My Paintings in the Viewing Room at Heidi Cho

.

Silk Road 115, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches



If you're making the rounds in Chelsea this evening, November 18, stop in and say Hi. Four small paintings of mine are installed in the Viewing Room at the Heidi Cho Gallery, 522 W. 23rd Street. The big exhibition in the front gallery is of work by Rex Lau and Diane Mayo. Enjoy it and then come and find me in the Viewing Room from 6:30-8:00.

If you'd like to know more about Silk Road, Liz Hager wrote a perceptive piece for her Venetian Red blog, Artists in Conversation: Joanne Mattera's Journey of Visual Pleasure. Here's an excerpt: "In these mostly 12 x 12 inch paintings the artist has deftly exploited the encaustic medium to opulent results. Yet appreciating this series solely on the basis of its tour-de-force technical achievement would be to miss the richer sphere that the work inhabits. . . Color on the scale of intimacy that Mattera achieves is a powerful experience."  
.
Click on the bolface title to access the story. Or come to the Heidi Cho Gallery on Thursday and I'll tell you all about the work myself.
.
If you're in the Boston area, my solo show, Travel with Me, is at Arden Gallery through November 29..

Marketing Mondays: Selling Out of Your Studio

. 

I was chatting with a dealer recently about a particular artist whose work we both like. Due to a recent gallery closure the artist is now without  gallery representation. During the conversation the dealer let on that he had been interested in taking on this artist. Asking around, he found that the artist has a reputation for selling out of his studio while represented. After exercising what he called “due diligence," the dealer found the rumors to be true.  An invitation to the artist for gallery representation was never extended.

If you are not gallery represented

Go ahead and sell out of your studio. That’s one of the reasons Open Studios have become so popular. Indeed, studio buildings that might have had one event a year now have two or more, often pegged to the holidays. Collectors go—at least we hope they go—looking as much for bargains as for new work by new artists. Dealers also visit open studios, too, and they do so with an eye to finding new artists

.
If you are gallery represented

Selling out of your studio is an established No No in a business that has few established rules. The reason is obvious: No dealer wants to invest in your career only to have you snatch a sale (and their commission) out from under them. And if you're selling at a price that's lower than the gallery price, you're undercutting your own best interests. If your dealer is not working for you, it seems to me that trying to have it both ways—representation by the gallery, sales out of your studio—is not going to serve you well in the long term. Someone is going to do their “due diligence”  and you may end up selling out of your studio for a good long time.
.
And let me state the obvious: You worked hard to find the gallery that represents you. Why not let them do what they do best so that you can do what you do best? 

.
The gray area

There are some areas in which the “rules” are less clear. For instance--and I'm purposely exagerating here--suppose you live in Portland, Maine, but are represented by a gallery in Portland, Oregon. It’s unlikely the Oregon dealer has you under exclusive contract for the entire country (and if so, get out of that contract!). So if you participate in an Open Studio in Maine, I would think you’d be OK in keeping the proceeds of the entire sale.

Still, there’s a gray area within the gray area: Did the Oregon dealer do national publicity for you recently? Publish a catalog? Arrange for a museum show or get you included in a national exhibition, or a traveling exhibition, that got reviewed or written about closer to your home? Those actions could easily have resulted in the kind of increased local interest that would help you sell out of your studio as never before. The dealer may be entitled, legally or morally, to a share in the sales. Should it be 50 percent? I don't know.  What do you think?

Suggestions for gallery-represented artists

. Talk to your dealer or dealers. What do they expect from you? How do their other represented artists deal with these issues?

. Talk to the other represented artists, too

. Read the fine print on any contract they ask you to sign. Courtesy be damned; you may be legally prohibited from selling out of your studio
.

If you would feel uncomfortable explaining the sale to your dealer, maybe you should rethink the way you make the sale
.
. Because I work with several galleries, I always ask the collector who contacts me, "How did you find my work?" If it was via a postcard or ad, I direct them to the gallery that generated it. If the response is a vague, "From the Internet," I direct them to the gallery nearest them. Because savvy collectors often browse several sites where an artist's work is being shown, I may let more than one gallery know of a collector's interest. That allows them to contact the potential client directly--or to work together--to make a sale, letting me step back from the commercial end of things 
. There are many other ways you can work with your dealer. One is to have the collector over to the studio and when the sale is about to be made, call your gallery and let them handle the details--including sales tax (a bonus here: galleries take credit cards, which most artists don't).  You'd work this out ahead of time with both parties, of course
. Or arrange for a studio vist where dealer and collector meet at the studio. The dealer can personally make the sale. If there's a problem with the sale later (check bounces, there's a credit card issue) your dealer will handle it
. Another artist I know collects the gallery price from a studio sale, including sales tax. She has the collector make the check out to the gallery, who then pays the sales tax and handles shipping, installation and the disbursement of funds
.

Over to you

Artists: Do you sell out of your studio? Do you do so even if you are gallery represented?

Dealers: How have you dealt with artists if/when you find out they have been selling without your involvement?

Buzzing Off . . .

.

That's me, worker bee. I have been really busy lately with deadlines for a number of projects. Marketing Mondays will continue until Miami coverage begins (and then resume in January), but posting otherwise for the next couple of weeks will be sporadic. I will try to get Nozkowski and a roundup of Chelsea shows posted--so do check in--but know that I'm buzzing off for a bit.

Marketing Mondays: Website or Blog?

.
Today's topic was inspired by an artist who emailed me with this question:

.

"Do you find your art is viewed more from your blog than from your website? I don't see the value of keeping up with both."  

My two sites do different things, and I use them differently. The website is a static tool; the blog, much more dynamic. Here's how I use mine:

. The website shows fairly recent work; it's never updated often enough, but that's because I have someone else do it, and it costs too much in time to rethink the changes and in money to pay for them. It offers a look at my work--not a catalog for selling, but for looking. My visitors have no direct contact with me, nor I with them.  (I launched my blog in 1998, back when everyone was on dialup and the only way to make a website was to know code. Eventually I will either buy a template and create my own new website or design a "website" blog that I maintain myself. But until I find a secretary, an assistant or a clone, it will remain as it is.)

. This blog is a dynamic tool that I maintain myself, allowing me to show my work--usually on the sidebar--and to be more fully engaged with the art world via reviews, reports (like the Miamipalooza coming up next month), commentary, links to events and, sometimes, to curate thematic collections of images in online "exhibitions."  It's also interactive via comments from readers, and via the many links I include throughout the posts.

. This blog links to blogs specifically for my resume and exhibition schedule, both of which I update regularly. I don't put those URLs on my business card. While I want them to be available and informative, I don't want them to be in-your-face. 
.
. I also maintain a blog for the annual encaustic conference I founded and direct. Part catalog, part newsletter, it links directly to my non-profit partner, which handles registration and does outreach of its own. The conference blog allows me to run a business from my studio, to interact with my producing partner, and equally important, to communicate casually and informationally with the conference particpants.

. And, finally, I maintain a syllabus blog for the class I teach at an art college. (Subtitle: Because Photocopying is so Last Century). There are tons of links to artists' websites and other blogs, to books and articles, and to information about the speakers who will visit the class or whom we will visit. I update it as necessary. And when I teach the occasional career workshop, I post an informational blog that remains available to the students of that workshop for one month.
.

Other people use their blog differently: as a website, as a gallery for showing, as a catalog for selling, as a studio or personal diary, as a newsletter, as a vehicle for political activism, even as a scrapbook for various projects.

So, over to you:  Website or blog? Or both? And tell us how you use each. Include your URL. If you can figure out how to make the link live, great. Otherwise, just post it; we can cut and paste it into our browser.

Travel With Me

.

Installation view, Arden Gallery, Boston

.

.
In Travel With Me, my sixth solo at Arden Gallery, I'm showing 15 small color-field paintings, the newest works from my Silk Road series. Travel with Me invites you to take a visual perambulation with the paintings, which traverse the gallery walls.

The gallery is at 129 Newbury Street in Boston. I'll be at the opening this evening from 5:00 to 7:00, and tomorrow afternoon, Saturday, from 2:00 to 4:00. Hope to see you! Click here for gallery info and more images. Scroll down for a bit more of a peek.

Silk Road 139

All work 2010, encaustic on panel, 12x12 inches unless noted

.

Silk Road 141.

Panning around to the left wall

.

Silk Road 135

.

Opposite wall, with Silk Road 140, 143, 146, 147

.

Silk Road 143

.

Silk Road 146, 2010, 18x18 inches

.

Seeing the Light

.
I’ve been lukewarm about Dan Flavin all these years. That’s odd, really, because as someone who works reductively and with luminous color in my own painting, I should have embraced Flavin’s oeuvre. Better later than never. I’ve seen the light. Then again, this is the first time I've ever seen this particular piece.
.
I walked into the Paula Cooper Galler to find a long rectangular structure dwarfed by the cavernous space. My first look was to the right, where I saw a yellow green glow pouring out of the structure and bathing the wall opposite. I followed it. What you see below is what I saw, in the way I saw it.
.

.

.

From inside, the stucture creates a luminous hallway that you can enter. Beyond the wall of light is a black void tinged pink around the edges.

.

Walking around the back of the dark gallery, you see both ends of the structure. The color above is pretty accurate (a challenge for a small point-and-shoot trying to understand fluorescent.)

.

Approaching the opposite entrance . . .

. . .  and entering. I love this view





This work is Untitled (to Barry, Mike, Chuck and Leonard), 1972-1975; 8’ x 8’ x (no length given). Edition of three, with one fabricated. The show was up through October 30. You can see more images of additional work on the gallery website.

Don't Just Vote . . .

.
. . . Vote Democratic!

.
Support the inclusive and liberal candidates who will support you. You don't have to love them, but you do need to vote for them. The right-wing extremists are salivating at the thought of getting into Congress so that they can impose their dogmatic and repressive ideas on us. And artists, if you're thinking of not voting because you're unhappy with the status quo, consider this: It's hard enough to be included on anyone's agenda, but the Repugnicans consistently vote down any support for the arts. Make a difference with your Democratic vote. It's that important.

. Say no to creationist morons who believe the Constitution was handed to Moses.

. Say no to anti-choice candidates who have come to this position after having had access to abortions of their own.

.

. Say no to anti-gay zealots who may or may not be boffing their parishioners or staffers in an orgy of delusion, denial and self hate. (We don't want them on our team, anyway.)

.
. Say no to anti-immigrant fanatics whose grandparents or parents (or who themselves) came here with dreams of a better future--and who now demonize those who are just arriving as they try to close the door.

. Say no to the Teabaggers who push for English-only (even though they can't spell with it), believing that "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you."
.
. Say no to the "anti-big-government" extremists who seek to impose fascist sanctions in the name of freedom 
.
. Say no to the people who promise no new taxes. The will cut what few benefits you do have in order to support their wealthy constituents. And you'll end up paying more for goods and services.

. And if you need more reasons, here are 90 of them, a list compiled by Robert P. Watson in The Political Agitator, which I found on Dana Roc's blog, Dana Delivered

Marketing Mondays: Scam or Opportunity?

.
You know how I feel about Vanity Galleries. Indeed, my outspokenness has earned me the Angry Hillbilly Award from Ico Gallery, a vanity in New York City.  (As you may recall, we had so much fun with the "award"--move over, Granny and Jethro--that they eventually took the post down, presumably from extreme mortification. But not before I dumped the contents here. )

Are those red flags?
.

.
Now comes the Bienniale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy.

They want me--they've already emailed me twice--but they want me to pay my own way, or get an organization to sponsor me. They found me via the Internet. Here's a red flag: The message was diverted to my junk email file. Here's another: You're automatically invited to participate if you have an Internet presence. Um, so my website with the paintings of big-eyed kittens in tutus and toe shoes makes me eligible?

Have you received one of these invitations, too? Maybe it's a legitimate exhibition, but those flags are waving. I don't care if Marina Abramovic did receive the Lorenzo Il Magnifico award from them. Here's the email:

Dear Artist,
.
We would like to invite you to exhibit your artwork in the next edition of the Florence Biennale. After reviewing your artwork present in internet, the Internal Committee has expressed favourable opinion for your participation. The Eight edition of the Biennale will be held from 3 to 11 December 2011.

Marina Abramovic and Shu Yong in 2009, Gilbert & George in 2007, Christo and Jeanne-Claude and Richard Anuskiewicz in 2007 and David Hockney in 2003 were awarded with the maximum recognition, the Lorenzo il Magnifico award for their career. The Biennale attracted an impressive number of enthusiasts, artists and visitors. Each day of the seventh edition was studded with collateral events and conferences, such as that of Gregorio Luke, Former Director of the MOLAA at Long Beach, among others that can be seen in our website www.florencebiennale.org.

The exhibition doesn’t receive any public neither private financial assistance. The exhibition is entirely funded by artists, that can search for sponsors independently in their own country. To those possible sponsors indicated by artists, Arte Studio will provide to send a formal nd request. Sponsors will be published both in the general catalogue and the website, as you can see by visiting the sponsor’s page present in our website, that helped some artists in the past biennales.

You will find all the necessary information in the participation documents, in order to send you these we kindly ask you to send us your postal address to the following e-mail biennalefi@artestudio.net.

Best Regards,
Internal Committee of the Biennale

If you know anything, this is the time and place to share.

"I am Not a Witch."

.

Christine O'Donnell, Tea Party candidate for republican Senate seat in Delaware: "I am not a witch. I am you."
.
.

 "Moi?"

..

"Moi?"

..
.

"Moi?"

.

"Moi?"

.

"Moi?"

..

"Moi?"

..

"Moi?"

..

.

"Mwahh?"

"Moi?"

.

 "Prithee, moi?"

...

"Nous?"

.

"Nous?"

.

"Us"?

..

Happy Halloween!

And since we're talking Trick or Treat, vote Democratic on Tuesday.

The alternative is a razor in your apple. 

Big Bang

.

Joy Garnett, detail from O.P.P., shown full view below.

.
Boom and Bust, Joy Garnett’s solo show of six large paintings at the Winkleman Gallery (through November 13), is all about that moment when something happens, something very unlike what was immediately before or will be immediately after. I know Garnett gathers her images from the Internet, and that her previous work focused on images of war. Here she has worked from images of military explosions. That fleeting instant, rendered in oil, is sublime—each a mandala against a night sky. I lingered safely before the paintings, choosing not to think about what came next.

.

.

Installation view:  Rose and O.P.P., with  full view below..

.

Continuing clockwise around the gallery, with Roil at right 

and full view below

.

.

.

Continuing around, looking toward entrance, with views of Sploosh, center, and Lost, right

Full view of Sploosh below

.

Marketing Mondays: The E-announcement

.
Before I start today's post, a request: Send me to Miami. Info and Paypal link are on the sidebar, right.  Merci.
.


I’m in the home stretch for a solo that will open in 10 days at the Arden Gallery in Boston. I’m getting ready to send out an email announcement—and that has inspired this Marketing Mondays post. Some e-announcements are effective; others are not. A few thoughts:

Want your email to get read?
You have three good opportunities in an email to reach your reader: the message line, the information in the email itself, and an image. If you have provided a jpeg or PDF attachment and gotten someone to click onto it, bingo.

. What’s in the subject line?Spam filters automatically sequester certain words and phrases: Good Day, Take a Look, and Hello, Friend. Look through the messages in your own filter and don’t use anything like what you find there. On the other hand, directness gets through. Here are a few messages I received recently. I’ve put them in order of Ho-Hum (completely non specific) to Gotta See It (who, what and where piques my interest enough to find out when).
. . . . New Exhibition
. . . . Reminder
. . . . Request to view
. . . . Exhibit Opens on Thursday
. . . . Open Studios this Weekend
. . . . San Francisco Open Studios, 2010
. . . . Joy Garnett: “Boom & Bust” opens at Winkleman

. Don’t send an attachment and nothing else
What am I, a mind reader? Give me a reason to click on that jpeg (not a PDF). Besides, I want to know it’s you and not a spammer who has hijacked your e-address with a virus-bearing attachment. In other words, give me some information. Yes, there will be redundancy between the email message and the information on the attachment. That’s OK. Redundancy can be effective. Effective.

. Give me an image
If you want to pique my interest sufficiently to click onto the jpeg—or just to read what’s in the body of the email—give me a peek at what you’re talking about. We’re visual people; that means an image. Dealers and curators get dozens, possibly hundreds, of emails a day. An image gives your email a fighting chance of being seen. (I know this is true, because I’m on the press list for all the galleries that have participated in every art fair I've covered and I get dozens of emails a day. Unless those emails give me a good visual reason not to, my m.o. is delete, delete, delete.)
. . . . Apparently Macs and PCs open mail differently, but an embedded email should be visible in both platforms. Size it down so that you’re not sending a 10-megapixel image that will take me five minutes to download. In PC, I have sent images to myself, allowing the program to automatically make the images smaller. When I get them, they’re a manageable 640 pixels wide and the standard 72 dpi. You can resize them in Photoshop, too. (Someone more Photoshop savvy than I can tell you how or if it’s possible to resize a bunch at once. Anyone want to comment?)
. . . . .Send the best picture of your best work, same as you would on a postcard. And make sure the live links in your document are functioning. There’s nothing more frustrating for a reader than to open a document with bad pictures and links that hit a dead end..

Finally, edit for typos. You don't see them in the document on your monitor, but I guarantee they will be the first thing anyone sees when they open your email. Send yourself a copy before you send it out to the world. Take a break and then go open your email. Those typos should pop out at you, too.

Further reading: C-Monster's Dear Artists and Publicists: Let Me Help You Do Your Job. (And scroll down to the comments for a chuckle.)
.
Update: Several of you have commented about the pitfalls of sending emails in large numbers from your personal accounts. Right you are. Send too many and the providers will flag you as a spammer, with the result that they shut you down for 24 hours (I know! Thank you, Comcast.)  In an upcoming MM post, I'll talk about the outside-party sender, such as Constant Contact, which allows you to send announcements, newsletters and invitations in whatever number you choose. I have to do a bit of research for that one--and I'm juggling some pressing deadlines--so it will be several weeks. In the meantime, here's a question for you: What's the best day to send an email? Answer in the next MM post that deals with e-announcements..

Family Ties?

Cordy Ryman, Trapped Wave, 2010, acrylic and enamel on wood, 62 x 62.5 x 2 inches

Viewing Cordy Ryman’s solo show at DCKT (up through the 31st) I’m struck by the family resemblance his work has—not to his famous parents, Merrill Wagner and Robert—but to the genetic ties he shares with other painters, sculptors and quilters who have stacked or pieced wood, fabric and paper, or engaged hard-edge abstraction in service to the concentric square.

Take a look:

Frank Stella, Color Maze, 1966, via the Internet

,.

Gee’s Bend quilter, Black Square, via the Internet

.

Jackie Winsor, Burned and Red Inside Out Piece, via the Internet

.

.

Jen Stark, Square, 2007, handcut paper, 12 x 12 x 3 inches, via the Internet

.

Stephen Westfall, Too Much Love, 2008, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, at Lennon, Weinberg via the Internet

.

Ben Dowell, Untitled, 2010, oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, at the Hogar Collection via the Internet

.

Richard Anuszkiewicz, Meta-Rouge, 1970, acrylic on canvas, my photo from the exhibition at D. Wigmore Fine Art

Update 10.29.10: Roberta Smith's review in the New York Times touches on the Stella/quilt connection, too.

Save the Date: November 5

"Travel With Me"

Arden Gallery

129 Newbury Street, Boston

November 2-19, 2010

Opening: Friday, November 5, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Info here

(Gallery link coming shortly)

Marketing Mondays: The Résumé

.

It feels like this sometimes, doesn't it?

Last week I talked about the differences between and among the CV, résumé and bio. This week I’d like to talk about the résumé itself.
.
The Basics
A standard résumé for artists organizes information this way:
. Education
. Solo Exhibitions
. Group Exhibitions
. Awards
. Collections
. Bibliography
Additional information you may wish to list:
. Academic Affiliations
. Curatorial Projects
. Writing
. Professional Activities
. ..
The Specifics
. List your M.F.A. (or M.A.), then B.F.A (or B.A.). If you don’t have an art degree, list your education up top only if it relates to the work you’re doing now. The degree of a surgeon turned painter is relevant if she’s making art that addresses medical or anatomical issues, for instance. If you don’t have an art degree, don’t sweat it. Unless you want you teach, it’s the work and your networking that will advance your career.
. If you have one solo exhibition and several two-artist exhibitions, make a category: Solo and Two-Artist Exhibitions. As you well know, solo and two-artist shows require a lot more ambition and work on your part. Dealers know this, so they look at that category with interest: Where was the show (commercial, non-profit, academic venue)? In a large city or small town? When? All of this information serves to place you in terms of professional achievements and standing. And it’s relative: A modest résumé may make you a catch for a small city gallery; for Pace, not so much
. By the way, using One-Man Shows as a category is passé, even if you’re a man. Stick with the more gender neutral Solo or One-Person
. Credit the curator. It’s not only respectful to the person who selected your work; it underscores the fact that the curator selected you for the show
. Careful with juried shows. They’re a good thing early in your career when you’re building your résumé and looking for exposure; and I think it’s a good idea to list the juror, especially if it’s in a good venue with a respected juror (otherwise why would you have bothered to enter the show?). By midcareer, however, you should be off and running in academic galleries, libraries, co-ops, non-profits and, ideally, in commercial galleries. Don’t list juried shows in a separate category; just fold them into your listing year by year
. Collections: List museums, institutions and corporate collections. If you have a lot of each, you could create little subheads; otherwise put the museum collections first, alphabetically, followed by all the others, alphabetically. When you’re listing a lot of items, alphabetizing introduces an element of order
. Keep the private collections private, as in Private Collections in North America and Europe. No one cares if Josephine Schmo, or the Blow Family owns your work. On the other hand, if it’s part of the Rubell Family Collection, or the Cisneros Fontanals Collection, or any large private holding that’s publicly known, by all means include it in your alphabetical list
. Be selective. If you’ve been showing since 1975, keep the kitchen-sink version as a CV and offer selected listings on the resume. Your 1980 solo at the Dorothy Sbornak Gallery of the Miami Beach Senior Citizens Center is useful as a historical fact on your personal and private CV, not as a current documentation. On the other hand, a 1980 group exhibition at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach remains viable
. How do you list additonal information if you have just one item in each category? A category needs two or more to be a category, so you might create an Additional Projects subhead and list the show you curated, the article you wrote and your involvement as the founder of the ABC Project. The résumé will change to accommodate new categories as your achievements grow
. When does career become more important than education? While some galleries always list the education first, I’m of the thinking that once you reach midcareer, your experience and achievements carry more weight than where you went to school. Personally, I now put my education last. (If you got your M.F.A. from Yale, disregard what I just said.)
.
Format
The basic K.I.S.S. formula works here: Keep It Simple, Stupid (not you personally, of course)
. Make sure your name and contact information are on the first page, and that your name is on every successive page. Basic information, right? You would be amazed at how many artists leave this off. I've seen it
. Even better, create a letterhead that you can use for the résumé, your statement, and any correspondence. Make one using available fonts in your word processing software. Use the letterhead for the first page only; your name and email address on the subsequent pages is enough
. Number the pages. We tend to secure résumé pages with a paper clip or not at all. What happens if the pages end up scattered?
. List your achievements with the most recent first. If you have several exhibitions in any one year, format the document in either of these ways. Be consistent with solo and group exhibitions, and with subsequent information:
2010  Exhibition
. . . . .Exhibition
. . . . .Exhibition
. . . . .Exhibition
or
2010
Exhibition
Exhibition
Exhibition

. Don’t get carried away with a variety of fonts. Pick one. Then to highlight the title of the exhibition, use “Quotes,” Bold, or Italic. Pick one. Underline tends to be used in the bibliography for book titles
. While I'm at it, here's my personal peeve: U.S. Post Office designations. There's a logic to the two-letter system, but it's post-officese; for instance NY, MA, CA and PA are designed to get the mail delivered to New York, Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania. In English those states are abbreviated as N.Y., Mass., Calif., Pa.
. You don’t need to list an Objective, as conventional job-hunting résumés do. Everyone in the art world knows what you want
.
What information can you leave off?
The résumé is by nature a selected list, so leave off the least important items; they're typically from early in your career anyway. This may make your career seem shorter than it actually is, but the résumé is designed for perusal.
. That brings us to the age issue. Artists of both sexes are judged by what they have achieved and when, so a selected list of recent shows and activities will focus the reader on your career now. If you're showing regionally, age may not be such a big deal. If you want a bigger career, it is. Joan Snyder, who has a string of important museum exhibitions, gallery solos, and a MacArthur Grant, thank you very much, is free to post her age (70) anywhere. She has the bonafides to back up the number, and has had them for a long time. Louise Bourgeois was a late bloomer careerwise, but by the time she’d reached 90, she was close to art world sainthood and her age became a badge of achievement. So when you get to be that age, by all means reinstate those early exhibitions if they're that important to you (they won't be, though)
. I have taken the years off my degrees, and removed my earliest exhibition listings. The perpetual double standard being what it is, ageism is worse for women. If you want to disregard me because of my age and sex, I’m not going to make it easy for you
.
Last thoughts
Want to see how other artists have structured their résumés? Make a point of looking at what the galleries provide. Or if you want to do it this minute, look for them online. While I have noted some basic categories and formats, you have plenty of latitude as to what you include and how you present it. But . . .
. Don't over design it. Leave that to the graphic designers, whose presentation is as much to showcase their skills as their achievements. But there are useful variations. One artist I know has created a sidebar to list the awards and grants he has received (it's a long and impressive list, worthy of being showcased that way)
. Skip the headshot of you on the résumé —unless you’re an actor or a Realtor. And trust me, if you’re not an actor, you’ll end up looking like you sell real estate
. Online versions offer you greater opportunities to structure a résumé. Live links are a great way to direct your reader to an exhibition installation or a good review online elsewhere. And templates for websites and blogs allow you to explore new options, such as sidebar information, even slide shows and videos. I include exhibition images on the sidebar of my online résumé, but I keep the print version standard
. What does new technology offer? Personally, I’d love to see a 30 second tour of an artist’s studio or short video of the artist being interviewed by a journalist, accessed by a click; or a 360 view of a solo exhibition in quiet animation on the sidebar of an online résumé. And if you want to put a picture of yourself in the studio, why not?
..
Now, of course, you have to go and make the work that gets into the show that gets listed on the résumé.