Kat Eye Studio

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How to become “known” as an artist

Last week, my son said to me, “Mom, I want my art to become known. How do I do that?” I laughed and then told him to keep creating his art, that’s the start. But it got me thinking, how and why do we become “known” as artists? I came up with three steps. These are the basic steps, but don’t start thinking they are easy ones.

 
1. Find your own style.

You have to figure out your voice, what you are going to say and how you are going to say it, in your art. It has to be unique and authentic. That takes time. It takes a lot of experimentation. It takes risk and openness and a willingness to go in unconventional directions. 

Ultimately, what other people resonate with in art is something at a primal level. You have to bring YOU to the process, wholeheartedly. It takes a lot of time and effort to figure out how to do that, so keep working and be patient.

Oh, and once you feel like you’ve gotten there, that you have a style, remember that feeling, because it lasts about two nanoseconds. Then it’s time to evolve again. But as you evolve, you will have some thread that stays constant throughout your work. That’s your style. That’s what you become “known” for.

2. Sustain your creation over time.
Keep creating, because you have to develop a body of work. That’s not ten images that work together. It’s piece after piece, some finding a place within a larger group and some just experimentation. Maybe some are created with intention and some come out unplanned. But you need to have enough that work together to show you have committed yourself to the process.

You can’t create one or two good pieces, no matter how unique the voice, and become “known.” It takes sustained creation of good work. Something that people can connect with and rely on, over time. They want someone they can trust and build a relationship with. 

3. Put your work out there.

Here’s where things get sticky. There is no one-size-fits-all way to get your work out there, and there is no ready made audience waiting to receive your work. You can exhibit in galleries, go to art fairs, blog, use social media (so many options there!), join local or online groups, have a newsletter, etsy shop, enter contests… Shall I go on? I probably don’t even know all of the ways to get art out into the world. 

You have to choose the right venue to share your work, or you won’t connect in the right way for you. So before you decide how to put your art out there, answer these three questions. I’ll use myself as an example in the answers, so you can see what I mean. 

What do you want to become “known” for?

I want to be known for create simple, compelling work that evokes a pause in the viewer. I want both my imagery and my words to connect with others and bring something positive into their life.

Who do you want to become “known” by?

I want to be known by two groups: People who want a piece of my art in their life and this homes, and people who want to learn how to create similar art. These groups may have some overlap, but they are not fully the same.

Why do you want to become “known?”

I want to become known because it helps me achieve my goal of connecting with others through my art. It helps me to fill my classes, it helps me to reach more people with a message that creativity is beneficial in everyone’s life, it helps me find other kindred spirits in this wide world. 

This last question, if you haven’t already guessed, is really the biggest one of all. It should probably come first, but we aren’t always ready to examine our motivations when we start something. It’s only later, when we’ve discovered some confidence in ourselves and our work, that we can ask and honestly answer whether we are working from internal motivations or looking for external validation.

Because the thing about wanting to become “known” is that you can get tricked into using numbers of followers, or sales, or exhibition acceptances, or contest wins, as an external proxy for confidence. We can use it to tell ourselves, “I am an artist, because all of these people believe I am an artist.” 

That’s a house of cards, because all it takes is one change — either to your art or an algorithm a social media platform uses to share your work or to the interests of your biggest patron — and your whole foundation crumbles. But if you know why you are putting your work out there, and you know who your audience is, you will find ways to reach them. 

It’s been a long road, filled with lots of experimentation, for me to finally discover what feel like the right venues to get my art out there. To discover the right connections and interactions, for me and my art. Yours will be different.

Where to start?

After all of this thought, the answer I gave my son stays the same: Keep creating your art, that’s the start. Everything springs from there. And while you are creating, start to share, experiment with methods, try things on for size. Ask yourself the three questions above. As your style develops, so will your understanding of how and why you want to connect around you art. Along the way, you might become “known” to a group of people. 

If the connections are genuine, based on a give and take of heartfelt expression, it doesn’t matter if that group is large or small. It will be the right one for you.

Thanks for being here, for reading my words, enjoying my art, and being part of my little pocket of being “known.” I appreciate the connection with you.

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Seeing is Believing

Have you ever had a moment where you saw someone doing something – maybe it is a physical feat or a lifestyle choice or some sort of art – and you thought, I didn’t even know that is possible! It stops you in your tracks and makes you think. It can break down some wall you didn’t know you had. Open you up to new possibilities and a breadth of thinking about the world, the people in it, and how they make choices in their life. Maybe how YOU make choices in your life.

I had the opportunity to think on this concept this weekend. A lovely friend came to Corvallis to spend the day on Saturday, and as we were chatting over chai, I asked about her daughter, who is nearing the end of her undergraduate degree. Is she going on to grad school? I asked. Probably not, she said, and we talked about what she would be doing.

It brought to mind my own experience in college. Being the first of my family to go to college, I eked my way through. Scholarships, financial aid, working two or three jobs at a time and studying like crazy to get done in four years. Exhausting. So when my advisors really wanted me to go on to grad school, I rebuffed them. Why? I couldn’t live like that for another few years. I was ready to get my degree and a job and have a life. I didn’t realize there were other ways to fund graduate school… That with my grades and as a woman in electrical engineering I could have had a full ride somewhere. I didn’t realize what was possible because I had never seen it. No one I knew, no one in my immediate experience, had ever gone to grad school.

Seeing is believing. I couldn’t see how. I didn’t believe. I didn’t even realize the possibilities that existed.

After chatting over chai about life and work and family and art, my friend and I continued on our day by visiting a few artists studios in an Open Studio event. Several professors from the Oregon State University art faculty opened their studios on Saturday to the public. It was fantastic to see the studio spaces and the range of work they were doing. Every artist’s space and art is so unique. It is wonderful to talk to the artists about the work they create and why. Our favorite visit was with Clint Brown. For a while we were the only people there, and we had a nice long conversation about his different work, his process and things he had done, and he even pulled out some of his photo collage work from years ago after talking with me about what I had recently been doing. Wonderful.

As we left his studio I realized how important these open studio visits can be. This is only the second time I’ve attended, but they’ve had an amazing impact on me. You can see where, what and how the artists create. You can see what is possible. And just like anything else, seeing is believing. For those of us coming to art later in life, who don’t have an art background or education, it can be eye opening. If you don’t know any professional artists or see how they work, how can you believe it’s a possible choice? It can seem as much a fantasy as going to grad school did to me so long ago. But when you see it first hand and talk to the artists it is different. You learn that it is possible to live a life that involves creating art as an everyday thing. I’m not sure the artists realize what an impact they can have by sharing their space and their art in this simple way.

Have you ever visited an open studio event? I encourage you to. Chances are, there is one sometime during the year near your home. It’s a fantastic way to see the art that is being created in your local area, meet the artists, and to open your eyes to possibility. Seeing is believing.

And to wrap the story back around… I eventually did get to grad school, in the way that made sense to me. I did it in the evenings while working full time, and my employer paid for it. I don’t have any regrets for the choices that I made at the time, since they all led me to the path I am on today. Looking back I can see why I made those choices: I didn’t truly understand the possibilities.

Think about what that might mean for you. What do you believe is possible?

Blogs and books are also wonderful ways to learn other people’s stories and see what is possible. The Spark & Inspire eBook is a perfect example! I’m excited to announce the winner of the eBook giveaway: Judy Salcedo of Hey Jude Photography, a long-time participant around here. Congrats Judy!

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Beyond “Hobby”

What do you call an interest that goes beyond “hobby?” When it becomes something that seems essential to your expression? When it’s a part of who you are? I’m trying to find the right word to use for my love of photography. The word I want is definitely not “hobby.” To me, that implies a side interest, something you do to fill your time. OK, I do that, but it’s become more to me than that.

Yesterday I met up with friend who was interested in learning more about my prints and how I was doing them. As we sat and chatted about what we were both up to, she used the word “hobby” for what I was doing and then kind of looked at me askance, as if she knew that didn’t fit either. I chuckled and tried to come up with a word for it, and I couldn’t.

I don’t have a word for what it is I’m doing with photography, and why. It’s as if it’s become an essential form of expression. I could stop teaching, if I had to. I could stop blogging, if you made me. But I don’t think I can stop photographing. Even if I had no one to share them with, I would still create photographs. It’s how I see and experience the world. It’s how I learn about myself. It feeds me energy and brings me joy. No matter what I try to do differently, even this whole mobile photography/digital painting thing I’ve got going on, it comes back to the essential element of the photograph.

Maybe I’m really just learning what it means to be an artist. I remember last year, listening to an artist talk about his journey and how, in his younger days, he was desperate to paint. Even when he had no money for materials, he found ways to paint. He had to, he said. He couldn’t stop it. I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s intense. I don’t feel that way.” But now I wonder if I’m starting to. If I already do.

Maybe being an artist, deep down in our soul, means not just that we do create, but that we need to create. That we can’t help it, can’t stop ourselves. There is something about photography that’s put it’s hooks into my heart and soul, and I can’t get away from it. Regardless of what else I explore, it always comes back to this for me.

So can you help me out? What’s the word I’m looking for, for this thing I’m experiencing? Because it’s way beyond “hobby” and I would like to put a word to it, if one exists.

There are several things going on I don’t want you to miss:

  • Today is the last day to enter for the Spark & Inspire eBook giveaway. You can enter by leaving a comment on this blog post.
  • Today is also the last day to link in to Exploring with a Camera: Chiaroscuro. Have you seen the gorgeous work that has been shared this month? Wow! Be sure to visit the links to see what your fellow photographers are creating with dramatic light.
  • The November Photo-Heart Connection link up opens tomorrow! What does your heart have to say this month? It’s time to find out. See you tomorrow!

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Redefining My Art

In my newsletter article over the weekend, I wrote about redefining productivity. How I haven’t been feeling productive recently, but that feeling was based on an old definition. I’m not sure where the old definition came from exactly – my old artistic practices combined with external influences, perhaps. It was a reminder that I seem to gather these definitions and rules up as I go along in life. I think we all do. Sometimes we need to reexamine them and redefine them.

What was more important in that article than redefining productivity, I realize today, is the redefinition of my art. I wrote, “My art is using photos and words to explore the connection between heart and the world around us.” Up to now, I haven’t quite figured out where I “fit” in the photography world. If you look at what I practice and write and teach it’s not standard “photography.” It’s something different. Something that doesn’t have a word for it. I’m an artist that combines photos and words together. For me, they can’t be separated.

Realizing that brings freedom. I can remove the labels from who I am, what I do. I can just be me, as I have been, but without trying to figure out where I fit. I don’t fit any standard mold. I can be the seamless blend, like building and sky in this photograph, if I choose. (And no, the photograph was not edited to look this way.)

It can be uncomfortable, though, being without a title. Being without name that defines me, in the eyes of others. It makes it harder to communicate what I do, what I care about. That makes it all the more important to keep using the “words” part of my art. Maybe someday I’ll come up with one word that communicates my art to others. Until then, I’m going to memorize this phrase:

My art is using photos and words to explore the connection between heart and the world around us.

I have a feeling that this moment may be as important as when I claimed myself an artist a couple of years ago. Time will tell.

PS – If you missed it yesterday, I announced a new class coming in April: A Sense of Place. Visit the link here for more details.

PPS – Only THREE DAYS to the next Photo-Heart Connection link up. I can’t wait!

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Connections


Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.
— Albus Dumbledore in JK.Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I saw that flighty temptress in Chicago, in this sculpture at the edge of Millennium Park. I know it was her, because I’ve seen her before, in the work of my dear friend Carissa. She introduced me to that quote above and the temptress in her painting below, started at the Do What You Love retreat in May.
The Flighty Temptress, Adventure by Carissa

Isn’t that cool? I love to find connections like this. Similar themes or styles or ideas between artists in dramatically different places and times. It makes the art I found on the streets of Chicago more real to me, because I saw a connection to a friend in it. And then, of course, I had to capture it, edit it and share it – making my own art and my own connection to the flighty temptress as well.

Here’s another cool connection I’ve been meaning to share, between my online friend Angie and I. She created this lovely stitched piece, inspired by a photo I posted here. I love how she took the basic elements of color, line and shape from the photo and interpreted it in the fabric and stitching.

Bollards and Ropes by Angie

Creating art is a cycle of connection and inspiration. There is nothing wholly new, we are all influenced by the world around us. Our contact with other art and artists can’t help but show up in our work. The cool thing is in how it shows up – we change it, give it our own twist. We share our own unique vision of the world.

Do you have stories of connection and inspiration between yourself and other artists? It would be fun to have you share them here!

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