Super offerings from Santa Barbara's finest

Thirteen artists are working in collaboration on a printing project to raise funds for the new organization Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative.

The idea was hatched by fund raising maven Tracey Morris as a means of, not only, raising money for direct-to-artist grants but also as a way to educate a growing audience that anyone can start a grand collection with limited funds.


Here are editioned prints {meaning limited to ONLY 25 of each image offered} at the affordable price of $50 each. They are hand made, hand pulled prints by our local and well loved artists. Half the money goes to the artist for the materials to make the edition, the other half goes to fund grants to help artists in our community stay in our community, realize a dream project or to purchase much needed materials.

The grants include all the arts, not just visual, but dance, theatre, music, literature .... I'm sure to be missing one, but you get the idea. The grants keep our community rich with culture, one reason why we all love it here.

How can this not be a win win for everyone! So far we have 7 prints available with a new print coming out the first of every month. There will be 13 in all, a good baker's dozen. You can get more information on the prints and their creators HERE as well as at the Arts Collaborative website.

Happy collecting! Let's get started!

Solar Plate Open Studio

Enjoy a full day of printmaking at the Rusty Barn Saturday, February 5th from 10am-4pm. $60 will give you access to an amazing studio with two presses... one large enough to print full sheets and multiple book plates.

Harmon Cabin 7x12"

It's an open printing day but I will be available for instruction and help with solar printing... exposing, printing, curating... whatever your printing need might be. Plates and paper available for purchase. Light boxes are handy in case there is a lack of sun for exposure.

Make sure to check out all the other interesting workshops lined up for 2011 HERE.

Affordable Web Presence

The amazing web gal, Amy Love, fabuloso designer and web programmer for Santa Barbara Printmakers has a special offer to anyone needing a website. She has put together a fantastic package deal, a website that has up to five pages (such as, about the artist, gallery and contact page) the gallery pages would include up to 16 images all for $500.


Here is a SAMPLE of what the web site would look like. It's a very clean template, easy to navigate and read. If you want more images or pages she can do that as well she would charge an hourly rate or by project if you want something more complicated.

template

The only thing NOT included in this $500 package is your domain name... which would cost $10 a year to register and the web hosting ( you must have a big main frame site that hosts your inclusion in the ethers) which would cost approximately $50 a year, both of which Amy could help you establish.

Amy has worked with many artists building their websites, mine included. Here are a few links if you want to see more of what she can do for you.

www.nicolestrasburg.com

www.lizbradyart.com

www.roeannewhite.com
www.valorifussell.com

Amy's own website with many more samples graphicengineering.com

Not only is Amy an incredible web person but she was first trained in print. She has designed and project managed business cards, postcards, announcements, greeting cards and advertisements. She is a one stop shop for your graphic needs. I can't recommend her highly enough, she is one of the easiest people to work with and gets the job done quickly and efficiently.

To get in touch with her you can either reach her through her website OR send an email to amy.love@gmail.com

Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative

REMINDER: DIRECT-TO-ARTIST GRANTS
A reminder that the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative’s First Direct-to-Artist Grants application process will be ending at midnight, February 28, 2010. These grants are made possible with support from the Santa Barbara Foundation and the Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency. At least two grants in four different categories (Literary, Performing, Visual and New Media/Film) will be awarded. Grant winners will be announced at the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission’s Annual Art Symposium on April 16th – a great opportunity for additional exposure for the awardees.

WHAT A RESPONSE!
Over 100 additional musicians, writers, sculptors, filmmakers, composers, painters and artists of all varieties, have registered on our new website since we first announced these grants, and we’re now closing in on a total of 350 registered members! Let’s give special notice to Justin Hyland Williams, a visual artist who was our 300th registered member. Welcome Justin! Now we’re wondering who’ll be #350?

HOW TO APPLY
The grant application is available on our website. Start by clicking or pasting this link into your browser: http://bit.ly/a1LLCs

You'll need to be registered on our site and logged in to see the guidelines and apply. If you're not registered yet, you'll get a screen prompting you to log in. Go to the bottom of the page and click on "register."

Once you're registered, the application will show up on the home page. Just read and follow the instructions. If you have any questions, please submit them to webmaster@sbartscollaborative.org.

GRANT CRITERIA
We have kept the grant criteria very simple. The goal was to invite surprises - encourage the creative community to do what they do best. The only criteria are you must reside in Santa Barbara County and agree to have your art interact with the city of Santa Barbara in some way of your choosing, and we ask that you describe that. Beyond that, we simply ask that you to tell us who you are, which of the four categories you're applying for, and what you intend to do with the money. We also give you a chance to share examples of your previous work or other supporting materials by attaching files online. That's it!

Once the application process is closed on the deadline, all eligible applications will be equally considered by an independent peer-review panel within each artistic discipline.

We hope this will be the first small step toward creating innovative and truly sustainable funding models for direct financial support to artists from all disciplines in our community. We welcome your participation and support, and look forward to collaborating with you.

SB Arts Collaborative

Limited time only @ Sundance

Sundance is having one of it's rare sales events that gives a percentage off your total order... meaning even paintings are up to 20% off! See my available paintings HERE.

Eric Maisel and Alyson Stanfield

A highly recommended, FREE recording from Alyson Stanfield.

Find it here on Alyson's Blog:

Free recording to help you avoid art career overwhelm

If you missed the call last week, you can still get the recording for a limited time. And it’s amazing! I interview creativity coach Eric Maisel to find out how to avoid art career overwhelm. In the 30-minute recording, Eric points to 6 specific situations in which artists feel overwhelmed:

1. Not knowing which thing to do.
2. Having too many small things to do.
3. Not enough successes or payoffs.
4. Finding your work boring or meaningless
5. Not knowing how to present yourself.
6. Not liking your own work.

He then shows how to use the incantations from his book, Ten Zen Seconds, to overcome overwhelm

On Blogging

blog (blŏg)

noun:
A website in which an individual or group of users produces an ongoing narrative.

verb: blogged, blogging
add new material to, or update a blog

derivatives: blogger

Origin: a shortening of web log


Someone said to me recently "what is a blog and why should I care?" If you guessed that it was someone over the age of 40 asking, you guessed right. I'm posting the answer to this question here, chances are this active questioner will never find the answer unless they are in communion with someone, anyone, younger or computer/internet savvy.

I came to making my own blog through an art marketing seminar. It was listed as one of 9 things that you can do to be seen or found on the internet. Not only is it a fluid form of communicating with your tribe, being available to your clients, and sharing your process with a large art community, every link and word can be a line connecting dots that create a larger audience for the masses of internet users in the world. YES, the WORLD.

Ultimately you are helping yourself be visible. The internet, blogs, myspace, and youtube are incredible tools for the individual to create a personal landscape for any and all kinds of relationships, business or personal. The breadth of uses for the opportunities that this tool offers are limitless (at least in the mind of this one little blogger).

To not know what a blog is? Amazing! To not take advantage of the tool? Crazy!

Blogger makes it painless. Yes, even if you are an octagenarian. Don't wait. Get connected.

Did I mention that it's FREE! How can you not?!

Tools of the Trade and Judy Lee

Introducing Judy Lee at five and a half








specializing in:

recollecting, recreating, and making meticulous pencil drawings

More about Judy:
"I started Five and a Half in the spring of 2006 with a paper trimmer and a pint of book-binding glue, making small handmade journals from the stacks of papers I had in my Brooklyn studio. Since then, the Handmade, Recollected journals have been sent to places all over the world, and are carried by stores in New York City, Chicago, and Berkeley." Read all about her HERE

I found Judy's fabulous journals from the blog of illustrator Camilla Engman.

Now Judy has added a special feature to her blog, a series of interviews, called "tools of the trade" where she invites artists and designers to share their studios and ways/means of working. In addition, the interview includes favorite materials, inspiration and ways of being green in the workspace.

I had the great good fortune of participating in this endeavor.... see the interview just posted today Tools of the Trade: Nicole Strasburg.

Thanks Judy!

Introducing Sylvia White

An art consultant since 1979, Sylvia White is celebrating 25+ years in the business and has just announced a relocation to Ventura. In her own words:

"Sylvia White is pleased to announce our upcoming relocation to Ventura, California...the new art city. Ventura is in a stage of enormous growth and determined to become one of the most important venues for contemporary art. It is very exciting to be a part of this emerging adventure. The city has just approved 44 million dollars in funds to break ground for the new WAV (Working Artists Ventura) project, a mixed use development that will incorporate galleries and artist live work loft spaces. In addition, BusinessWeek just named Ventura as one of the top 10 cities in the US slated for economic growth due to its favorable programs encouraging the visual arts."

Great news for us and enlightening with regards to the growth in Ventura. How wonderful to be close to a budding art community. The time is right to get your hand in play before the scene explodes.

Sylvia will be a fantastic addition to our local coast with her business CAS. She developed Contemporary Artists' Services to help artists acquire the skills needed to survive in the business world.

I stumbled across her website through another link and have been a faithful subscriber to her newsletter ever since. All the articles she has written are available on her website here: Advice on Art

She will be an invaluable member in the art community of the south coast.