step further…it also made you want to have one yourself. Before you saw the video, you were only curious about the iPhone…after the video, you were so excited that you couldn’t wait to have one or at least touch one. And your “About Me” page should develop the same reaction in your visitors.

How many of us have an “About Me” page that just lists a brief biography and a colorless description of the kind of work we do? How many of use don’t even have an “About Me” page because it’s hard to write one without seeming like we’re bragging? How many people go from curiosity to “I gotta have something from that artist!” after reading your About Me page? I know personally that the “About Me” page is not my favorite thing to write, but I have one because I know that visitors to you website trust you more if they can learn more about you and know that you’re an actual person. But, as Franklin pointed out, your “About Me” page should take it a step further and should transform readers into buyers.

If you want to check out the Media Artist Secrets podcast, visit Franklin McMahon’s blog at http://www.fmstudio.com/2007/07/05/media-artist-secrets-episode-69/ and check out the July 5 show. The entire show is about 35 minutes long, but if you want to skip ahead to the iPhone marketing segment, it starts about 22 minutes into the episode. The beginning of the episode also has some pretty good tips on keeping yourself from getting distracted while you’re working…so you can’t go wrong by listening to the whole thing.