Art News DFW - ArtGroupsDFW News Blog

The Orphan Works Act of 2008 has now passed the U.S. Senate. The legislation threatens artists because it requires only that a company make a "reasonably diligent" search to locate a copyright owner before using their work in media including the Internet, and limits compensation required for the use of an infringed work. To protect your work you would have to register all your artwork for a fee.

Artist Walter King sounds a call against the legislation in the House in his Absolute Arts blog:

http://blog.absolutearts.com/blogs/archives/00000461.html

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Orphan Works Act 2008 - To provide a limitation on judicial remedies in copyright infringement cases involving orphan works.

OpenCongress Summary:

This bill would limit the amount of damages a copyright holder could collect from an infringer if the infringer performed a diligent search for the copyright holder before using their work. The goal of the legislation is to free up for reuse copyrighted works whose holders cannot be found. It would also set up a process for the Copyright Office to certify commercially-produced visual registries to help people locate the holder of a copyright and prevent the orphaning of works in the future.

An article in Art Print Issues: Orphan Works Act 2008 - Artists' Rights Under Fire?. It summarizes the controversy and provides numerous sources for differing viewpoints.

The Internet offers a wonderful opportunity to sell your art! Here are some ideas for you to use. Please note that inclusion of a website does not imply an endorsement since this list is intended as examples of possibilities and is certainly not complete. Many sites are free or a free version with limited features is available. Information and prices are current as of Sept. 2008. Some ability to edit images of your work is usually needed – for help on that see the last section. For suggestions or corrections, please use the Contact button.

This guide is divided into five sections:

1. Artist websites (blogs, photo galleries, and personal websites)
2. Online art galleries (collective)
3. Online stores
4. Auction and classified ad sites
5. Helpful guides and resources

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Alyson Stanfield is publishing a series of articles designed to help artists promote their exhibit on her websites: ArtBizBlog.com and ArtBizCoach.com:

Start Promoting Your Exhibit Now:
Part 1: Describe It
Part 2: Break Down Tasks
Part 3: Execute Your Plan

The articles are also available as Podcasts. There are many other great resources on her Artist Self-Promotions and Networking page.

Stanfield is the author of I'd Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist's No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion.

Imagekind (an online seller of art prints where any artist can create a free account) has published a list of the best networking sites to help promote their artists work. The list includes the social networking sites you would nominate right away (MySpace and Facebook) and others that might not occur to you (Flickr, the photo-sharing site, Youtube, the video-sharing site, and Squidoo, a sort of personal Wikipedia.)

The article gives a brief explanation of what the site is and how it functions, how the site is helpful for artists, and how some artists use the site to help promote their work. Check it out on the Imagekind blog.

In current copyright law the artist automatically owns the reproduction rights to the art the minute he or she creates it. Registering the copyright entitles the artist to sue for damages, in addition to fair value. The proposed Orphan Works legislation now before Congress would strip artists of all reproduction rights unless the work is registered! Artists would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work.

If you are concerned (and I am) that this will legalize theft of your work, read the wonderful explanation and rant by Mark Simon:
Mind Your Business: You Will Lose All The Rights to Your Own Art: Mark Simon is mad as hell and, in this month's "Mind Your Business," he tells you why you should be too. http://mag.awn.com/?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605

CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATOR:
To find the phone number, address and e-mail of every U.S. senator, U.S. representative, governor and state legislator go to http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Resources:
H.R.5889 Orphan Works Act of 2008 (Introduced in House): http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.5889:

Public Knowledge: Orphan Works http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/ow [this site is pro-legislation on the issue but provides a good explanation of the other side of the issue]

Interested in getting prints made of your artwork? Here's some insight on the issues involved in the article Advice on Working with Giclées & Giclée Printers. The points discussed: image capture, selecting a printer, working with a printer and the advantages of Giclée.

What exactly is a Giclée (pronounced "zhee-clay") you ask. According to Wikipedia, it is "an invented name for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word "giclée", from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray". It was coined by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art."

The controversies swirling around the use of the name are discussed in the article What Is a Giclée? Both of these articles are from the blog Art Print Issues by Barney Davey. You can subscribe to his newsletter to keep up with art print issues.

"I'd Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist's No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion" by Alyson B. Stanfield was published by Pentas Press in Feb. 2008. For details on the book and tours see idratherbeinthestudio.com.

The book offers practical approaches that help you sell more art and build an art career that lasts. Alyson B. Stanfield, the art-marketing guru behind ArtBizCoach.com and ArtBizBlog.com, shares self-promotion tools that have enhanced the careers of thousands of artists. You'll learn how to: (1) Introduce yourself as an artist so people want to know more; (2) Nail your artist statement to discover the right words for all of your marketing messages; (3) Expand your mailing list and use it to cultivate collectors; (4) Create marketing materials that outshine the competition; (5) Become a media magnet so buyers come to you; (6) Take advantage of your Web site and blog to build a bigger audience; and much more.

Meet the author at a Book Tour Party:

• Saturday, March 29 Artspace111, Fort Worth, Texas, 2 to 4 p.m. Drop in!
  
  Benefiting the Emergency Artists' Support League


• Sunday, March 30 Deanna Wood's studio, Sanger, Texas, 1 to 3 p.m. Drop in!
  
  Benefiting Visual Arts Society of Texas

If you miss out on the party, follow along on the I'd Rather Be in the Studio! blog tour. Artist bloggers will be asking Alyson questions about art marketing and then posting the interview on these dates. Questions will vary, so don't miss a day! ArtGroupsDFW will be joining in too.

Artist Ann Hardy has updated her website with over two dozen paintings: www.AnnHardy.com Check it out! Her bio can certainly provide inspiration to her fellow artists:

Ann Hardy is living life as fully and well as she knows how. For Ann, the joy of painting is in the process (journey) and not the destination. Growth in life and art is the most exciting thing she can think of. Her philosophy is to keep moving, but not in the direction that fear makes you move. You must be willing to risk and be at home in your own skin. For her it's fun to be slightly?? eccentric. (And she plays that to the hilt) by painting in a 12 by 12 foot tree house, and the following:

What Color is Your Dream?, a book written by Dallas author and artist Kittie Beletic, received rave reviews from Heartland Reviewer Bob Spear (Publisher and Chief Reviewer). What Color is Your Dream? was released by Brown Books on Monday, Sept.17, 2007.

Allworth Press recently published"Marketing and Buying Fine Art Online: A Guide for Artists and Collectors" by Marques Vickers. This comprehensive resource walks artists, galleries, and resellers through the process of establishing an effective website geared to attract viewers, promote sales, and establish long-term, credible presence.

Professional artist and collector Marques Vickers elaborates on the winning strategies, marketing tools and efficient tactics the most popular art and business websites employ to generate links, media exposure and buyers. This valuable volume for the developing Internet savvy artist-entrepreneur and informed art buyer provides details about a diverse range of emerging sales trends and opportunities on the Internet for traditional, original, and reproduction artwork.

In addition, it presents evolving opportunities for licensed products, greeting card publishing, print on demand Gigle's, barter, auction exchanges, motion picture set decor, e-commerce stores, virtual art galleries, affiliate program and many others. For purchase info see the Allworth website: www.allworth.com.

Allworth Press announces its latest book to aid the artist in business:

Many artists have discovered that getting their work into a gallery isn’t the only path to success. In his new book Selling Art Without Galleries: Toward Making a Living from Your Art, author Daniel Grant shows how a wide range of artists have found prestige, art world acceptance, and ready groups of buyers through nontraditional venues such open studio events. Below is an excerpt from Selling Art Without Galleries:

Read this article (Ask ArtInfo: Opening Your Own Gallery - Part I) from ArtInfo's columnist Robert Ayers before starting an art gallery. In it experienced director Renato Danese suggests that the entrepreneur's background requires not only business skills but knowledge of art history. He also says a gallery must have a moral compass, deal ethically with artists, and view itself as part of the service industry.

Quoted by permission from Allworth Press Artists Newsletter Issue 5.

No artist can succeed if no one knows about his or her work. As important as it is for an artist to draw media attention and find new audiences, few artists enjoy marketing and public relations activities. Veteran public relations consultant Susan Abbott guesses that only 2 percent of artists embrace the tasks involved in self-promotion. This minority of artists, Abbott points out, are social people who welcome the opportunity to get out of the solitary studio environment and interact with people. These artists, she observes, “have literally made their art careers on the backbone of their social skills.”

But what about the other 98 percent? In her book Fine Art Publicity, Abbott reveals how proper goal-setting and planning can guide any artist through a career- enhancing PR campaign. Below is an excerpt from Fine Art Publicity: The Complete Guide for Artists, Galleries, and Museums, Second Edition, by Susan Abbott and published by Allworth Press.

Robert Ayers, who writes ArtInfo's "On Collecting", has written valuable advice for both emerging artists and collectors. For the text of the article "Valuing the Work of Artists with No Auction Trial", see the Artinfo website.

Artinfo is a well-known publisher of art magazines and guides, including "Art + Auction", "Modern Painters" and "Gallery Guide." It also offers a free email newsletter of art-related news.

Advice about pricing artwork is bountiful on the Internet:

Creating and Marketing an Artist's Web Site contains free advice from Daniel Grant. He is the author of several Allworth Press books: The Business of Being an Artist, The Artist's Resource Handbook, How to Grow as an Artist, and The Fine Artist's Career Guide.

Rather than telling you how to do the nuts and bolts of webmastering or HTML, it provides an overview of the types of websites with advice on design and content.

Holland Cotter defines a new type of art collective in his article "Collective Unconscious", published in the New York Times. He talks about the work of miniature subcultures that do away with the one-artist-one-object model. Working as anonymous cyberspace entities, they may assume the identity of a single person or a single artist may assume the identity of many. They may not call their product "art." His examples consider the work of 0100101110101101.org, Critical Art Ensemble, Otabenga Jones & Associates, Reena Spaulings, Bernadette Corporation, and Wrong Gallery.

Anyone know of any local collectivs? If you do, please note it in the Comments.