A blatant promo for a gallery with heart!

Trillium Gallery - "the little gallery with the big heart."

http://www.trilliumgallery.com/

***Full disclosure - I am a member of both the online and the physical gallery so I'm indulging in a bit of shameless promotion. I'm incredibly proud to be a member along with some of the most talented artists anywhere. And I'm doubly proud that some of my work is hanging in the physical gallery as well as shown online. Curator Maureen Maliha describes the gallery this way on the homepage:

"Trillium Gallery is located in the beautiful Catskill Mountains of New York State, less than a 2 1/2 hour drive North of NYC, and less than an hour from Albany, NY. A train leaves from NYC to Rhinecliff, NY, arriving in less than two hours, and we are less than a half hour drive from the train station."  

We began with an idea more than five years ago, and now are proud to share the art of members from around the world in both our physical and online galleries. Our 'Always' Exhibition features the art of our web members, and their work will always be the heart of what we care most about- the heart in the art. Their art will always be available. We offer original and reproduction art, as well as art books, music, jewelry and sculptures, and we now offer family portraits."

The new physical gallery has been open only a month and already there have been numerous events - a grand opening celebration, an introduction to the Soundpainting workshops and an young artist exhibition. This unique gallery is supported and supplied with art primarily from members of the online gallery at http://www.trilliumgallery.com/. Both galleries are involved in the production of a monthly art magazine, Trillium Magazine, whose Fifth Edition has just been released through Lulu.com. This just might be one of the best art magazines on the market today for the money. Beautifully edited, the magazine includes not only stunning full page or two page art spreads but artist articles, interviews, tutorials, poetry and artist tips. 

What's different about Trillium from other online and physical galleries? Several things - first membership is small and very select. and members have come to think of themselves as family. There really IS just as much heart as art involved at Trillium. You are welcome to apply to join by contacting the curator at trillium@post.com and submitting samples of your work or online access to your portfolio. There's another way you can become a member though - enter one of Trillium Gallery's open competitions where the top prizes include membership, magazine cover exposure and an invitation to display a work at the physical gallery. At the moment, Trillium has issued an "artist call for entries" for a juried competition with the theme "Human Essence" and the competition is open to non-members as well. You can get the guidelines, awards, and entry information here:

http://www.trilliumgallery.com/trillium-gallery-in-saugerties.html

Spring time is a great time to visit the Catskills and stop in at the Gallery, located at 228 Main Street in quaint Saugerties, NY.  Browse the beautiful work displayed and choose a piece that fills your heart and your environment with joy.

Motivation and marketing

People don't like to admit it, but it does motivate you to make work if you're selling it.

There is a drive in that. (Zoe Benbow)

Chanson d'Amour

http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/DigitalPainting/Florals-and-Macros/i-LHQ6vXX/2/L/chansondamourdesatcl-L.jpg

Continuing the discussion from the other day about different kinds of art sites and the potential for burn out from having to keep up our presence and participation in various online art venues, I thought I’d tackle the other half of the equation – the reason we do all this! As I mentioned, our first priority may not be sales, but I think it’s a bit ludicrous to say, “I’m only in it for the art” when we’re working our rear-ends off trying to market ourselves every which way to Sunday. There probably isn’t one of us who wouldn’t celebrate a sale even if just as an affirmation that what we create appeals to someone besides ourselves.

And we’ve probably all bitten off more than we can chew when it comes to self-promotion. We read blog after blog about how to market ourselves online, how to be more visible to potential buyers. Maybe we even buy packages that promise to show us how to get 10,000 Facebook fans in just weeks. Then…the next blog you read says, “Don’t count on Facebook to sell your art.” More successful friends recommend Google+ or Pinterest and so you do that too.

As artist Dan Turner says, “Too often, artists start down the online art marketing path and quickly find themselves bogged down in “how-to” details. They reach burn-out before they ever get a fundamental marketing plan in place. Trying to connect the dots in a half-baked, half-finished marketing plan is disheartening and counter-productive.” Dan’s written a simple, easy to follow art-marketing primer called, “7 Keys to Selling Art Online.” Best of all – it’s a free e-book download. Remember though, just because Dan makes it look simple with his clear, step-by-step advice, doesn’t mean it isn’t going to take work…lots of work…but at least the end result might be those sales we keep pretending aren’t important. That doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about why I create in the first place or how I measure my success as an artist…it just means that it would be less than honest of me to suggest I wouldn’t like to sell a few pieces now and then too!

You can get Dan’s free art marketing guide here: http://danturnerfineart.com/dan-turners-7-keys-selling-art-online-free-ebook-artists/  But don’t stop there…he’s got lots of worthwhile advice in his blog too!

Perhaps it's true that as Abigail Brown says, "We cannot judge our art because it does or does not sell." In the ideal world, that's the way it should be. But the real world is more likely to be like this:

Where do you find your inspiration?? 20 possibilities

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/ralphwaldo130588.html#3aXWtx5Q88lrMHjF.99

Sugar Palace

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-sugar-palace--river-road-blues-lianne-schneider.html

We've all run into it at once time or another - artists' block, writers' block - just plain creatively blocked. It's frustrating, even a bit scary. I once went six months unable to write a single poem and I was absolutely certain that I'd never write again. I joked about how my muse had gone on vacation and just decided not to return. But I was extremely distressed. I turned to art then tentatively at first, and was inspired by history, the blues, and certainly other artists. But the writer's block persisted and the creative block returned even about the art work. 

Maybe that happens because we just have too much on our plates at any given time and we need to withdraw from creative activities. That's what I tried to tell myself, at least.  But the truth is if we need to withdraw from creating...then it's not an essential part of who we are. Our art, our writing should be many things to us - therapeutic, cathartic, joyful, fulfilling - but it shouldn't be something we can just walk away from for months at a time without concern. Regardless of what our responsibilities are, if it's fundamental to our identities, then we have to MAKE time for it, no matter what. If that means getting out of bed an hour early or going to bed an hour later, so be it.

So what on earth do you do when absolutely nothing seems to inspire you, when you look at that blank sheet of paper or that empty canvas and don't have a single creative thought? Great artists and great writers have offered all kinds of advice - I remember reading something in poet May Sarton's journal where she said that no matter what she felt or didn't feel, she MADE herself sit down and write for at least one hour every single morning. It didn't matter if all she wrote were remembered lines of an old poem or someone's speech - she wrote whatever popped into her head for at least an hour. Sometimes, though, even such a disciplined approach won't work. 

Here's a great list of ideas for inspiration from the folks at ArtProMotivate:
"Feeling inspired can be tough at times, especially for artists who have a 9-5 job outside of art. We may be too tired to think straight, or distracted by our daily routine. In such situations, we have to search for sources of inspiration and creativity." Read the rest at: 
20 Art Inspiration Ideas for Creativity - Artpromotivate

Remember too that one of the most creatively inspiring things we can do is teach or inspire someone else. There's an old adage that says whatever it is you wish to learn, teach. Lead by example. In teaching others to plumb their own creative depths and find their own unique expression, we discover over and over again that the well of our creativity is bottomless. 

 

Hope...has eyes

"Hope is the dream of a waking man" ~ Aristotle

 Being Temperamental

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/being-temperamental-lianne-schneider.html

Words of despair seem to be bandied about in many contexts today – the economy (and perhaps our own personal financial situation), unending wars, inevitable destruction of the environment, the nastiness of politics, the inhumanity of man toward other human beings, the starvation of children…indeed, the list alone seems a cause for despair. And personal despair is on the rise as well – one in four Americans will develop a mental illness relating to depression and 150 million doctors’ visits a year pertain to that depression. This must not be a new phenomenon, however. Sometime during the second century B.C.E., Pliny the Elder said, “The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Clearly depression and despair were understood to be a significant aspect of the human condition even 4000 years ago. But read that sentence again…and note the second half of it particularly. That phrase smacks of something called hope – and hope is a universal attitude that gives us eyes to see the world through a different lens. “Despair is blind. Hope has eyes,” says Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series, “Conversations with God.” Hope gives us the courage to face our deepest fears and our greatest grief. As artists in every genre, our gift, we hope, is to open the eyes of the despairing to beauty, grace, love, common experience, compassion and light – to foster hope in others, to remind them that even in the darkest moments, they are not alone. As Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games wrote, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.”

HOPE BREAKS

Hope breaks…upon the rocks –

shattered into droplets,

dashing itself against the

unforgiving, immovable crags,

their remote faces rejecting

the pleading grasp of blown spume.

At the height of the tide,

in the fury of the winter storm,

it might almost seem as if

nothing could remain of hope.

Yet when that futile surge

of lost promise slips away,

rebuilding for a new onslaught,

there is a poignant sense of loss,

a bleak feeling of abandonment.

But then, close to despair, I recall

that it is those storm driven tides

which bring the gifts from the sea –

casting them like so much refuse

beyond the coastal drift line,

tossed atop the beveled berm,

treasures revealed only when

the wave draws out to sea again

exposing the blessings in the sand…

laying there amidst the seaweed,

with other trash the sea has swallowed,

are pearly shells, small and large,

the driftwood, the beautiful stones,

a piece of Kelly green sea glass,

perhaps a letter in a blue bottle,

each with its own story to tell

of the challenging voyage

that brought it finally to this shore. 

©Lianne Schneider