For those of you who have followed my teaching basics over the years, you already know how much I speak about name recognition as being an important key to artistic success. But when you are just starting out on the journey, how do you go about building your resume and getting name recognition?

 You will need to consider a couple of things. You must have a plan, some money and skill. Sounds simple enough. Let’s talk a little about each and how they can relate to our topics.

 The plan. Many artists don’t think about this as being a real thing that is under their control. They mostly react to what is going on around them bouncing from one thing to the next. I find that writing a plan out on a piece of paper helps to solidify it….you might want to use a pencil with a big eraser at first. Be flexible and realistic but most of all take some real control over it all with a good plan. 

 How many shows would you like to be part of in a year?  Do some homework and choose a variety of local and regional venues to exhibit your work and that offer balance. Just to help put it in perspective, this may take you a year to figure out.  Watch the art calendars and listings for shows within your medium and get sample prospectuses for annual events.  Make your own list according to your interests and energy level. Look at your calendar and decide what exhibits would fit into your life. Do not pick too many at first. You may not even have enough good work to enter in several things at once.  You may not have the money to finish them properly. 

You want to select places from easy to hard, not unlike what we did with our college applications years ago. Rejection is difficult to deal with so you want to have the ‘sure thing’ as well as the more prestigious show within your region and medium. You can become a member of an art center and have access to their annual member’s exhibit.  These are generally easy to get into and usually have some prize money or awards that you might be able to win. Becoming a member of at least one or two places will let you get your work up quickly and also open the door for some much-needed networking.  If you get into a show, any show, do a press release to your local newspaper or popular Internet spot. Don’t forget to send along a digital image of your piece from the show.  

It takes a while to get this plan in place and to have things ready on your computer: bio statement, artist statement, resume, description of your work, a price list, photos of your work, sample cover letter, and the beginnings of a press release. Once you have them though, things get a lot easier and faster to do. It is all part of the plan. There are lots of questions that will need to be answered here to develop a workable plan of attack. 

The money. This is such a major part of your plan that it deserves its own discussion. How much money can you realistically devote to your art in a month or year?  Look at what you are taking in and paying out. This sounds basic but I think this is where the term ‘poor starving artist’ comes from. Poor planning. Don’t quit your day job. Once you have a good hard look at your income and payouts, you maybe even need a part time job to pay for your art. Frames, entry fees, photographing your work, a website, creating CD’s, creating a portfolio of prints to show, or making a hardcover book of your work all cost money.  It adds up quickly if you don’t have a plan. 

When I first started out in this crazy business of art, I had very little money. I was working full time and trying to pay my first mortgage as a single homeowner. I had been working for a major pharmaceutical company for several years as their staff photographer and was ready to test my creative capabilities. After looking at my plan and deciding what to do about the money issue, I got a part time job. It was clear that I did not have any extra money per month to do anything. Reality has to be part of this thinking. 

My plan was to devote no more than $500 for the first couple of years to get started. It was not a lot so I had to manage it carefully. I created what I called my press kits. At the time, galleries were only looking at slides of your work so I created a number of identical slide pages of my work, wrote a sample cover letter, made copies of my artist statement, created a business card and packaged it all up in a folder. Fortunately, I was a photographer and could copy my work easily without cost to me. I guess I need to give credit to my boss and Ciba-Geigy for supporting the artistic career of Nancy Ori here. Thank you. 

I chose 50 galleries to send my press kits to in 1994. The kits looked so professional that I am sure it made me stand out from other artist’s presentations. I had a 10% return and got 5 shows for the next year. I asked for all the kits back and even included return postage but only got about half of them back. They were reworked and sent out again and again until I finally got nothing back. The rest is history.  

So, my $500 that year went for mostly postage, business cards, postcards for my exhibits, postage to mail out my press releases and juried show entry fees. It was a good balance and can be done exactly the same today if you have some computer skills to create your CD’s, use presentation materials from places like Archival Methods, order your ‘free’ cards from places like Vistaprint and research your juried show selection. The only thing that I would add to this today is a website. There are lots of group artist sites where you can easily download your images into a template and you are ready to go. If you can not do it yourself or want something more tailored to your style, then this is one that you will have to throw money at to make it work. 

Juried shows are a great way to measure yourself against others in your medium and can become a benchmark for your own progress.  You may not get accepted at first and need to go back and take a good hard look at your work and try something else the next year until you get in. Jurors change and so does your work. Being accepted into a juried show and winning awards is a great way to build your resume and can also help when you approach a gallery. They may like your work but having an artist with a nice bio and a list of exhibitions and awards will help confirm your potential for sales. Many times buyers need that sense of familiarity. It is important to them that they recognize your name. They read it someplace.  You know the saying…any press is good press.  Well, today you will not get any press unless you do it yourself.  Knowing how to get name recognition has been the key to much of my success. That, a fairly decent portfolio and a lot of energy has taken me to where I am today. 

Your skill. And then the third item, of course, is the skill needed for your particular type of medium. This goes without saying and can be handled nicely by continuing to take classes and workshops on an as-needed basis as you develop your style and expertise. Do you have enough good work?  I think that you should have at least 20 good pieces before you start looking for galleries. Join critique groups to get some feedback as you go along. Network with other artists and get medium-specific magazines like the Pastel Journal or Photo Review to see what other people are doing. 

Your skills will need to expand into the digital world. This seems to be especially difficult for many painters. Think about it, if they wanted to be digital players, they would have probably been photographers and not painters! The story today though is digital submissions to galleries and juried shows….not only just digital submissions, but specific digital submissions. This means that you need to have a decent camera and something like Photoshop Elements on your computer to create specific file sizes according to the prospectus guidelines. If you do not create things properly, some venues will not even look at your work. And while we are talking about digital, it is the artist with a website that will get gallery interest. You can just send people to your website to view your work. This is what is happening now. If you are not on the train, you will be left at the station.  

Your skills should also include proper finishing techniques for your particular medium. The presentation of a piece is just as important a part of the work as the work itself. I have curated and juried enough shows in my time to be able to tell you that if the artist has treated their work poorly in matting and framing, then why should I have the same respect for it when placed up against the next piece that is beautifully presented. Presentation, presentation, presentation.  

There are a lot of good artists out there. The ones who will succeed over the rest will be the ones with some savvy.