Artist Michelle McSpadden

Recently, an artist buddy and I went on the White Rock Artist Studio Tour to see how others organize their work space to inspire us to make our studios more efficient. Before we ventured out, we made some mental notes of what we wanted to pay attention to so that we could learn how to make our studios better. One of the things we were both interested in was art supply organization, so whenever we saw something that would make life easier, we pointed it out to each other. Two weeks after our artist studio tour & research outing I decided to re-organize my supplies. This ended up being a day long project, because the last time I had done anything like that was in 2003 when I decided to clear out my furniture and turn my living room into a studio. Going through everything was actually fun and interesting. I found a lot of stuff that I wasn’t using and wasn’t intending to use any time soon, so I put those items in a box and will be giving them to some artists this week. This will help

If you’ve noticed a lull in sales over the past year due to the economy, you’re not alone. A lot of artists are experiencing a decrease in sales these days because of what is going on in the job market, but alas, we can still expand our businesses in this economic drought and look forward to a lush future. What can you be doing to expand your business? Well, you could…. Update your website, refresh your artist statement (that’s supposed to be done about every 2 years anyway), update your artist resume, re-evaluate your pricing, revise your marketing strategy, experiement with a new style, technique, theme, or medium, start a new series, study with a mentor, update your portfolio with new imagery, re-organize your studio space and give away art supplies that you don’t use (be a blessing to another artist), organize your sketches by date for easy future reference, stretch canvases, do an inventory check and determine how many new pieces you want to create in the next 6 months, set your c