30th November 2008 - Who's made a mark this week

The first set of Kelpies by Andy Scott
Copyright - Any Scott (sculptures); Nisbet & Wylie (photography)
Phots courtesy of Andy Scott

Meet the Kelpies, Scotland's giant addition to the UK sculptural skyline is a Guardian article about sculptor Andy Scott.

Kelpies are mythical water horses in Scottish lochs and rivers but are now set to become a public art project involving two vast equine heads which will stand 35 metres high - that's a third higher than Antony Gormley's Angel of the North. The heads will become the centrepiece of a £49m eco-park near Edinburgh and will guard the entrance to a canal link connecting the Firth of Forth with the Clyde in Glasgow.

Andy Scott has very kindly provided me with photograps of the first set of relatively small maquettes for the project which helped to win both support and funding for the project. You can read more about the project and the public art of Andy Scott on his website Andy Scott Public Art.

Art blogs

• Jeff Hayes (State of the Art) has been visiting rural India and was in Mumbai this week - but is safe. He left the train station in Mumbai on Wednesday about 15 hours before the indiscriminate shooting started and writes about what happened to him in Leaving Mumbai.
• Jana Bouc (Jana's Journal and Sketchblog ) shows us how even really tedious activities involving lots of queuing can provide excellent opportunities for sketching in Dangerous Driver Goes to Traffic Court and Plays Courtroom Sketch Artist
• Cathy Gatland (A sketch in time) has also been in court and sketching Art & Justice

Lots of people have been creating items associated with their art:

• Cathy Johnson has created a gallery site for her art on Blogger - Cathy Johnson Art. As she says it's been a long time coming!
  
• Lindsay Olson (Non-Linear Arts) has been making a paint map of the locations of all her paintings for her Waterways Project. Vivien Blackburn also has a paint map
  
• Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield Art Journal ) has been making a blurb book about her portraits - see BLURB and preview the book here. It's got a nice balance between close-ups and full size portraits - ideal for her potential clients!

Plus more tributes to Cindy Woods (see last week's who's made a mark this week':

• Illustration Friday blog - Cindy Woods rocks on!
• plus Ronda - Learning Daily - Giving Thanks
  

Art & Illustration - team blogs and projects

• On Monday I wrote about Making art and selling art - communities of interest for artists
• Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson) has provided an update on The Fine Art Department in More concerning the Fine Art Department and Things are settling down a bit - apparently she wasn't expecting quite so many people to want to join her new venture! Anyway, everything is now sorted and I must say I'm liking her choices.
  
• here's the November 2008 Results! for all the the people who took part in the Virtual Sketch Date this month

One more day to go! Tomorrow comes the announcement of a brand new team blog devoted to....but that would be telling! You may just pick up a clue from some of the teasers we've all been leaving lying around.....all over the place......even in this blog post!

Artist

• Karin Jurick (A Painting Today ) is a Finalist in the International Artist Magazine's People & Figures Competition. She has a picture an article in this month's International Artist Magazine. Karin tells me that she's also going to be the featured artist in an article in American Artist in 2009
  
• I really like Sherrie York's (Brush and Baren) tiny linocuts in her Small Linocuts Gallery
• The Guardian has provided a wonderful insight into the studio of Norman Ackroyd RA. He produces the most wonderful fine art prints - check them out on his website.
• British art critic Waldemar Januszczak has an interesting article in today's Sunday Time about Lucian Freud’s early obsessions.

Art business & marketing

• There's only 4 hours left to vote in the Making A Mark November Poll How much art have you sold via your blog/website in the last year? There will be a results analysis later this week - the poll is in the right hand column.
  
• The New York Times has an interesting article this week about Transforming Art Into a More Lucrative Career Choice. Thanks to Alyson B Stanfield for spotting this one.
  
• Marissa L. Swinghammer (m.Lee Fine Art), a very successful printmaker on Etsy, is recommending the Artfire website and highlighting the registration opportunities available. Marissa was an early adopter of Etsy and she reckons this one looks as good. The current deal advertises itself as cheaper than relisting at Etsy. Artfire is for handmade products designed by artisans around the globe.
• The Art Newspaper suggests that Artists should have same tax deductions as collectors when donating works of art and reports on a new campaign
  

Art Collectors

• Edward Winkelman (edward_winkelaman ) offers his thoughts on:
• How to Buy Art in a Recession, Part 1 which "discussed discounts, payment plans, and advanced payments as means of buying work when money's tight or taking advantage of the situation to secure a better position in a waiting list or pecking order." and notes that even Damien Hirst is now prepared to take a price cut
  
• How to Buy Art in a Recession, Part 2 is about positioning yourself for the next upswing

For artists whose prices are in that difficult zone (too high for impulse purchases and low enough to indicate you haven't yet had a retrospective at MoMA), a recession is perhaps a good time to consider making less expensive works...just to keep your market active

• Which Artists' Work Should You Collect? posted by Linda Blondheim at Landscapes Of The South
• In the Sunday Times article What are the big ideas driving the arts these days? Mark Quinn and Jessica Morgan comment on what they think are ideas relevant to Art. Of course what they're offering are individual perspectives. I do wish these peices would seek people who are able to comment beyond their own personal field.
• People interested in art which also support worthwhile causes will want to read my post listed below.
  

Art Competitions

• On Friday I posted about opportunities for artists interested in wildlife art in Two wildlife art competitions and a snow leopard
• while on Tuesday I posted about Selection, jurying and must-see lists which attracted quite a bit of interest and comments
• The CPSA Annual Exhibition prospectus has gone out to all CPSA members (I've got mine) and the website will be updated with details early this next week.
  

Art Economy

• Wall Street Journal -The Fine Art of Surviving the Crash in Auction Prices

The art market's crash - for that is what it is - threatens to remake the art world. In the past few weeks, auctioneers, dealers, artists and collectors have changed strategies and policies, and it's likely that future changes will be even more sweeping.

Art Exhibitions

• If you're travelling, bookmark the International Herald Tribune's Global Arts Guide - it seems to be listing all the major exhibitions in very many countries and cities
• Here's an example, the IHT listing for the exhibition about Venice at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel includes a slideshow which includes paintings of Venice by Canaletto, Turner, Manet, Renoir, Singer Sargent, Signac and Monet. There's an even better one on the Fondation's website
  
• For those of us who can't get to "Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur," at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian until Jan. 4 before reopening at the Seattle Art Museum on Jan. 29 - you can review this interactive feature which has audio explaining each of the paintings a nice feature which I'd like to see more often as an option.
  
• I went to the Preview of the Annual Exhibition of the New English Art Club on Thursday and will be back tomorrow for one of the guided tours plus a discussion - and my review will be posted this week.
• Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) has work in the 2008 Christmas Exhibition at the Beside the Wave Gallery in Falmouth in Cornwall. See Sarah's wonderful paintings of boats on the River Helford. She sold two paintings at the Private View so it augurs well!

Piran
Oil on gesso board,10 x 18 cm 0r 4 x 7in
copyright Sarah Wimperis
available from the Beside the Wave Gallery

• The Mini Picture Show opens at the Bankside Gallery on Wednesday and I'll be visiting to see the first selection on offer.
• Romaine Dennistoun draws wildlife from life and wrote to tell me that she is one the artists in an exhibition "Inspired by Nature" at The Wildlife Gallery, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.The exhibition runs until 5th January 2009.
  

Art History

• The Guardian highlights that in Auvers-sur-Oise Impressionist villagers protest at industry plan. Interestingly, while reading The Private Lives of the Impressionists I learned to my surprise that some of the places where Monet lived and painted were far from rural idylls and in fact there was a fair bit of noisy, smelly industry around and about
• On Thursday, everybody in the USA ate Turkey and I wrote about Turkeys and Monet's Montgeron series

Art Supplies

• Is it my imagination or are Dick Blick's percentage discounts in its sale getting bigger and bigger? Are we all being more circumspect before ordering and/or do they have a lot of stock to shift? Anybody noticed any other good deals?
  
• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) highlighted a Fountain Pen and Marker on Gurney Journey this week. He also got 'marked' himself! ;)
  

Book reviews

• I'm starting a series of blog posts highlighting books shops which are good for art books. I know the Internet can be cheaper but I actually like looking at art books before I buy. The first post was about The Bankside Gallery Bookshop which has probably got the best selection of books about the different methods of fine art printmaking anywhere in the UK.

Websites and Blogging

• On Saturday, I posted about Search engines - some alternatives to Google - which has had a very good response from people who weren't aware of some of the searche engines I wrote about.
  
• This is the Paintmap site and this is the Paintmap Blog - and How-to: Embedded Paintmap Maps tells you how to embed a paintmap Google Map on your website
• If you're being green and saving power when you're not using your computer (but don't want to switch off) do you know the difference between Standby/Sleep and Hibernate? If not, read Hibernation revisited -- saving energy with a PC
• Did you know the mouse is 40 next week?
• Caution! Watch out for a new form of spam. I had a comment this week which left the link back to their product very low in the comment so it was easy to miss (ie there was no link in the text and the link comes just above the 'publish' link in Blogger). When I checked it this is what it said (below) - yuk! The person commenting came from a blog which was all about drugs. The stupid thing is it's completely pointless as all the links in Blogger are automatically marked up by Blogger as 'no follow' and hence never ever count as links! So watch out for all those human "seeds" (see quote) - I just call it seedy and stupid!
  

Our large fleet of human based publishers seeds / delivers the content about your product or service, including a link to your website on a variety of highly related and visited news, forum, blog, social bookmarking and other types of websites.

and finally..................

This is an item for both fans of Thomas Kinkade and those who are less fond of his painting style and business practices.

I was interested to read the Vanity Fair Article about Thomas Kinkade's 16 Guidelines for Making Stuff Suck. It reprints in its entirety Thomas Kinkade's memo containing sixteen guidelines for creating the "The Thomas Kinkade Look". I gathered from reading them that this is what he does when creating his paintings. So now you know..........

Incidentally Frank Pasquale (Concurring Opinions ) highlights this article in his comment on Copyright in Movie and Painting Styles?