HOW TO OPEN STUDIO #13: A Book Review of “Open Your Studio”

I’ve come across lots of wisdom in my decades of making and selling my creative work. I still try to look at the advice given by other people, because you never know where a great insight or tip can come from.

Last week, I ordered a highly-tooted book called OPEN YOUR STUDIO: Nine Steps to A Successful Art Event by Melinda Cootsona.  I was curious to explore what other artists thought was a terrific guide to staging our first open studio.

My opinion? 50/50  I give it a C+.

Here are the parts I thought were useful:

1. Do NOT have a ‘sale’ section or a ‘bargain bin’.  It detracts from the perceived value of our current work, and there are better ways to move older work on. (I agree!)
2. Be consistent in your pricing. (YES!!) She offers some good pricing strategies, too. (But ONLY for 2D work.)
3. She offers good suggestions for pricing 2D work with or without frames, a common conundrum in the 2D artworld.
4. Let there be a little ‘mess’ in your studio. People will find it interesting, like a peek behind the curtain. (I totally agree.)
5. If you intend to demo during your open studio, have a sales assistant on hand. (Yes!) Otherwise, you can share your process with photos of your production process, or a slide show on a laptop.
6. It’s good to raise our prices as the demand for our work grows. But have a private reception for your collectors to give them the option to buy your work BEFORE you actually raise your prices. (I love this idea!)
7. If you are brand-new and need to start a mailing list, she has some good suggestions for that, too, including some I’d never thought of. (Of course, once your reputation and audience is grounded, we can be more selective, if we choose. (This wasn’t mentioned, but either ASK those people if you can sign them up, and/or always give them the option to unsubscribe. It’s really important no one can call you “spam”.)

What was not useful or just plain head-smacking:

1. Most of the suggestions revolve around 2D artwork. She mentions ceramics and jewelry in passing, but no real insights about pricing, etc. There’s ONE picture of a box maker’s display, but it’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Something that looks like a newbie at their very first show. (Yes, I made a similar mistake at my first show, but now that I know better, I DO better, AND I tell OTHERS how to do better.)
2. She actively negotiates her prices if a visitor askes for a discount. No. No. NO. First, the person who deserves a discount is a loyal customer, not a newbie who just walked in the door. (Doesn’t it annoy you when your favorite magazine/newspaper consistently offers great rates to a NEW subscriber? And not to people (YOU) who have subscribed for years? Rethink this, please!) Also, there are ways to sweeten the deal without compromising the stated value of our work.
3. There is absolutely nothing about how to engage visitors, how to make them comfortable in our space, how to talk with them, etc.
4. There’s nothing about the power of a good artist statement. A great artist statement has the power of engaging someone who isn’t even that interested in our work, if it makes them go back and look at our work a second time…
5. We’re encouraged to post our event on social media, but no suggestions on how to make that engaging for our audience there. Same with press releases, etc.

After I read the book, I went back to read the reviews on Amazon. As expected, this is a great little book if you have never sold your work or held an open studio before. and IF you are a 2D artist.

But the insights about credit cards, promoting our event, the encouragement to actively discount our work, and the total lack of anything useful for selling work that isn’t 2D, was massively disappointing.

It’s definitely worth a read for the good stuff. I found a copy on Bookfinder.com at a great price. So check it out, then let me know what YOU think!

 

 

 

THANK YOU, ALLIE BROSH!

One of my favorite blogs in the whole wide world is a totally idiosyncratic creation called Hyperbole-and-a-Half by Allie Brosh. (Idiosyncratic is a good thing, because Allie is totally, hysterically, wonderfully herself.)

Allie disappeared from view a couple years ago. When she returned, she wrote poignantly about her struggles with depression.

It is one of the funniest, saddest, most powerful, most truthful descriptions of depression I’ve ever read. And of course, since depression affects almost all of us, at one level or another, at one time or another in our lives, it really hit home.

I totally recognize that spiral deathtrap of wanting to be nice, and doing nice things, and suddenly realizing I’m not doing nice things because I’m nice, I’m doing them because I want to be a nice person, and I want other people to think I’m nice. Even though the thing I really want to do is scream at some difficult person and say, “You are a self-absorbed idiot and I hate you!”

That spiral comes from intensive self-awareness. Not a pretty sight.

Allie transformed the spiral into something incredibly readable. Entertaining. Engaging. Even educational. (I’ll just say it has a long list of things NOT to say to a depressed person, and the list involves fish.) A true creative act if I ever saw one.

I wanted to write to Allie, to thank you for her honesty, and insight, and….well, for being her.

If I were to leave a comment, I would say, “Allie, I am grateful you are in the world. I’m grateful the internet provides you with a forum, a platform to share your delightfully silly drawings and your searingly honest self-awareness. I’m grateful because, in sharing your inner self, you’ve made us all feel better about being human. You’ve made it safe for us to realize being human isn’t about BEING good. It’s about making choices, very tiny choices, to be BETTER. Even if our reasons for making those choices is based only on the desire to appear good.”

Because being human being, and being a half-way decent human being, is in that real desire. And how good we actually are is an accumulation of all in those very tiny choices.

Sometimes the choice is easy, such as the time I opened a grief writing workshop with a quick discussion of the group rules, and one person volunteered, “No hitting?” Yes, not hitting people is a good rule, and a good choice.

Sometimes the choice is hard, like not giving in to envy of other people’s successes. Or not giving in to resentment at someone else’s lack of gratitude when we do something nice for them. (Oh, yeah, we SAY we don’t need to be thanked, we were happy to do it. But…..!!!)

And sometimes the choice is REALLY hard, like when you realize you must confront someone on their behavior that is racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or classist (discrimination based on social position), knowing full well that person will not react well.

Allie has made a hugely important and brave decision to share her life stories. She’s made herself vulnerable, a condition we are only just now recognizing as a very important human trait.

Yes, they are also hysterically funny, such as the one about basic concepts dogs don’t understand. But others are profoundly personal and don’t necessarily showcase herself at her “best”, as in her story about destroying her grandfather’s birthday cake.

By sharing these stories, she has deliberately made herself vulnerable. And in doing so, incredibly loveable, and forgiveable.

In doing that, she makes it easier for us to be vulnerable. And easier for us to forgive ourselves.

In short, Allie Brosh is one of my life heroes.

As for leaving a comment like this, it’s kind of hopeless, because she has hundreds of thousands of other fans who adore her writing, and hundreds–no, thousands–of comments on her articles and her Facebook posts. Mine would be a tiny drop in the ocean of people who appreciate her.

So here’s a bigger drop of water for the ocean today, for Allie.

Allie Brosh….THANK YOU!!!

P.S. My daughter bought me Allie’s brand new book for Christmas. It is perfect, except that it’s missing one of my all-time favorite Hyperbole-and-a Half stories, Wolves. But I’m hoping that will be in Allie’s next book.

Is it a coincidence that my dear hubby suggested last night it was good time for me to get started on my book?? I think not.