Hunger for Peace

JR won a TED prize with his wish to turn the world inside out with art.  In this TED Talk, he tells the story of how people are changing the world one picture at a time.

Bullets and Beanie Babies

Last night I listened as a wounded Iraqi veteran talked in halted, nervous tones of his struggles with anger, of his lost jobs because he could no longer do simple math, of his efforts to put into art the things that he could not put into words.

He talked about the soldier's pack he carried … filled with bullets and Beanie Babies … and two cans of Coke ... because I like Coke.  Beanie Babies to make friends with the children during the day. Bullets for the middle of the night or early morning ... when people were deepest in their sleep and would be least likely to resist.  Beanie Babies for the children … bullets for their resisting parents.

He talked to a room full of students who sat sanding plaster casts of their smooth, innocent faces … faces untouched by the veteran's world … and answered questions about bronze and glass and why.

What have we done?

Picasso's Mother

Yesterday my blog sister Louise at Recover Your Joy posted a quote that startled me and set me to thinking:

When I was a child my mother said to me, 

'If you become a soldier, 

you'll be a general. 

If you become a monk, 

you'll be the pope.' 

Instead I became a painter 

and wound up as Picasso.  

  -- Pablo Picasso

I missed the class that taught me how to truly appreciate Picasso's art … but his words often blow open a closed door in my mind.

Think about this quote which is wise on so many levels.

Would Picasso have become Picasso if his mother hadn't opened the world to him?

Why don't we hear more about his mother?  What manner of woman must she have been to say such words to her child, to lay endless paths of possibilities before him?

What might we do with those words in our own lives?  Is it possible that, even if our own mothers did not quite paint such endless possibilities for us, that we could, even now, mother ourselves? 

Could we say those words that give us the permission to go to the far reaches of our own possibilities, to step fully into our own authentic selves?  

We don't have to be a general or a pope … we don't even have to be a ground-shifting artist … but what a gift it would be ... could be ... to be wholly, jubilantly our own selves.

About this image: Awakening

Often, 

when things seem quiet, 

when nothing is moving, 

when all seems dormant, 

behind us,

unnoticed,

without effort,

without expectation,

the blue light of tomorrow

arrives

and becomes 

now.

Stealing Second

“Progress always involves risks. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first base.”

- Frederick B. Wilcox

Yesterday, I took my foot off first base; now I'm in the danger zone between first and second, not knowing what will come next.  

It all started with fear.

 

A couple of days ago I made a silly decision to go see "A Dark Knight Rises" as a minuscule act of resistance against fear.  What I received for this act was 2 hours and 44 minutes of non-stop violence and a disturbing view of an apocalyptic world.  I can't recommend this movie … take that precious 2 hours and 44 minutes and make life with it.

However, this thinking about fear prompted my current leap into the void.  Last December I was thrilled to be accepted into the Gallery at Marina Square in Morro Bay.  It is a beautiful space filled with the art work of almost 70 artists run by an inspired and very patient leader, Jane Siragusa.  It has been a great experience … I've learned a lot, met inspiring artists and was stretched to a new level when I was given the privilege of being a featured artist and had to fill 22' of wall space with my art.  

Acceptance into the Gallery was a major factor in my decision to move to the Central Coast … a decision I'm grateful for every day.  However, yesterday I resigned as an artist in the Gallery … turned loose of my safe, accepting, friendly and supportive place and decided to steal second.  The Gallery sits in the primary tourist area in Morro Bay so it gets a lot of traffic but most of its sales are jewelry and small pieces of art, often related to Morro Bay and its signature rock.  

In the past several weeks, I've spent a lot of time trying to find a strategy for making my art fit this market so that it would be financially more viable.  The problem is that I want to do bigger pieces, not smaller, and I want to do the work that calls me rather than what I think might sell.  

I believe in art.  I think the act of creativity heals our Universe … any act of creativity whether it's art, poetry, gardening, raising a child, teaching or dancing.  Creativity is not about the end result, it's about the process of pulling a piece of ourselves into the "real" world.  Focusing on the end result affects the creative process.  

The Gallery fits some artists perfectly … what they are called to create happens to be what the visitors to the gallery want to buy.  For me, it was a mis-match.  The safe route would have been to adapt to the market.  I'm choosing a more risky path leading to somewhere I can't see.  

Only tomorrow knows where we're headed.

About this image:  Into the Abyss

Harmony is a small art community here on the Central Coast, population 18, with a glass blowing and other art studios.  One day i was visiting there and, as I was walking toward the glass studio, something in the weed-filled area in back of it caught my eye.  It was just a wooden wall, burnt and weathered but it called to me and from it came this image.

It's Official: Art Makes Us Happy!

Watch this short video ... then go make art ... buy art ... view art ... support art in our schools!

Reflection of Time Past

An old memory surfaces

Throwing reflections across my heart

Then. Now. then. now. thennow it beats

until it becomes not time, notime, just is time.

nothing is ever lost

nothing is ever gained

all that is remains.

Summer

Memorial Day always seems like the beginning of summer so this is the image that showed up today.


May your holiday be safe and joyful.

Art Is Within Everyone

In the current western culture, we tend to think of art and beauty as decoration, a nice to have luxury.  Our schools, when faced with a choice between math and art (or music or dance or theater), drop art and focus on tangible, measurable skills.  Since only a few students will become "artists," why waste precious resources that do not produce doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, the backbone of growth and productivity?  


It's the cement-mixer school of thought:  pour a bunch of math, science, language and computer skills into an empty drum, revolve it for 12 years and pour out the building mix of progress.

What's missing from this logical looking formula?  The soul, the creativity that exists within each of us, the new ideas that will pull energy out of tides, teach the body to harness its own healing power, enable us to find ways to live with creeping climate change.

Art, creativity, beauty ... this is the light contained in each of us ... but it needs to flow out into the world, to be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, heard.  Bottled up, it creates despair, anger, cancer, (figuratively and sometimes literally); encouraged, supported and set free, it creates joy, ideas, solutions to old problems and inspiration for new worlds.

The video that launched this train of thought on this glorious morning on the central coast features Ricky Lee Gordon, award-winning South African street artist and art activist. He states: 

Color creates energy, energy creates inspiration and inspiration creates change. It is our responsibility to inspire ourselves to inspire others to inspire the change. Art is the remedy for this.  ... Removing the grayness from the soul of the city is the job of artists, poets, and musicians.

His motto is:  Inspiration and love through art to make a difference in South Africa.  Use art to change perceptions.


I highly recommend this video and hope you'll take time to sit down, watch the video, and then actively let your own creative light flow free.  Perhaps you can find a way to use your art (whether it's cooking, painting, gardening, dancing, sewing, writing, teaching, sculpting ... however you express your self) to change the perceptions of the people who make decisions about our schools, our communities and our country.

Who Hijacked Our Art?

"Cosmic Balance"

A friend of mine who is a very smart guy and curious about all aspects of the world writes, "I don’t understand any of the arts.  Maybe you can explain.  Who gets to decide that the Mona Lisa is a great painting?  Is that the same group that thinks that Picasso is a great artist?  What makes Picasso’s art great?   I certainly don’t get it!"

Interesting question. Creating images and representations is apparently part of our DNA.  There has always been art and artists ... however, I'm not so sure that there were always art critics. (Since I wasn't there when art was born, and, as far as we know, the critics of ancient times didn't leave anything behind, I don't know this for sure.)  

What I do know is that somewhere along the line, we gave away our power to appreciate art.  I'm not sure if we donated it, or someone hijacked it, but gradually the score card became controlled by a small group of critics, curators and collectors (whom I'll call the C-squad).  

To some extent, this made sense ... some people are more interested in art and they spend their lives gathering information about specific artists, methods and trends.  They become "experts" and develop their own opinions about what is "good" and "bad" and they want to share all the information they've gathered and the opinions they've formed.  That part is fine.  What's not so fine is when their opinions are presented as fact.  Picasso is great; Kincaide is a dud (even though millions of people love those little cottages with lights in the windows).

Over time, art became the sport of the elite and the rest of us began walking around with puzzled faces scratching our heads about what the art world called great.  We lost confidence in our ability to appreciate art, to respect our own ability to know what we liked.  Gradually, we left art to the "experts."

"Nothing is positive about art except that it is a word." -- de Kooning

I am in the midst of reading a biography of de Kooning, part of Jason Horejs's ongoing book club.  Whether you like de Kooning's work or not, the C-squad has deemed it great and, after 300 pages of his biography, I've developed a great respect for his depth of understanding of the historic patterns of art and the personal struggle that engaged him.  While I still can't say that I like most of his work, I'm starting to understand that he wasn't trying to paint what he saw, but rather what he felt.  He was always after what he called the "nothing" part of the painting, "the part that was not painted but that was there because of the things in the picture which were painted."

In that concept of "nothing," he may have captured the magic of art.  Great art captures that nothing in a way that creates a chemical explosion within the viewer.  We may not be able to articulate it in words, but we feel it.   We know we "like" it; we feel a connection to it.  However, since each of us is different, the art that creates an explosion within me, may not be the art that connects with you.  

This is the point where art got hijacked.  The C-squad added the world "should" to the equation and designated which art contained the nothing that people should connect with.  You should respond to Picasso.  You should not respond to Kincaide.  I think de Kooning might respond with a blunt B.S.

I also think de Kooning would like being alive today and would approve of the new world of art making and art buying.  While the C-squad is still active, it seems to be losing some of its grip on the masses.  Millions of artists are quietly working away in their own studios, trying to capture their inner worlds in pigment, clay and dozens of other media.  Some make work to sell, most are just following their own calling.  At the same time, in art fairs, galleries and in-home exhibits, people are responding to the "nothing" that appears in paintings, sculpture, photography, quilts, glasswork and other forms ... buying what causes the chemical explosions within themselves without waiting for the official word from the C-squad.  

Through the growing number of local art events and the Internet, we are gradually waking up to our own authority to know what it is we like, knowing that if we like it, if it creates that explosion of connection within us, it is great art.

Creativity Heals

This week I met a young woman who told me a story ... a sad story that happens all too often.

Her dad died when he was only 52, leaving his wife and five grown and almost grown children.  Her mom had been a talented creative giver ... one of those women who could make anything and was constantly giving it all away.  When her husband died, it took the spirit out of her and she stopped.  For almost twenty years now she has withered, losing precious time with her children and grandchildren, losing her health ... losing her self.  

Grief can do that; it is a powerful force that drains our life energy.  When a loved one dies, it's like a door closes on the life that was.  Sometimes we sit in a chair facing that doorway, wishing it would open again, yearning for what was.  However, behind us, if we could only turn around, are new doorways opening  to new lives and new joy.  Sometimes a sense of guilt keeps us glued to that chair faced toward the lost past.  We are afraid of dishonoring the dead by turning toward a new life.  In some cultures, the wife is expected to throw herself on the funeral pyre.  We don't do that literally but sometimes people do it slowly, metaphorically, letting their life energy fade away like embers in an untended fire.

After my husband died, I read countless stories of tragedy and grief, and it seemed like everywhere I looked, there was one common thread leading toward new joy:  creativity.  People who were able to go forward and build new lives found a creative outlet:  for some it was creating a living memorial for their lost loved one such as  Candy LIghtner who started Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) after her daughter was killed by a repeated drunk driver or Cindy Sheehan who began to protest war after her son was killed in Iraq.  For others it was finding or renewing a passion for gardening, sewing, family, community, or art.  

Creating something new plugs us back into life, starts the juices flowing again ... heals us. I was one of the lucky ones.  A few weeks after my husband died, in an effort to escape the pain, I wound up in a digital collage workshop in a tiny fishing village just south of Puerto Vallarta.  That workshop changed my life ... and maybe saved it.  I recently published a book about death, art and the healing power of creativity in hopes that it might help others.


Joy after the Fire, when grief, despair and loss become the seeds of new joy and growth is available from iBookstore for iPads or as a downloadable pdf that you can read on any computer ... just click the Buy Now button.  Grief and loss comes to each of us ... finding a way to create something new seems to be the only real way to heal the wound.

Joy after the Fire

Art: Conscious or Unconscious?

Jason Horejs, owner of Xanadu Gallery and great mentor to all artists, is hosting a book club focused on "de Kooning, an American Master" by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. I don't particularly appreciate or understand de Kooning's art, but I wouldn't miss one of Jason's book clubs so I dove into this 700+ page book.  The writing is superb and the story is engaging.   A young Dutch boy from a poor and dysfunctional family finds art and follows its trail to America when he drops into the New York budding modern art scene of the 1930s. De Kooning seems to be the poster boy for the "starving artist" image so it's interesting to read about his journey.

One part of the story made me read with envy ... the community of friendship, conversation, and support of artists who are struggling to find a new way to express themselves and being largely unappreciated and unsold.  Unrecognized by the official art world, small groups of artists encouraged and supported each other and their vision.  Even though de Kooning was classically trained and depended on his commercial art for his meagre support, he destroyed almost everything he painted for years, trying to find a way into a new way of expressing himself.  The book offers many stories about artists who would start works, get stuck, come back later, get stuck again ... and again.  It was like they were trying to dig out nuggets out of their unconsciousness and find a way to put them on canvas.

In the midst of this thinking about de Kooning and the early modern art years, my quilter friend Vivian Helena loaned me a DVD copy of "Stitched, the film ... behind every stitch, there is a story."  The film follows three quilters as they enter three of the biggest quilt shows.  The quilting industry is huge ... over $4B in sales, 21 million quilters, and the Houston show draws over 50,000 people!  Beyond the size of the industry, however, I've noticed that in many ways it is far more progressive than the rest of the art world.  When I want to think about art marketing, I wonder what the quilters are doing.

What struck me while watching this film, though, was the messages the quilters choose and how carefully and beautifully they craft that message into the medium.  My own process tends to be an unconscious groping.  I seldom know where I'm going when I start and it is only as I'm groping, trying things, rejecting things, making adjustments, putting it aside and coming back later, does the message emerge. I would love to find the means to be more purposeful when I enter into a new piece of art but so far it hasn't happened.

It makes me wonder how you view this dance of conscious and unconscious in your own art?  I would love to hear your take on this ... just leave a comment below.

About this image:  Shining Star

I'm getting ready for my show at the Gallery at Marina Square in May and this is one of the pieces I've just finished.  This morning glory was crawling across a sidewalk in Oakland and shouted, "Look at me!"  It is available on dye-infused metal and its size is 10"x20."

Brainard Carey: Your Art Has Value

Brainard Carey, an outrageous artist and art mentor, says your art has value.  Remember that.  Here he is with that same message in a quick 1-minute video that you might want to watch more than once.

Show Your Art

 This quote comes from Alyson Stanfield this morning:

Art is a form of communication. You might think you make art as a form of self-expression, but you know that your work is incomplete until people see it and respond to it. You understand the synergy that erupts when you are in a room full of people looking at and talking about your art. 

It also reminds me of the incredible poem from Mary Oliver that prompted this image and ends with the lines:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

The Unsung Artist

The Unsung Artist

Two years ago, my friend Suzanne and I had a retreat at her sister's house on Kiawah Island, SC.  We took hundreds of photographs and tonight I was wandering through them and found one that I was particularly taken with at the time.  It was a curly weed amidst tangles of beach grass.  But as much as I loved the photo, I couldn't make it leap out at me as it did on that chilly day on the island.

So tonight I started playing with it, intending to just spend a few minutes seeing what would emerge.  Slowly it began to speak to me and, hours later, I realized that I was in  collaboration with a master artist.  The colors, the brush strokes, the dramatic energy ... they were all there just waiting for me.  My job was just to set them free.

One of the presenters at Ariane Goodwin's SmARTist Telesummit asked us to ask ourselves why we are artists.  Tonight the answer came back again ... because it is so much fun!

Here is the original photo which has haunted me for the past two years.

Why Am I An Artist?

Why am I an artist?  Someone asked me that recently and I replied with my usual, "Because it brings me joy!"  Then another wise person asked, "But what does that mean?"  And, that sent me onto a new trail that looked something like this:

Why am I an artist?

Because ...

• It's fun.
• It makes my spirit sing.
• I love seeing colors and shapes come together in new ways.
• It surprises me when new things show up.
• It takes my breath away when beauty shows up.
• It proves that I was wrong when I thought I could not do art or be an artist.
• It shows me that there is a river of creativity waiting for each of us to step into it in our own way.
• It reveals pieces of myself that I didn't know existed.
• I often don't know where things come from or how they got into my camera and computer.
• It feels like a sacred gift from the Creative Force.
• It makes me feel part of the Whole, connected by strands of beauty through the act of making art.
• It is my prayer for the world, my small way of sharing the joy and beauty that has been given to me.

It is my prayer for the world.  The person who originally asked the question said we'd get a jolt when we hit the core reason of why we're an artist.  This is where I got my jolt.


I encourage all of you to do this exercise ... you can substitute whatever word is appropriate to you for the word "artist" ...  writer, mother, teacher, doctor, politician, singer, butcher, baker, doer of whatever you love.

Eden Maxwell, author of An Artist Empowered: Define and Establish Your Value as an Artist-Now, initially asked the question that launched this train of thought as part of the SmARTist Telesummit.  Ariane Goodwin, founder, organizer and host of this incredible gathering of artists and art marketers, pushed my thinking even further.

Art Marketing Case Study: Drew Brophy

When we think about marketing our art, it's easy to get lost in generalities.  Today I found an artist who offers an excellent example of many principles of art marketing.

I was introduced to Drew Brophy by his wife Maria Brophy, who is part of the SmArtist TeleSummit.  I was intrigued when I heard that he painted on surfboards so I went to his website and found an artist passionate about surfing ... or maybe a surfer passionate about art.

Here are some of the specifics I noticed:

A tagline that builds credibility and speaks to the target audience:  "Making things look cool since 1971."  Surfing is one of the few "young" activities that seems to honor the elders in the field.  In some fields, mentioning the year 1971 would almost relegate you to the dustbin, but here, it's a badge of honor.  There's a secondary tagline of "Livin' the dream" with a picture of a surfer and a killer wave."

Understanding and speaking the language of your audience:  In addition to images that fit the subject ... bright colors, dragons, eyeballs ... Drew's words fit the subject and the audience.  Here's the opening of his artist statement:  

In high school Drew Brophy’s guidance counselor pulled him aside and sternly warned, “Drew, you can’t just surf and paint your whole life.”   He was crushed, because those were the only two things that he was good at.  He was determined to prove her wrong.

By proving her wrong, Drew connects with every frustrated teenage surfer ... even if they happen to be adults still remembering their younger days.

Using the technology relevant to the audience:  Drew's clientele is young and the media of the young is video.  Here's a video where Drew transforms a plain vanilla van into a surfer's dream machine ... all to the pounding beat of music that fits the target audience.

Focus or Fail!

Focus

What do carrier pigeons have to teach you about reaching your goals?  A lot, according to artist and writer Jack White in his fascinating post for Fine Art Views.  

White begins with John James Audubon who reports seeing the sun eclipsed by a flight of millions of pigeons and continues into the tales of heroic carrier pigeons and their amazing ability to find home under extreme conditions.  He uses the pigeons to teach several lessons important to artists, and anyone trying to create success in their professions.  

My favorite, perhaps because it hit home, is Focus or Fail! and here's what White says:

3. Carrier pigeons faced great danger with the enemy doing all in their power to kill them. Yet they ignored the fodder and fire to push on - always pressing forward and never looking back to where they left. The moment the pigeon carrying a vital message was released from its base, the bird became single focused. The one and only goal was to reach their home coop. I have found lack of focus to be the Achilles Heel of so many artists. Write this down, Focus or Fail.

The post is filled with interesting information and valuable lessons and well worth reading.

Gallery at Marina Square, Morro Bay, CA

If you're ever in Morro Bay ... stop by!

Cookies and Art

I grew up in a tiny town in Kansas, population 266, and went to an even tinier church which had an even tinier flow of cash into the coffers.  One weekend we had a bake sale and lined tables up in front of the church on the main street.  It was a feast of cakes, cookies and pies and the tables were womaned by eager and friendly church members.  Who stood there.  Traffic down main street was pretty much non-existent so there was no one to buy their lovingly prepared baked goods.

My friends and I had been enrolled in helping with the bake sale so we, too, stood there with nothing to do.  I'm not sure whose idea it was, but finally we got frustrated enough that each of us took as many cookies, pies, and cakes as we could carry and went walking door-to-door through the neighborhood ... and came back, time after time, empty handed.  The bake sale was a success and we had, inadvertently, learned a lesson about marketing.

Now, many years later and like many other artists, I'm trying to figure out the marketing side of art.  There seems to be a legion of us standing by our tables of lovingly baked goods on a road with too little traffic.  So the question is how to take our art to the people who would be interested in buying it.  It's not quite the same as taking cookies door-to-door but that may still be a metaphor to contemplate.

People like cookies and they know exactly which cookies they like, whether it's sugar cookies with sprinkles or chocolate-chunk-with-pecan cookies.  Most people are far less comfortable about art.  Many feel intimidated by art, unsure that what they like is "right."  They hesitate about buying art, afraid of making a bad decision, afraid of looking stupid, afraid of winding up with a black-velvet Elvis on their walls. (Personally, I loved black velvet art, but that's another story!)

And, of course, cookies are far more affordable than art.  They are small, inexpensive indulgences whereas art is often an investment, a commitment to beauty.

Perhaps last and least, cookies don't have to match the couch!  In a few minutes they're gone, leaving only a sweet memory.  We've been schooled to believe that art lasts forever, that it gets handed down to the next generation, that it has to stay on your wall even when you can't remember why you bought it ... because it's ART!

What if we thought about art in the same way we think about clothes?  Beautiful things to dress our homes, offices and studios.  Beauty that makes us feel beautiful, peaceful, enlivened, connected to the world.  And, when it stops "fitting," we pass it along to someone else and purchase the next experience of beauty.  Maybe we don't have to "collect" art; maybe it should be ok to just wear it, enjoy it, savor it and then let it go.

Food ... or should I say cookies ... for thought.

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 ...