Tips for studio based artists

I have been following Lisa Lams blog titled Craft Boom which is aimed at “crafters” who are interested in turning their craft into a home business. Content covers how to market and sell products online to how to plan and balance your studio and personal time. Interviews with successful “crafters”, day to day business advice, tips on getting started and hints on craft blogging are all covered.

Much of the advice given can be applied to studio based artists and designers who create one off items for sale. Recently Lisa Lam wrote a piece 10 Ways to Diversify Your Income as a Crafter or Artist which is worth checking out and thinking about.

 

Attitudes to craft changing

An interesting article in the Age has me pondering. Crafty business points to the changing professional practices of a number of craft practitioners.

The landscape and attitude to the term craft is shifting. This is for a number of reasons. Craft as a practice is now influenced by professional art school training. This means the term is shifting from being associated with a hobby to a contemporary professional practice.

The market for craft is huge the article in the Age states that retail sales of DIY crafts and sewing materials now account for more than $US30 billion a year in the US alone. There is a growing rejection of things mass produced and DIY culture has heavily influenced how craft is being revalued as having meaning in a persons life.

Not only is the market huge and expanding craft practitioners have access to that market via the internet which of course has a global reach. As designers they also have access to trends, a network of people who they can share ideas with, they can see other peoples work and although working in physical isolation they are in touch with other practitioners. This keeps the creative process ticking.

These elements combined mean that gradually the term craft, is shifting and is being perceived and used in a different way. Do you think this is happening? If so for any designer maker this is good news.

Thanks goes to Linda of Chloes Place for emailing me the link.

 

The Art of Peter Callesen

British paper artist Peter Callesen creates intricate paper cutouts, which reveal a painstaking craftsmanship. The results of folding and cutting produce stark, dramatic 3D pieces that hint at narrative.

Callesen has an interest memory and its connection to childhood. He describes his work as a reinterpretation of classical fairytales and inspired by romanticism. Of his most recent work Callesen states that he is interested in relationship between two and three dimensionality and the tension between image and reality

The work exists in the gab between the recognizable everyday object and the fragile and spherical condition and material in which it appears. The whiteness, the ideal pure copy of something real as well as the vertical direction coherent in most of my paper works, could also indicate the aspect of something platonic or religious.

 

Design it Yourself

The DIY site houses introductory tutorials, tips and advice on designing business cards, books, CD and DVD packaging, press kits, house ware, newsletters, photo albums, postcards, gifts and stickers. The website is produced by students and faculty members in the Master of Fine Arts program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in order to promote a book.