Lesley is a painter living and working in Portland, Oregon.
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I have a shop on Society6 where you can get my art on prints, canvases, cases for your phone or iPad, and even mugs and clocks and pillows! They are running a free shipping promo through Sunday.
To get free shipping through March 9th, use this link to get to my shop and activate the discount! If there is a painting of mine you like but don’t see up on the Society6 shop, let me know and I’ll add it.
Thanks for looking, and happy shopping!
"Veiled Aurora" © Paul Zizka Photography
Many of you will not be surprised to find me drawn to the photography of Paul Zizka. I’d like to share it with you - welcome to this week’s Something Beautiful.
Fang in the Mist © Paul Zizka Photography
Paul Zizka is a professional mountain landscape and adventure photographer based in Banff, Alberta.
Specializing in photographing in difficult conditions and hard-to-reach places, Paul has a passion for shooting alpine sports and backcountry experiences, capturing the spirit of adventurers and finding unusual angles of common mountain subjects. As a landscape photographer, he particularly enjoys the challenge of capturing nature’s beauty at night and the unique features that come with a dark sky – stars, Northern Lights and dramatic silhouettes.
Feeling small? A kayaker lingers below the colossal toe of the Bow Glacier, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.© Paul Zizka Photography
These photos are just so stunning. Just look at those rocks, that ice, the sheer scale of it!
Resplendent Sunrise © Paul Zizka Photography
Paul has a lovely looking photo book out called Summits and Starlight: The Canadian Rockies. The subtitle should be Two Things Lesley Loves!
Cryophilia - Johnston Canyon © Paul Zizka Photography
There are tons of gorgeous pictures at Paul’s website and I encourage you to go and check them out! I’m going to go scroll through Pinterest and pin some of his inspiring photos.
The Danish design collective Numen / For Use has been exhibiting these amazing creations made out of tape. I’m going to show you the Tape Tokyo exhibit, but you can see all their Tape Installations at the link above.
Numen/For Use is a design collective working in the fields of scenography, industrial and spatial design and conceptual art. The group first formed in 1998. as a collaborative effort of industrial designers Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler and Nikola Radeljković under the banner For Use.
In 1999 they establish Numen as a collective identity covering all projects actualised outside the sphere of industrial design. From 2004. onwards, after setting up a large scale site-specific project for the production of “Inferno” in the National Centre for Drama in Madrid, Numen/ For Use become intensely involved with scenography. Further realisations in theatres across Europe ensue.
Since 2008. the collective turns its focus towards configuring objects and concepts without a predefined function, an activity resulting in the more hybrid and experimental works such as the Numen-Light series and Tape Installation.
“Tape Installation” is an art installation that developed out of a dance performance in which the trajectory of the dancers’ movements was traced with tape. The giant cocoon-like structure that will appear at “Tape Tokyo” will be like a parasite attached to Spiral’s atrium. The first part of the exhibition period will see the artists working with several assistants recruited by an open call in Japan. Together they will create the installation publicly, transforming it day by day as the work progresses. After it is complete, visitors will be able to enter inside the installation for a viewing experience that feels like the artwork is enveloping them.
This is just so neat. I wonder what it feels like inside. Is it hot? Is it bouncy? What does it sound like?
Here is a time lapse video of the installation:
Okay, so doing this every Monday didn’t get off to a perfect start, but if you had yesterday off for President’s Day then you are still getting to see this as you kick off your work week.
Naz Shahrokh, Tree of Life, detail, 2003
594 Glass Jars Filled With Stems, Dried and Pulverized Petals, Leaves, and Metal Wire on Tree
I ran across these really cool art installations by Naz Shahrokh, whose work has a deep connection with the natural world.
Landscape and nature act as important sources of inspiration throughout my work. I consider my work linked in tradition with the Ethnographic arts, as my studio practice is inspired by my direct surroundings, while also to native man’s relationship with nature and the cosmos, and to modern and contemporary artists who have drawn their inspiration from the natural environment.
I strive to reference a harmonious meditative visual experience. Along with the use of detritus, either synthetic or organic or the mélange of the two, I attempt to transform the typically disregarded and commonplace materials into something less ordinary. I am drawn to the tactile process of assembling, collecting, giving new meaning to materials. The process of creating order out of chaos is a meditation and process that is deeply meaningful.
© Ayyub Hamilton
This project is site-specific to the palette of the East, as it is an investigation of spices/herbs found throughout the Gulf region, the Middle East, and North Africa. I began the process of collecting these materials in Egypt, but the source of inspiration derives from a visit to Iran in 1995 where I had for the first time experienced the mounts of spices found at the local bazaar in a town called Rascht (where my mother is from).The process of collection of spices took many years until I was at a place where I could finally begin assembling the work. The formal framework in this project is appropriated from Ellsworth Kelly, as the vertical rainbow is inspired by his work. The plastic bags that house each spice/herb is site-specific to Abu Dhabi (UAE), as these are the bags in which one finds the local spices sold.
I’ve been terrible at blogging, so I thought the very least I could do is share something beautiful to start your Monday off right. I’m going to do this every week.
First up is the stunning collection by Venezuelan artist Rafael Araujo. The series is called Calculation, and I first saw them on the blog Colossal.
Nautilus, by Rafael Araujo.
Here is what they wrote about these fantastic pieces:
At a technology-free drafting table he deftly renders the motion and subtle mathematical brilliance of nature with a pencil, ruler and protractor. Araujo creates complex fields of three dimensional space where butterflies take flight and the logarithmic spirals of shells swirl into existence. He calls the series of work Calculation, and many of his drawings seem to channel the look and feel of illustrations found in Da Vinci’s sketchbooks. In an age when 3D programs can render a digital version of something like this in just minutes, it makes you appreciate Araujo’s remarkable skill.
These are just so beautiful! The precision and care is just phenomenal.
Shell, 2004, Ink, acrylic/canvas 47.1x39.3 in., Rafael Araujo
Go to his website and look at all of them. Quite a few have process shots, and the link to the blog post above has a great photo of Shell in progress showing the tools he uses.
Seen anything beautiful lately? Share with me in the comments!
The Stars We Are, detail.
I finished a painting! My first for 2014, though I started it quite a while ago.
Here is the piece in its entirety:
The Stars We Are, 11x14 gouache on paper, 2014.
I started out painting several layers and shades of orange. After that was good and dry, I added masking fluid in the dot pattern on top of the orange paint. I then cautiously laid the grays and blues on top until I was satisfied, then peeled off the masking fluid to reveal the orange underneath.
I assumed I’d be working on it more after I did that, but I looked at it and thought, nope, this is exactly what I want. Then the name came to me in the form of a song, and that was that. I’d love to do one with the colors reversed, dark grey circles on a vivid orange plain.
The original is available on Etsy!
I’ve got a sale going on at my Etsy shop - 20% off everything. Everything! Art and pendants and ornaments!
Just use the coupon code SONOFANUTCRACKER. Sale ends December 15th.
(I have the hardest time picking coupon code words! I wanted a quote from the movie Elf, and narrowed it down to “son of a nutcracker”, “angry elf”, and “Francisco”.)
ANYWAY. Go forth, and shop! I’m also giving 10% of my December earnings to Out To Pasture Animal Sanctuary.
I put some of my artwork up on Society6. Like RedBubble, they do prints and reproductions. Like RedBubble, they also make phone and laptop cases. Unlike RedBubble, they do some really nice, mugs, totes, and pillows. If you’ve always wanted to drool on one of my paintings, here is your chance.
Prints!
Totes!
Laptop Cases!
Mugs!
Please go check it out, everything looks really nice!
Right now Society6 is having a short promo - Free Shipping through November 17th. Click on this link to activate it! Promotion expires November 17, 2013 at Midnight Pacific Time. (*Offer excludes Framed Art Prints, Stretched Canvases and Throw Pillows with insert.)
Thanks for your support!
I just got back from picking up my paintings from Red Magnolia Salon. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to sell everything, so now I’ve got my husband’s new tote that he bought for board games sitting in the middle of the living room, full of paintings. I’ve also got a box from my other show at a.n.d. Cafe. haphazardly set in my art closet. The closet is a disaster, so it is going to take a day to get everything cleaned out and situated so I can put the paintings in there.
It would be much easier to find a happy new home for them. So how about some free shipping from my Etsy store? You can find all my available paintings there. I mean, I have to go to the post office anyway, it wouldn’t be any trouble.
Code for free shipping is SHIPITGOOD. Offer good for just a short while! It’ll be over on 11/4.
I’ve been thinking about online marketing today. I get a lot of emails and see a lot of articles on it, especially as we approach the holiday season. I end up saving this info for days or weeks, because while it is important and useful, reading them sounds like one of the most boring things I can do with my day.
Today I told myself I was going to go through my emails and notes and get some stuff read.
I have an Etsy shop. It is my main online venue to sell my paintings. I’ve also got the pendants and ornaments there, because they are a cool, inexpensive way to get a piece of my art, and this is an easy place to sell it.
I have a shop on RedBubble where people can get prints of my art. I figure people don’t always want to splurge on original art, so they can go here to get a print in a variety of sizes. RedBubble also has shirts, which seems to be the bulk of their self promotion. They also have stickers and posters, which I don’t sell, and iphone/ipod/ipad cases, which I do sell. Its nice because I can upload high resolution copies of my work, and they do the rest. I don’t need to go spend money upfront to get prints made to sell.
There are other online storefront options. A couple years ago I put several of my paintings up on Fine Art America. It isn’t the most intuitive site to use, or navigate, but I’d heard that it got a lot of traffic from art collectors. They let you post a small amount before charging, so I just have that minimum requirement up there. I’ve had a couple inquiries that didn’t lead anywhere. You can also sell prints. I haven’t sold prints there, or at RedBubble, to be honest, so maybe I need to reconsider what people want? I’m losing nothing but time doing it, so I don’t really have an incentive to stop.
There are other storefronts out there - Meylah, Big Cartel, and Society 6 being three I’m looking at. But it seems I shouldn’t have my original art all over the place. If I sell a piece on Etsy, I’d need to take it down right away at all the other sites. I always feel a little nervous having art up in town that is also for sale on Etsy. I mean, I wish people were knocking down my door to get pieces right away, and that having things in two places at once was a foolhardy problem. But having pieces in six places at once seems like an accident waiting to happen. Is that just me?
So my options.
I don’t think I get a lot of random traffic, I know that self promotion is the key to getting eyes on a storefront. However, it seems it would be overwhelming (not just to me, but to you too!) to promote several places, especially when they have the same product.
On the other hand, random traffic on these sites does occur (I barely promote the Fine Art America account and 706 people have stumbled across my page), so I feel like I don’t want to miss out on catching those potential sales.
I would love to have a dialogue about this. What do you think of my bullet points? How thin should I spread the selling and promotion of one original piece of art? How much self promotion is too much? What are your strategies with online sales?
I need to take a leap somewhere. The route I see, other than trying to really boost an online presence, is investing a bunch of money in prints and taking my originals and prints to art fairs and shows. I’m getting tense and mildly nauseous just thinking about that…