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On the goals I set myself in 2010, and how they turned out

High jumper. Geddit?
Two days away from the studio this week, partly to review my plans for the year. Right at the end of 2009, I bought Alyson Stanfield’s book ‘I’d Rather Be in the Studio’, which is based on her business as advisor and coach to artists, and I decided to follow as much of her advice as I could. One of those things was to make a long-term plan consisting of specific goals and specific steps to achieving them. In looking back over 2010, here are some of the things that I managed to do:
  • Created this blog, and stuck to a routine of daily posting (actually, 422 posts for 2010).
  • Completely revised my website.
  • Whenever I visited a city together with Patty to research a travel article, I arranged in advance to meet an artist in that city and interview them for the blog.
  • Update my publicity materials (long bio, short bio, artist’s statement, CV).
  • Attend art openings in Chicago.
  • Send out proposals for exhibitions.
  • Arrange to teach workshops (Interlochen and Shake Rag Alley).
  • Obtain a grant for a public art project: the public art project happened, the grant was actually obtained by my collaborator, Patty McNair, in the form of a faculty development grant from Columbia College Chicago.
  • Continually update my mailing list: I began 2010 with about 50 names, and I got that up to about 120 by the end of the year.

Things that still remain to be done on that list, and which I want to accomplish in 2011:
  • Get the mailing list up to at least 200 useful names (I find this the hardest thing to do, probably given that I haven’t really made sellable work for a while).
  • Get 500 postcards printed and sent out to the museums, galleries, art consultants and potential buyers on my mailing list.
  • Start sending out a newsletter.
  • Take a class at Columbia College Chicago (I get a discount as an adjunct faculty member).
  • Obtain at least one more public art project.
  • Meet a Chicago museum curator.
  • Get at least one gallery and one art consultant to handle my new work.
  • Create a printed and online PR book about me and my work.
  • And by the end of 2012, earn all of my (very very small) income from art and art-related activity.

So that looks like I’ve accomplished about half of the things on the two-year plan, and that I’m on schedule.

There were a couple of things that were on the list which I now realize probably won’t happen. One was to finish converting the small barn at our country home into a studio. I realize now that the funds just won’t be there to do that. The other was to create ideas for group shows, and send out proposals to art spaces with me as the curator. There isn’t the time to do that.

Here’s some good news: I was invited to submit work to a charity art auction at Chicago’s Gruen Gallery in February; and I will have a show at Finestra, on Michigan Avenue, in the fall.

My motto for this year, which I am thinking of printing and taping to my studio wall:


Make work. Sell work.


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