THE HIDDEN ARTIST
6 Ways to Spread Yourself Thin
Between work in the TV industry and my
aspiration to be a famous living artist (verses a dead one) I've tried several
avenues to promote my art. My eyes have popped from my head after Googling
information for hours, I've graciously accepted family and my friends' advice,
and even hired a kinda PR person to help me deal with social media (until I
understood I could take care of most of that myself...ahem).
Here are some tips that I came up to help
sustain and promote my work.
1. MAKE ART
Yes, part of being a self-proclaimed
artist is keeping up the good work. That involves having a space to paint and
having the paints accessible at all times. More than that, it involves commitment to
a project, albeit a series. But excuse me. The phone just rang. I've been asked
to work on a TV production that will actually pay my bills. I have to put my
art table and paints away because I don't have a studio like a normal artist.
Now that that's done, I better do some FB posting on my art page because I
won't have any time to do it otherwise.
2. POST ON FACEBOOK ART PAGE
Well, I have two Facebook pages—one
personal and one for my art. I'm more active on my personal page. Why, I
just posted another selfie of myself there...a weirdly lit, not
quite smily-faced one that gets comments like, "you're weird."
But that's my artist statement, although I didn't direct
it from my art page. And oh! I MUST share this gif of the woman wiping
her ass with a blinking-eyed Sponge Bob! Again, not my art page, but oh well. A
little bit of anti-Trump-pro-Hillary statements and I'm all Facebooked out. I
think I'll do my Instagram now.
3. POST ON INSTAGRAM
Damn. Would someone please explain to me
the convoluted foreign language of HASHTAGS?! I've posted to Instagram
"#art and/or #painting", but my hashtags seem pretty conservative
compared to what I've seen up there. I'm beginning to think I'm missing the
boat or something. Perhaps I should try something along the lines of this: #conceptualizedwhiletakingamajordumponthetoiletat2am
or #justbuymygoddamnartalready. And there's another thing I
don't understand on Instagram. Who on earth am I supposed to follow
if nobody uses their god-damned names? Like, who is BronzePony? Nail
biting. Time to check out my LinkedIn.
4. LINK IN TO LINKEDIN
WTF is LinkedIn, anyway? I joined it in
2009 and ever since then I've gotten requests from people who want to connect
with me. Ironically, I'm ALREADY connected with most of them on FB and probably
even on Instagram if I were able to actually figure out who BronzePony
was. Does ANYBODY get ANYTHING out of being on LinkedIn? This frustration just
killed me. I better forget this and see if I have any artist calls in my email.
5. CONNECT AND KEEP UP WITH ARTIST CALLS
Well, can't do that one. I'll never make
that deadline. Thirty-Five bucks to submit? Are you kidding me? Oh, here's a
topic. Submit any work that falls under the theme, "The Baboon Who Ate his
Right Nut Off." Classic. Can't do that one either because I only have an
Orangutan that ate his left breast. I have no patience for this right now. I
think I'll see what's going on at the galleries.
6. "BECOME" THE ART SCENE
That means go to art openings, meet
gallery owners, and have a life. Well, I'm sorry. I just gave all of that away
to a paying job that's about to suck every living hour of my day out of me. I'm
terribly familiar with my week's progression. Alert on Monday, counting the
rest of the days on Tuesday, engulfed on Wednesday, fading on Thursday,
exhausted on Friday, and comatose on Saturday. That leaves one day—Sunday, when
there are no gallery openings or gallery owners to meet.
That about sums up my personal art
promotion—one that didn't even include Pinterest. know what I think? I think I
better hire that PR person again.
