Sculpture Made From Weather Data

Pretty interesting video from TED talks:
Nathalie Miebach: Art Made of Storms
The artist essentially takes weather data and visualizes it using sculpture and music. Pretty cool stuff:

Overview of Social Media for Artists

It seems like every time I turn around I hear a story about some artist making it big with social media. Don’t believe the hype. If you are an artist, and want to continue to work as an artist, social networking can help you improve your marketing approach. Becoming an expert in social networking takes a lot of work, skill, and experience. If this is what you want to do, then go for it! But, if you want to be an artist and use social networking to promote your work, prepare to balance yet another set of responsibilities with your passion to change the world through art.

With so many options and new services popping up every day, social media can be confusing. I thought I would start with an overview of the different social media pieces and how they fit together; a ramp-up to quickly get up to speed on social networking.

Before we move on it is important for me to explain the “attitude” of social networking. People who blatantly use social networking to promote themselves are quickly shunned. It would be like walking into a party and telling each party goer how great you are. No one would want to hang out with you. The same is true for social networking, listen, be yourself, build relationships over time, just like real life.

The Pieces

A complete online marketing strategy may have many different pieces, or channels, that you will have to maintain. The most important first step is choosing the channels that will best reach your audience, and making sure you are actively engaging customers through those channels. As an artist, you need to decide how much effort you want to put into this.

This is important: it is better to simply have a message directing customers to another channel than to have a poorly maintained one. If you only have one well maintained channel that is great! One poorly maintained channel will make you look bad. Start slowly and don’t forget, you are an artist, not a tech/social media geek.

Channels can include a web site, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, YouTube and a blog. I’ll briefly discuss each below.

Web Sites Are Still King

If you are only able to choose one channel, develop a web site. A well-designed web site is still considered your most important asset. This is where customers will ultimately go to find reliable information about your art. All of your other channels, should you decide to maintain any others, should point back to your web site, and your web site should list all of the channels you have chosen to maintain. The web site is the hub of your marketing efforts.

In the diagram above the viewer is at the center. You should always keep this in mind, people will come to your web site, Facebook page, Tweets, etc. from different places. It is up to you to make sure their experience reflects your work and personality.

Facebook

With 800 million active users, Facebook is hard to ignore. Facebook has pages and profiles. Think of a profile as a description of yourself, a CV or resume. A page is a storefront or professional presentation of yourself. You can keep these separate, but then you have to maintain both. You don’t need a page. A profile is a good idea.

Creating a Facebook page requires you to first create a Facebook profile for yourself. You can’t create a page without that page being tied to an individual’s profile. The steps to create a page are pretty simple and can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/help/pages

Blog

Writing a professional blog is one way to keep your content fresh. The blog can be hosted by a free service like blogger or wordpress.com, or you can ask your webmaster to host the site on your own servers. Blogging is an inexpensive way to reach your customers by offering valuable information that is relevant to your field. The important thing here, which is true for all of these channels, is to stay with it!

Linked-In

Linked-In is a professional social networking site. This service has fewer subscribers than Facebook, but people interact with a business focused mindset on Linked-In. You will find mostly mature professionals that are looking for networking and help finding resources and opportunities. Creating a Linked-In company page starts here: http://www.linkedin.com/company/add/show

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging site used mostly by the 25 and older crowd. You will find all kinds of information shared here, but it is particularly useful for breaking news and quick answers to simple problems; like finding a resource on the web or a tool to achieve a specific goal. Creating a Twitter profile is relatively easy; go to www.twitter.com, submit your email address and username and you are ready to start tweeting!

Google

There are other search engines, but Google has the majority of search and advertising traffic. Optimizing your site so a search engine can find your information can get pretty complex. The simple and most important things to keep in mind; constant updates to your site, descriptive page titles, keywords and section titles will raise your ranking. There is a whole science and industry built around search engine optimization, but Google offers some getting started advice.

Putting the Pieces Together

Hopefully the brief description above is enough to get you started asking questions on your journey down the social marketing path. The important points I want to emphasize:

1. You don’t need to use all of the channels, but once you pick one, stick with it! 
2. Overt advertising is considered spam. Start using social media by listening. Don’t send out a bunch of press releases and advertisements. Listen and try to help your admirers and colleagues, see how other people are using these channels and figure out how want to portray yourself. No matter how long you have been making art, you are building a reputation for the first time on each new channel. 
3. Each channel is different. There are tools that will allow you to send your Facebook updates to Twitter, for example. This is obnoxious and will annoy people, don’t do it.

Hopefully you find this information helpful. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think or whether I left anything out!

New Steel Sculptures

I have a new batch of steel sculptures that are hot off the press! The first one was generously donated to an auction to benefit breast cancer research through the local Komen foundation by my Karate Dojo - Zanshin Karate. The event was put on by great people at Toombas Jeans.

These pieces had a strange evolution so I thought I would share the story. I have been making a lot of bells lately, both small bells and some large ones.  They all have some circle or horn element to them. As I was working on my dissertation (social media and privacy, a totally different story) - I noticed the reflection of an orange blanket in the window. I didn't want to miss an opportunity to procrastinate, so I got out the sketch book and went to work.

Blanket reflection in the window

The first sketch was:

It may be hard to see the relationship here, but it worked for me. From there I created a bunch of sketches:

and got to work on building the sculptures. For better images, check out my web site: http://www.ironstonestudios.com/ironBronze.php

The first was:

1

and then I cranked through the rest:

2

3

4

5

6

For the first time in my sculpture career the names came easily. I didn't add them above because once they were named I couldn't see anything else.

1. Hope

2. Teletubby

3. Cookie Monster

4. Mr Tibbs (I vaguely remember a monkey named Mr. Tibbs on tv)

5. Marvin the Martian

6. Early Bird

As a kid I watched a TON of tv, I can name the tv theme song of most seventies/early eighties shows in a few notes. 

Georgetown Library Sculpture Show

I have three pieces in the upcoming Georgetown Library show. With 47 artists represented, it should be an interesting show! More information can be found here: http://arts.georgetown.org​/

From the site: From July 10 through September 13, the Texas Society of Sculptors, in conjunction with the Georgetown Arts and Culture Board and the library, is presenting their fourth annual Summer Sculpture Show. The artists reception, at which the show’s award-winners will be announced, will be held on Sunday, July 17, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. on the second-floor bridge of the library.

Big Red

The latest, and one of the largest, bells I have made to date. Made from a recycled Oxygen bottle, this wind chime is about five feet tall. Climbing up the ladder to hang this 80+ pounder from the tree was a nerve wracking experience! I'll see if I can post the video of the sound it makes - a nice, mellow tone that resonates for a while.

YouTube Video - mostly for sound quality...

Big Red wind sculpture ringing

From sculpture

Benny - 25 foot tall cedar sculpture

Benny.

When we first moved to Austin we had one of only three houses that had been built on the block. We were surrounded by wooded lots - cedar and oak trees, deer eating our bushes. It was fantastic. I had an "outdoor studio" next door, until they started building the neighbors house. I was working out there one night when a raccoon came ambling up and chased me back into the garage. I guess I was too close to her family.

One of the trees that was removed to make room for the neighbors house became this tall, curved sculpture. Check out more images at: http://www.ironstonestudios.com/wood.php

Towers Wood Piece

Finally finished the towers piece and added it to the web site.
Cherry is a very hard wood and reacts nicely to a high polish finish. This piece really came out nicely. At over 5 feet tall it is a conversation starter. When I was installing it the first time it was shown in New Jersey, some construction guys walked by and said "that is some great firewood"!

I was focused on some time-honored sculpture traditions with this piece. Immediately evident are positive and negative space. You can see that turning the logs to face away from each other created this profile of negative space, with some great tension! The outward facing surfaces are slightly concave, offering a great reflection with the high polish surface. The line created by the negative space was inspired by the knot pictured at the right. You can see how this line matches the line created by the two halves of the sculpture.

I also played with texture, keeping the surfaces that face each other rough and adding a high polish finish to the outside surfaces. There is plenty to say about which face we show to the world and how we treat those that are closest to us, but I'll leave that to others.

This wood sculpture would really do best indoors, but the tung oil finish will protect it well enough outside. Tung oil is all natural and easy to re-apply, so I will keep it in good shape until I find a permanent home for it.

The sculpture was completed in 2000, before September 11, and shown at The College of New Jersey. It has been in storage until now.

Towers Wood Sculpture Refinishing Complete

After many hours of sanding, this piece is ready for a base and installation. I'll post more images on www.ironstonestudios.com once the final piece is documented and ready for a gallery.

Choosing web site development software to showcase your artwork

I’m a sculptor who has worked in web development to pay the bills for years. I have been engaged in a PhD program and working full time for the past five years, so my sculpture has been on the back burner. I am finally through with course work and qualifying exams, so I am free! Well, almost. I still have that dissertation thing to write.

Meanwhile, I have kicked my sculpture career back into gear, and one way to share my work is through the web. I set out to get a quick site up and running that would accomplish a few goals: act as a touchstone for galleries and perspective customers to learn more about my work, increase awareness of my work by expanding my audience, and create an avenue to sell a limited set of pieces. After writing business and marketing plans, I set out to develop a site.

There are many different ways to develop an artist’s web site, and the software solution you choose has to match both your goals and the medium you work in. A fantastic artist who now works for Electronic Arts and is a professional photographer uses Smugmug to display and sell his work through http://www.joelwadephotography.com. This site is impressive, and if you are selling photographs, this seems like the way to go.

The first step with any of these options is to register your domain name. You can do this through a hosting service (I use Dreamhost, but you could use register.com, GoDaddy etc). The process is pretty simple; run a search to see if the name you want is available. If it is, register it and pay a fee. I recommend automatic re-registration so you don’t lose your domain name. Think carefully about your domain name. What will it look like in print? Is it easy to say and remember? Can it create a strange acronym? This is your calling card, so spend some time on it.

If you are selling objects, you have a range of options from extremely simple, what you see is what you get (wysiwyg), to code it yourself using stylesheets and notepad. I started my career the notepad way and I am partial to having that level of control. But I also want to spend my time making sculpture, not developing web sites. I’ll offer an overview from least effort to develop and maintain to the most effort to develop and maintain. To spoil the ending –I choose the most complex, Dreamweaver, after trying Iweb.

Easiest route:

Etsy.com

If you want to sell your work, Etsy is a web “store” that makes it easy for artists to upload a photograph, set a price, and sell their work. Etsy is a really simple, low maintenance way to get your work out there. Twenty cents to post a single piece, and Etsy takes a percentage if you sell your work.

Wordpress or Blogger

The next step up in complexity is to create a blog. You can really create some sophisticated, interesting sites using this software. Check out Norm Hines for an example: http://normhines.com/ Either of these sites make it easy to get started with and easy to configure, customize, brand, and importantly, maintain. Free to set up and maintain your site, so a great option.

IWeb

If you use a Mac, the IWeb and IPhoto combination is pretty powerful and very easy to use. After purchasing the software, you will also need to start an account using a hosting service. If you are convinced that this software combination is right for you and that you don’t plan to use anything else, than a Mobile Me account from Mac (soon to be ICloud, and free) is the way to go. $99 per year to have your web page, photos, documents, and contacts all hosted on the web by Apple. Once your hosting account is set up, IWeb follows a few simple steps to get things up and running. I’ll cover these steps in a different blog post.

Dreamweaver

The last option is to use more powerful, but more complex to use and difficult to understand web development software, such as Dreamweaver. You can write the code by hand in notepad, previewing in a browser as you go, but Dreamweaver offers site management tools, code hints, and publishing options that make it a very efficient tool to use. This is the tool I eventually decided to build the site with, after giving IWeb a try. With any of the other options you will find limitations – the ability to add meta tags, the ability to add more complex scripting or develop a customized contact form all become a series of trade-offs and compromises when using the other tools. With Dreamweaver you can write it yourself if you can’t find something that fits the bill perfectly.

I’ll write more about building the actual site in IWeb and Dreamweaver, as well as using social networking tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to promote it. Leave a comment if I missed anything!

Refinishing a wood sculpture

Back in 2000 I finished a large wood sculpture - about 5' tall and 2' wide - for a show in New Jersey. I started with a large cherry log about 2' in diameter, cut it clean in half vertically, carved out the inside of the logs to create a curved space, then matched the line of the outside of the logs so they match. You'll have to see it, but imagine the flat, inside part of the log facing out, and the curved outside part of the log facing each other.

After years of being outside and moving around the country, this piece is in rough shape. I started refinishing it, and thought a description of this process might be interesting to someone who is trying to figure out how to refinish a wood piece. The process is simple - start with low grit sandpaper and work your way up. I started with 50 grit and worked the whole piece for about four hours.

This is one of the support cleats that held up the tree.

A fantastic knot

After the 50 grit, I moved on to the 60 grit. It might not seem like a big jump, but getting the bigger cuts, scratches and tool marks is really important. With each grit you need to sand until the only marks on the piece are being made by the tool you are currently using - perfectly smooth at each level of grit.

60 grit

Carving wood or stone, each tool leaves its own mark. The chisels you use leave a mark not only on the surface itself, but below the surface as well. This is especially clear when you work with marble, but you can still see it when working in wood. What happens is these tool marks will show up later as you refine the surface, and if you don't work each layer of sandpaper enough, you will end up going back to fix things. There some great philosophical foundations here...

I jump to 80, 120, and then 220, working each level for about 2 - 4 hours. I did have to back up off of the 120 on one of these pieces, tool marks started to show.

120 grit

For this piece, I will use Tung oil as the finish. Tung oil comes from the nut of the tung tree and creates a beautiful, rich color. It is non-toxic, easy to clean up and fun to apply. It doesn't change color like polyurethane, and you can easily apply another coat later on without stripping the whole thing back down to bare wood. Great stuff!

I'll post more when I have this piece closer to finished.