Reach out like an art expert with confidence
Blog post from the series of Socialising In The Art World
As an art curator I put up an open call for artists who want to become a part of my database of artists.
After receiving a massive response I have approached many artists from the call and one of them was Suzanne Levesque.
Even so Suzanne studied the arts in the US and Germany and became a successful painter. The artwork which truly caught my eye was her installation Müde bin ich, 2017.
It was an installation of several floating beds in a moat around a castle in Austria.
The atmospheric photographs and a video of the installation brought up strong emotions of being lost, struggle and despair and because my field of research is identity, migration, past and memory I immediately related to the artwork.
Another practical aspect of the call was that I have started to follow every artist, who applied and had Instagram account. Then I have reposted their artwork on IG as thank you for joining my database.
Some of them I have approached and with a joint force we did a series of Art Talks by Artists which turned out to be very informative podcasts about Contemporary Art.
Currently, there is a new open call for the Art Talks by Artists, so I can keep on publishing podcasts about wonderful artists and their art practise.
The only thing I would like to emphases is that the artist statement is not a covering letter or CV. If you want to do a little bit of research about how to make the artist statement then have a look at this website. It is not my website but it is a good starting point.
The artists statement is super useful in all stages of your career. It does not have to be made especially for my open call.
Based on the first open call in November 2019 I had an opportunity to go through a large number of artists websites and I have admitted that just a small sample of them were visually appealing and even smaller number of them were technically able to represent the artist.
It is nice to be an artist and create wonderful artworks but what is it good for if nobody knows about it?
The artist´s website is kind of a shop window of the artist´s inventory. Like you would maintain the real shop, then the same way the artists should maintain their website.
It is hard to share artist´s website if the images are loading for ever or if there is just an image of the artist and contact details but no samples of the works or artist statement.
Perhaps the artist should think of giving a little background of each project. So, that anyone who is interested in the artworks can see the trail of thoughts behind the artworks.
The other benefit is that searching engines like Google will start showing your website in the search results.
Feel free to explore more about the topic of Marketing For Artists and the self-help available on that web page.