Monday, January 16, 2012

Artist Statements - An Evaluation

How do the pieces all come together?
Emily Dickinson once said, "Tell all the truth but tell it slant."  She makes it sound so simple.


I've been picking up artist statements mainly done in the form of "rack cards" (generally 4"x9" although they varied somewhat in size).  One of the hardest things artists are called on to do is write about ourselves and our work.  "We're artists not writers, salespeople or marketers," we say.  Yet in today's art world, any artist who wants to sell her or his work does not have the luxury of being "just an artist."

We need to put our best foot forward in our printed material, just as we do in our artwork, so here are some observations made from the 36 cards I have picked up so far.
  1. We can do better ... we NEED to do better.  Typos, hard-to-read fonts, and endless paragraphs are all-too-common.
  2. We need to be clear about the purposes for these rack card statements.  They cost money so they should *do* something ... remind the possible client of who we are and what they liked enough about our work to pick up our art statement card.  They need to know where they saw our work and how to get in touch with us. (FOUR of the cards I looked at had NO contact info.  28 of them did NOT reference the gallery or city they were showing in.)
  3. Did I mention that these cards cost money?  Yet, only NINE of the 36 cards had anything printed on the back of the card.  All that space just going to waste.  Yes, it might cost a little bit more to print on both sides but it's an opportunity to show more of our work or add intriguing information that would engage our potential clients.
  4. All of these cards were from VISUAL artists who paid MONEY to get their cards printed, yet 22 of the cards had only one, often small, image on it ... and 2 cards had no image at all!  How will the potential client remember our artwork if they can't see it?  The cards that had at least 4 images seemed to make a stronger impact although one artist included a powerful image that took up half of one side of the card.  That worked well, too.
  5. If the purpose of the art card is to remind a potential client about our work, shouldn't the card make it clear what our work is? On 17 of the 36 cards, I had very little sense of what the artist's work looked like or what the focus of their work was.
  6. If we want a potential client to contact us, shouldn't we give him as many ways to contact us as possible?  Assuming that email, website and phone numbers are the three basic contact points, I was surprised to find that only SEVEN of the cards contained each of those fundamentals.
  7. When a client buys a piece of our art, they are also buying us.  If they've resonated with our art, they feel like they "know" us in a way.  I hadn't thought about putting my photo on the art card but NINE artists did (and FOUR did self-portraits in their own art forms).  Those cards stood out for me, I felt a connection with the artists and their work.
  8. A lesser observation was that 14 of the cards were written in 1st person, with the rest in 3rd person.  It didn't seem to be the driving factor in the impact of the card.
  9. Overall, first sentences on the cards were very weak.  Glance through the list below and note which first sentence fragments would make you want to read more. (Only the first four words are included in order to not reveal any identities.)
I started taking pictures ...
I spent many of my ...
Painting has been a ...
I started oil painting ...
California, and specifically ...
I grew up in ...
My interest in working ...
I’ve been working with ...
My art is  ...
I create hand-marbled ...
I attempt to convey ...
My father and mother ...
I tend to remember ...
Hello there, my name ...
Born in Santa Ana ...
(Name) describes himself as ...
Born and raised in ...
(name) graduated with ...
If you like the sea ...
(Name) paints with passion ...
(City) resident (name) ...
(name) is from (city) ...
(Name) is the youngest ...
graphic artist by trade ...
local jewelry artist (name) ...
(Name) has been a ...
(Name) uses the art ...
(name) has resided on ...
(Name) has long focused ...
(name) creates her ...
To create new, diverse ...
(name’s) interest in art ...
(name) earned a BS ...
(name) has been creating ...
(Name) is a native ...
(Name) resides on ...

2 comments:

  1. Excellent summary, Joyce.

    This was one of the subjects of the Art Salon I attend monthly. The group is multidisciplinary but the Salon's aim is to provide all with knowledge about the business of art, which seems sorely lacking among even the most professional of artists. One guest speaker addressed use of business cards, a gallerist talked about marketing and promotion, and so on.

    Good stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wish I could be there with you and would love to have you share some of what you learn.

    ReplyDelete