How artists can use Instagram

 

So this happened: Christie’s had an art auction on Instagram, grossing $134.6 million. And an artist in New Orleans, Ashley Longshore, sells paintings directly from Instagram, for upwards of $30,000. Obviously there is some serious coin passing hands through an app that was designed just to share your own cell phone pictures.

I’ve grown a decent following by posting 3-4 times throughout the day. I love looking at my feed and hope Instagram doesn’t eff that up like Pinterest did (but that’s another story). My Instagram has become the main driver of traffic and sales to my website Lee Wolfe Pottery, in just 7 months. Here are my best tips for artists and artisans who want to gain and grow a following on IG for the purpose of selling their work. The basics can be learned anywhere, and by that I mean how to set up an account, use hashtags, comment on posts, etc. Let’s pretend you already know that, plus how to use your camera, editing apps, PayPal, online shipping, etc. The next level after the basics is where just being an artist, that is, having a lot of natural curiosity, an opinionated and focused point of view, and an aesthetic sense that you feel deep in your gut, will make you stand out.

1) Know who you are as a brand before you start. You might be very clear about what that is, but if you are not, try putting it into words. What is your artwork about? What larger trends, if any, are you aligned with?What are you opposed to? What need does your work fulfill? What problem does it solve? Visually, what represents you? Musically, what represents you? What gets expressed when you make things? You don’t need an autobiographical answer to each of those questions in order to open an Instagram account! But it helps if you could confidently answer a few.

2) Make sure that every post, and every element within your posts, represents you as a brand. This gets really obvious after you think about it awhile.  Take me for example. Lee Wolfe Pottery is based in the organic, natural world and is connected to simple living, artfully prepared food, warm and welcoming homes that nurture and revitalize creativity. So, which of these does not belong in my photos as a staging prop?

a) a flower from my garden

b) works by other artisans, such as block printed napkins, hand carved wooden spoons, handmade soap

c) garden vegetables, fresh baked desserts, organic eggs

d) plastic cutlery from Dollar General

I hope you got that one right. It’s d.

3) Look at your posts as a whole. There should be enough negative and neutral space within each photo to allow the grid of your posts to seem harmonious and uncluttered. For example, my posts are usually shot on a white table. I space my dark background shots so that they have at least 2 white background shots before and after. This isn’t the only visual formula that works by any means! But a formula is important.

4) Be social more than promotional. A life lesson to apply: no one likes that person at a party who is always selling insurance or trying to list your house, even though you’d be likely to ask within your circle of friends when you need insurance or a listing agent. So use your IG as a window into your world more than as free ad space. Post a bit of daily life in your studio, new works shot informally, and other parts of your life that directly relate to your brand. Watch which posts get the most likes and comments and then post more like that. People will teach you about what to post if you pay attention!

5) Like and comment liberally. It’s free and it matters.

6) Space your posts out. I don’t like to post more than 1X every 4 hours, no more than 4X a day (usually less than 4). You don’t want your posts to be spam. If you have multiples of similar photos, pick only the best, the one that tells a story, the one with great lighting and composition.

7) This is really everything: always add value. If you can’t see the value, don’t post it! Give people something interesting, informative, revealing, inspirational, beautiful, and/or funny. Think about original and unique posts. Play with editing apps. Make still shots little collages. Bake things just for Instagram! Make your children  hold things on their heads or until their little hands cramp while you get the perfect angle… okay, maybe not that. But do stretch your creativity and make an account that must be followed because it is that good.

you can follow me here LeeWolfePottery, if you like.

Sarah-Lambert Cook's Amazing Creative Vortex

The miniature watercolor with its impossibly rich detail and precision rendering are impressive, but what makes Sarah-Lambert Cook stand out is the quirky choice of subject matter. Monty Python, Jane Austen and Harper Lee references show up often, usually with an unusual personal twist. There are also finely drawn  animals, flowers, landscapes. Where, you might wonder, does she get all these ideas? Well, for starters, she has moved 5 times in the last year as a military spouse, so she's seen a lot of various landscapes, zoos, museums, nature preserves. But her best inspirational source is with her younger sisters. Their distinct and fearless personalities are captured below, along with Sarah-Lambert's notes. I think it shows how one creative person is often the voice for all that has touched us, especially the people who live in our hearts and minds.

This is my youngest sister who, at 16 years younger than myself, has a fantastic person style.  

She's really into red pandas right now and is wearing my Red Panda necklace (found here) while holding her own pet red panda, Charlie Brown.

Julianne is a pensive, beautiful girl who is just on the cusp of high school now. (Wearing the Le Magical Fireflies necklace) 

She spends a lot of time reading and even more time inventing stories of her own! (Wearing the Arrowhead necklace) 

Katy-Lynn is on the cusp of college and full of possibilities. Her observant nature helps in her writing which she is very good at! (Wearing the Llama locket)

Family

I rarely start out to make these insanely elaborate decorations. You would think that after 70+ hour weeks in the studio making pottery, I’d just make a pie, or stick flowers in a vase. But my mind is racing with imagery. At the market I just have to have these particular lime green mums, and…not those…not those…oh, have to have these bright red mini carnations! And then they have to be meticulously arranged. Like this:

And the funny thing is, I never feel closer to my grandmother than when I am obsessed with getting the pie crust to look just right. I can so vividly recall her lattice crust and the way she used a zigzag cutter to cut the strips.

This Thanksgiving, my daughter returned for the first time a grown woman. She went right to work in the studio, making pottery for her Etsy shop, MarciG. When she helped me cook and bake, I was amazed at how much she knew without being told. And then it occurred to me how many years she’d silently been there, just watching.

Flock of Love by MarciG

I think what makes us family is not so much our genetics, as we are all so very different. It is rather this silent language that runs through us.

We make our nests, our homes like a monk prays, or like a little bird sings.

Raised In Love from OneClayBead

Beatles vs Stones

I liked the Rolling Stones better than the Beatles, and if you were a teen in the late 60’s to 70’s, this choice had to be made. It defined who you were. Maybe it still does.
I am listening to Keith Richards’ book, Life,  on CD in my studio, and then caught Martin Scorcese’s documentary on George Harrison the same day. Keith was the guitar player for the Stones; George for the Beatles. I was struck by a sharp contrast between these 2 British rock stars who rode the same wave to fame.
George used his music to say something important. It was message driven music. He railed against the Tax Man and advocated Eastern mysticism and philosophy. Whereas Keith was obsessed with what he could learn from playing guitar. He was driven by a need to get a chord he’d heard or a blend of sound that felt right. George was a teacher who used art in his lessons. Keith was a student and his art was his teacher. And that’s why I’ve related to Keith and the Stones more than George and the Beatles.
It's not that I disliked the Beatles nor mysticism, and George wrote some of the best, like Here Comes the Sun and Something. It's just that, as far as music goes, George wasn't all in the way that Keith was all in. There's this old quote that gets attributed to different people, that goes:
"If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you."
Music was that thing within Keith that saved him. And that is what pottery is like for me. I'm not expressing joy or awe in my work. Joy and awe are expressing through me when I am making pottery, and that's why I make it.

I don’t have anything to say with my art, yet it has taught me to live a life filled with satisfaction. What I find there is beyond words, beliefs, theology.

flower bowl in OneClayBead
Who are you, as an artist? Stones or Beatles?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In the studio yesterday, Marci told me that she was turning her cell phone off more often. She was weary of the drama. She was happy glazing; excited about a new design. This, above all, I have wanted to impart to my teen daughter.

After some early success in the fine art world in my 20’s , I began making pottery. Fine art is so gravely serious. Works of light and joy were, at the time, viewed as useless fluff, and perhaps they still are. I was drawn to the silent thoughtless world of clay where you can be moved to an almost holy place just by how beautiful something is.

Today I ran across this quote. It is from the novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“she knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love. how she wished she could learn lightness!”

I suddenly wanted to see lightness everywhere, to go outside and capture with my camera the light shining through leaves. To feel that lightness of being is to be transparent, thin of  negativity and judgment, and allow the light of Creation to shine through.

I’m going to do this more often. it feels good.

Imagine. Dare. Dream. Make it.

“When the soul wishes to experience something, she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own image.’ –Meister Eckhart
When I stare at the chalky grayness of clay,  I use my mind’s eye to give it color. Unlike paint, glaze contains little resemblance to the final fired color, so I have trained myself through the years, to mentally try on my various glazes until I visualize the ones I want. I also choose, first in my imagination, the little embellishments like the wire twig on my Owl House ornament.
This ability to dream, to see in my mind’s eye, to explore what might be, to give birth to possibility, is a skill that serves me well in my art and in my life.
Owl House began with this feeling that this holiday season will be full of joy, magic, and everyday blessings. I shut my eyes and immersed myself in that feeling, and the image of the little owl perched in it’s snug home, staring with curiosity, emerged.

Garden Retreat

 

This is my back yard. It was a shambles when we bought the house, but we’ve built the flagstone patio area with the swing, fire pit and picnic table, planted tender new flowerbeds everywhere and spent many long evenings eating and laughing together here.

My daughter and I just finished this dinnerware set, which combines my Organic Soul with her garden Retreat.

 

We’ve worked hard on the dinnerware set to make the leaf plates curl gracefully, to make plates that are organic shapes but also not warped. We’ve sweated in physical labor as a family creating our retreat far more than the time we’ve spent lazily enjoying it.

Is this a conundrum, to work hard making a place of rest, or a dinnerware set intended for long leisurely meals?

The work has been a kind of joy and pleasure unlike any other. There are thoughts that come while forming clay into a poppy or planting new lilies or laying the flagstone that are as if the mind has opened and something large and full of grace steps in. Inside of the physical work of creativity I find delight, as if delight were the most serious thing possible.

River Journey Series

My two favorite things in clay are textures, especially lace textures, and glazes that flow. The River Journey series has the colors from my whitewater rafting trips on the French Broad River, and this one captured that essence perfectly.

I may not go rafting for another month as I am still fragile, recovering from surgery. These colors still call to me, perhaps even more urgently as memories than as experiences in real time.  I think of that exhilarating moment going over rapids, scenery blurring, control suspended, and what it is to be no more than a leaf taken by a strong current. Isn’t it ironic that most of our lives are spent trying to get or maintain control, while the nanoseconds of exquisite joy occur during abandon and surrender. Perhaps this is why I layer 7-10 glazes and stack them in the kiln, never knowing what the heck will happen.

Like this one.

MarciG’s flowers

 

                                              

Marci G

at work

I love Marci’s new flower bowls. They have evolved from a bowl that looks somewhat like a flower to flowers that contain the idea of a bowl.

I started in clay as sculpture and transitioned to functional work. Marci’s path is the reverse.

Artisans Gallery Team

From top: ring by Markhed, vest by LoveandKnit, pottery by oneblackbird, clock by PaulaArt,   painting by StudioZen.

As the snowstorms raged and birds clung to our feeders like jewels of life outlined by white death, I dreamed into existence the Artisans Gallery Team on Etsy, in partnership with the talented and intelligent MerrittHyde. Okay... maybe it wasn't quite that simple or graceful, and yes, it took hours and days of endless lists and secretarial prowess (which I possess in scarcity) but in the end I see a team of extreme talent and professionalism that exceeds my original vision. If you visit the team blog or search the team tag, agteam, you will see what I mean!

We are a juried team of artisans of distinction, vetted by peers for excellence in design, skill, presentation, integrity, and customer service. Our team will offer buyers an online experience akin to shopping in a gallery by creating a marketplace of high quality, exceptionally skilled artisans. As an international team, with volunteer translators, we are a network aligned to promote the goals of the Handmade Revolution, to connect and support each other across language and geographic barriers, and to recognize and encourage professional standards and unique artistic voices.

I hope that you will sense, as I do, the individual artistic voice of each member, and find joy in discovering the members of our team.

OneClayBead

I have been dreaming of making my OneClayBead jewelry for half a year, and now I've carved out the time to do it. I have 5 successful pieces finished after 4 days of messing around with my loot from a wholesale bead show, all using at least one of my own hand formed stoneware clay beads. I could have made $750 in pottery inventory in this amount of time, and have an entire page of customer requests that I am neglecting, but this is something that I need to do. No financial adviser would tell you to stop making successful products and instead fumble around with expensive materials and no production plan. There is, however, a difference between an industrial factory and an artistic soul.

I want to make jewelry that is unlike anyone else's. I like the boho style. I like using natural materials and other people's handmade beads, and I like teaching myself new techniques and using all my various craft skills together.

This ^ is one of my most unique designs, just finished yesterday, and listed here. I macramed 32" of silk and cotton cord with pearls and mother of pearl carved beads. I used one of my own Spiral Heart stoneware beads, and a Tibetan silver and pearl dangle. The model is my daughter's friend, Julia, and I like the shot of her, too. I like using unprofessional models, no make up, and capturing that inner quality.

I'm very pleased with the few pieces I've created. Something intangible and vital gets woven into the strands and strung on cord, and connected to clasps. It relates to, and also informs my claywork.

I wonder if other artists and craftspeople pursue different media. I recommend it highly! If you are not failing over half the time, I assert that you are not truly creating.

Is Dad an Eco-Freak?

When my dad retired from his executive corporate job, he took pleasure in old memorabilia, like this mid century table radio, in the vintage shop of jessjamesjake. His house became less of the place that I remembered, where my mom entertained other business associates and their wives, and more of a showcase for objects that he found personally pleasurable. This was the beginning of his metamorphosis into a full blown eco-freak. It starts with appreciating old objects so that they are upcycled back into use, rather than contributing to the mound of waste polluting our planet.

I've noticed that since my husband lost his job, also in the corporate executive world, he has a much more value-centered approach to finding a new job than when he was a younger man. His drive to make a difference through his job exceeds his desire to simply sell his time to the highest bidder. Maybe being used up and spit out by corporations has given him empathy for how we are treating the planet's resources. He now firmly believes in the value of small businesses, helping grow the local and real economy, and developing green business practices for all companies. This clock made from recycled railroad tie plates and found objects, found in PaulaArt's shop, would interest him a lot these days. This former suit is clearly in the advanced stages of becoming an eco-freak!



At the last, most critical stage of becoming an eco-freak, a person will develop an irreversable love for anything organic and earthy in nature, such as this lidded vessel by Barbdunshee. Such objects will become preferable to ties, gunracks, and large power tools that are more typical gifts for Father's Day. We are also meeting many younger men who have bypassed traditional male interests altogether, and gone straight into eco-freakdom.

I am writing this so that some might take some of these changes in male tastes into account when considering what to buy for Father's Day. Your dad, husband, grandpa, stepfather, or godfather may already be an eco-freak!

Peaceful

I can't get enough of pure white lately, and I've started making these white bottles that have a second white glaze on the top which gives a textured white on white surface.

White is where I want to go in my meditations and prayers. It's where I'm at peace with everything and even myself. It's where I've given all my problems and complaints over to the Divine. White is pure possibility. An artist starts from a white canvass. A film is projected on a white screen. And so it is, I think, with our thoughts and prayers. Getting to a peaceful place is essential.

Buy Me

Sherrie and Allison, the buyer and manager of Grovewood Gallery, were here yesterday to pick out pots for the gallery. They both had many kind words for my new work, and picked my Buy Me table clean.

Even after 30 years, I have an inexplicable level of anxiety around who likes my work, how much they like it, and whether people who liked last year's work will take the leap with me into my new stuff. I keep working on ideas and lines whether or not they sell, but it is so much easier when they do! The urge to create comes from within me, and I enter states where the sheer sweetness of color and form, the audacious purity of impressionable clay, and the timeless trance of hands/eyes/attention are reason enough to keep making new pieces. But I, like any artist, secretly want a place in the world, and the place in the world that we all want is one where what we do that moves us to joy or tears moves others as well.

Success

After two months of screwing up pots and not getting what I want, I'm starting to get some wonderful new pieces! Here is a faceted pot in Tenmoku and Black Tea Dust glazes. I love everything about this small vase- the subtle ridges in the facets, the glaze flow and fit, the shape. Buyers are coming in two weeks, and I am down to the wire to get enough of these pots glazed and ready to sell.

My Aqua, Tidal Pool Blue and Green Tea glazes are still unpredictably running, but the last kiln load had more successes than failures. Yayyyyy!

After 30 years as a potter, I have enough technical prowess to knock out the same ole same ole with precision but its just not in me to do that. I like adventure, and exploring off the beaten path, and so onward I go.

The journey is the destination.

Before and After

The first image was one I actually posted on Etsy when I first started out. Surprisingly, I sold 2 of these necklaces, despite the dreadful presentation! Both buyers gushed in my Feedback about how much prettier the piece was when they received it, and I thought at the time that they were just being kind. But now I'm thinking that hey! maybe I should get the photos to look as pretty as the pieces....ya think? So this is my new attempt.

If you want a snicker, look here- these are on my Etsy site now! I didn't take into account the crop that Etsy does for their gallery view at all! And at the time I wondered why everyone snatched these up at my studio but ignored them online. Now compare this!

I did my photo makeover in Photoshop Elements 5. I did a better crop, and clone tooled out the uneven neckline on my daughter's shirt. I balanced the lighting in levels, my new best friend. Then I selected the shirt and jumper and changed their colors to warmer tones, which make the jewelry pop out better.

So I guess I'm not an old dog after all.

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. ~Attributed to Harry S. Truman

To Follow Your Life

I was struck by a comment left yesterday by Anne-Julie, regarding the meaning of her piece, Le Labyrinthe: "It represents a time of my life when I needed to look further, to escape from limbs and labyrinths, and other things that used to brake me. I needed to finally follow my life..."

...Which leads me to Gary Heller's Mystic Garden, pictured above. It is just summoning me to follow my life. What's really sort of making my head explode is that I could have also used this image from munieca in Argentina, or this one from InMost light in Tel Aviv, or even this print by Angelshair in Brooklyn, NY. They are all images of beckoning.

I'm not someone who likes to get all rational when I sense the mysterious, so I'll just end by saying that it's very intriguing that people from around the globe are making images in a common language, the one of our dreams, our inner listening, our heart's desire.

Maybe we are all sojourners on this planet; some spiritually, some emotionally, and some physically, so it is important to keep this in mind.

Le Labyrinthe

This is Le Labyrinthe by french artist Anne-Julie Aubry of The NebulousKingdom. She made it in Photoshop, and offers them in her Etsy shop printed on archival paper. Although she offers no commentary on why this woman is following a butterfly into a labyrinth, I can tell you that she must have known what it was like the first day that I discovered pottery. I was happily working at a REAL JOB ( the kind that Mom tells you to get) managing the gallery section of Brentano's in New Orleans, when I took just a few classes in pottery. A few years later, still taking classes, I decided to be a potter, and my career path of linear advancement up a known ladder completely ceased. The road that I've traveled as a potter thus far very much resembles a labyrinth, and instead of having a sensible mentor of any sort, I am perpetually following a butterfly.

I don't know how many times I've come up with some series of work that sells like sunscreen at the beach. Somewhere before I can see a straight line of sales and no worries, though, something goes awry. A glaze begins blistering, my kiln develops a mysterious malfunction, or glazes that I counted on to combine a certain predictable way just do something else instead. And in the process of fixing all these mishaps, I discover another little fork in the road that I cannot resist pursuing.

It's all worked out fine...if I don't count the obsessive hours of glaze tests, discussing pyrometers and thermocouples as if I know all about them, and sleepless, stressed out weeks. I just hope I never lose sight of that butterfly!

A Whole New World

I dragged my "vintage" table, lightbox made of a cardboard box and tissue paper, and point and shoot camera outside on a beautiful balmy day to photograph some new pieces. I think I'm getting somewhere with my homestyled setup. These look pretty darn near to what I used to pay $20 an image for.

They are all tagged, described, and listed in my Etsy shop, if you are interested. I was up until 4 a.m. photoshopping, resizing, catalogueing, and uploading. Ack! When you read all those articles about Etsy's success, they never mention that you must be a near pro photographer, copywriter, language specialist, and techno whiz to participate! Or that you'll fall so in love with everyone else's work! Or that it will completely change the context you have for what it means to be a maker of handmade things.