Podcasting and the Arts

In two days, I will be in the San Francisco Bay Area, and while I am cruising the Northern California freeways, I will be listening to San Francisco radio station KYCY-AM, the first station in the nation to devote all of their programming to podcasts.

What is podcasting, you ask? Podcasting emerged last year as an online phenomenon, allowing amateurs to distribute audio programming over the Web. Listeners can subscribe to certain programs, download them and play them later on digital music players such as Apple Computer's iPod. The station plans to select programming based on listeners' interests and daily feedback and evolve to 24-hour programming.

All of a sudden, podcasting is becoming a huge phenonmena. ABC News and NBC News each plunged into the world of podcasting last week with plans to offer TV newscasts as on-demand audio programs over the Web. National Public Radio also offers some of its shows in podcast format.

But, now something new in the world of podcasts...alternate museum tour tapes done by amateurs and art professionals. For instance, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, you can rent a tape for $5 and listen to informative talks about painter Jackson Pollock while you walk around the museum viewing his paintings.

Or, you can also download, for free, an audio discussion of Pollock's works by David Gilbert, a professor of communication at Marymount Manhattan College, done with a group of his students, in which they discuss the works with a distinctly collegiate blend of irony, pop music and heavy breathing. It is one of the newest adaptations in the world of podcasting...museum tours with a different point of view.

Specifically, these museum guides are an outgrowth of a recent podcasting trend called "sound seeing," in which people record narrations of their travels, such as walking on the beach, or wandering through the French Quarter, and upload them onto the Internet for others to enjoy. In that spirit, the creators of the unauthorized guides to the Modern have also invited anyone interested to submit his or her own tour for inclusion on the project's Web site, mod.blogs.com/art_mobs. (Instructions are on the Web site.)

In the museum world, where the popularity of audio tours has grown tremendously over the last decade, the use of commercial MP3 players seems to be catching on. Officials at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis have discussed putting their new audio guide material on the Web for downloading to portable players. Last year, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo lent viewers iPods to use as audio guides for one exhibition, and Apple Computer has helped the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley of France do the same thing, using the sonorous voice of the actor Michael Lonsdale.

But the rise of podcasting is now enabling museumgoers not simply to enjoy audio guides on a sleeker-looking device but also to concoct their own guides and tours. A New York art Web site, woostercollective.com, recently made a sound-seeing tour of the Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, which the Web site's creators made in hushed tones while wandering through the show, sometimes quoting from the museum's official audio guide, which they listened to as they chatted.

There are other examples of podcasting being used in museum walking tours. In any case, it would be fun to listen to them, in addition to the ones that are available at the museums. I recall how much I enjoyed listening to the narratives provided at the Musee D'Orsay in Paris as I walked around looking at the works of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Whistler, Degas and the other famous painters whose works hang in that wonderful museum. Perhaps next time, I will take a podcast to get a different point of view.

Special Sale in Leavenworth This Weekend

If you are going to be in the Leavenworth area this weekend, be sure and stop and see me in my tent at Art-in-the-Park. For this weekend only, I am selling original 11x14 prints of some of my works, double matted in matching colors, framed in lovely large frames for just $75 each. Basically, I am selling the matted images and giving the frame away for free!!

I am not overstocked on these prints, but I have way too many glass-type frames and I want to lower my inventory. If you are in my tent, you will see that I have switched mostly to showing framed canvas prints, which require no glass. That has left me with a fair amount of glass-style frames and I just want to lower my inventory. Some of my best works are included with the frames, so be sure and stop by, if you can.

And I will also have some autographed copies of the new book, "Northwest Artists" on sale.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!!

Getting Ready for California

Sorry I have been truant about writing my art blog. Frankly, I have been so immersed in producing fine art that I haven't had time to write about it. I cancelled my appearance this last weekend in Leavenworth to get into what I call "Production" mode...that is producing enough work to get me through two large shows in California.

When I leave for the Golden State, I leave my printers behind me so I have to make sure I have enough canvas and paper prints of my work to get me through these shows. The problem is, of course, that I don't know what will be my big sellers, especially in my new works. I have a fair idea about the works I carried with me last year, but the new ones are still an unknown quantity.

Doing new shows (at least new for me) is always a fun, but apprehensive experience. You don't know what to expect; ie where your booth is going to be located, how much wall space I have (inside and outside wall space vs inside only if the tents are placed exactly side-by-side), weather, wind, weird rules and regulations, etc. It always works out, of course, but it is still a nervous time.

I am looking forward to meeting new artists and seeing old California friends and relatives. I will be staying with my "soul sister" Paula Miller and her husband Hardy in Walnut Creek, then move over to Oakland to stay with my brother Dave. And I will have five days between shows to relax and perhaps enjoy some time away from art. Maybe I will hop on a BART train and spend a day or two in San Francisco.

After the Novato show, I will head back on a long Monday drive to Ephrata to get ready for another show in Leavenworth. If I do really well in California, I may have to take that weekend off to produce more works for my next series of shows. July is going to be a very busy month for me.

However, I am getting ahead of myself a little bit. I still have this upcoming Memorial Day four day weekend in Leavenworth which was very good for me last year. And the weather looks like it is going to be in the 80's for all four days. So, if you are spending the holiday in Leavenworth area, please stop by and say hello.

More on Doug Miller

In my last post, I mentioned my artist friend Doug Miller in conjunction with the forthcoming book, "Northwest Artists." I decided to tell you more about Doug and his work as he is an internationally known artist and deserving of your attention.

Doug has been a full time artist for the last 28 years. His work is known worldwide and many of his originals go for several thousand dollars. He has received many awards for his work, some of which are listed on his website. Doug's media is oil painting and while I don't like to classify anyone else's work, I guess you would have to call many of his paintings "Photo Realism". Many of his works are very detailed and take up to 30 days to complete. Lately, he has also been using a more Impressionist style in some of his new paintings, with beautiful results.

Most of Doug's subjects are what he likes to call, "Paintings of the American Outback." He uses mountains, deserts and most every other kind of natural landscape you can think of as his subject matter. Each of his paintings is a genuine work of love that is obvious when you look at them. No one could paint is such vived detail without loving what he was doing.

I have known Doug for many years as we lived in the same town. We would play tennis together on several occasions. It was he who started me down my current path with good, constructive criticism on some of my early works. He taught me about the importance of light and color. And he was there with helpful advise when I decided to become a full time artist and join the art show circuit.

Doug and his wife Barb now live in Wenatchee, WA as Barb got a full time job with the Wenatchee schools. In the last month, Doug took a major step and opened his own gallery in Leavenworth, WA, about 18 miles west of Wenatchee. For those who are not familiar with Leavenworth, it is designed as a Bavarian village and sits among the tall mountain peaks of the eastern Cascade Mountains.

Besides being a popular tourist destination, it is a mecca for art of all kinds including music, paintings, photographs, pottery and other art forms. Doug and I have spent many weekends there at their Art-in-the-Park festival. His new gallery is quite lovely and well laid out. There, one can buy originals and beautiful Giclee prints of his work done on canvas and paper. I expect he will do well there. I hope you get a chance to visit him and see his amazing work.

If you can't make it to his gallery, you can visit his website to see and buy many of his works online. To visit, go to:

http://www.dougmillerart.com

New Book Features Northwest Artists

In eight days, a new coffee-table book will be released for sale entitled, "Northwest Artists." It is being released initially at the Ellensburg National Art Show. The 224 page book features nearly 200 of the Northwest's most notable artists. For some reason, the editor of the book decided to include me in the group. Five of my works are featured, along with a biographical blurb about me.

Of course, I am honored to be included. In fact, I am a little knocked out by the whole experience. I was able to help select the works to be included and to edit the text about me. Among the other local artists included is Doug Miller, a former Ephrata resident who now lives in Wenatchee. This also gives me pause to be included in the same book as Doug as he is a great artist and one of my heroes (and mentor, I might add).

On the evening of 19th, many of the artists in the book will be in Ellensburg to attend the formal artist's reception for the show. About 30 of the artists in the book are in the show and the others are coming just to autograph books, myself included.

Last week, a proof of the book sold for $700 at The Fred Oldfield Heritage Center Museum in Puyallup, Washington. I am not sure what the selling price of the regular book is, but I know it won't be that high.

Many of the artists will be autographing books for each other at Ellensburg. I should have some autographed copies for sale at all my shows after the 19th. I should also mention that the reception in Ellensburg is open to the public and many of the artists will be there to autograph copies.

San Francisco Dreaming

In four weeks, I will be doing my first of four shows this year in the San Francisco Bay Area...two in June and two in September. Last October, I spent some time in San Francisco and the Napa Valley taking some pictures that I hoped to turn into artworks. At that time, I was only wishfully thinking about doing some shows there in 2005.

After a lot of hard work, I was accepted to do these four shows. By that time, I had already begun work on San Francisco subjects. I was told by those in the know that Northern Californians like to purchase artworks that depict their local area. With that in mind, I have completed five new works featuring San Francisco.

My first painting of the five is also my particular favorite, probably because it took so much blood, sweat and tears to complete. It is simply called, "The Bay Bridge." If you know the San Francisco Bay Area, you know that my picture actually only shows 1/2 of the Bay Bridge, the part that runs from Treasure Island in the middle of the bay across to the city itself.

The foreground depicts Treasure Island and the bridge as it leaves the island. The middle ground is the bridge itself, while the background is the San Francisco skyline. The sky shows the fog creeping in from the Pacific Ocean and and blue sky above that. If you have ever spent any time in SF, you know this blue-sky-over-fog scene is repeated many times during the year.

If you look at all my pictures from San Francisco, you will notice some similarities in the sky. I decided to unify all my San Francisco pictures with the same brush strokes in the sky, although the skies are all different shades of blue. I wanted to have this unifying sky theme throughout all the exterior scenes of my San Francisco work.

If you are familiar with my work, you will also notice that these San Francisco paintings are a different style than I have ever presented before. I am always experimenting with new techniques and this one came together after a lot of experimentations. There were actually 14 different versions of The Bay Bridge before I settled on this particular technique.

Being in San Francisco again after so many years absense was a journey of memory and love. You see, I spent most of my childhood in San Francisco and the Bay Area. In some ways, I was nervous about going there again as sometimes memories are best left as memories.

But that wasn't the case here. I loved being there again and it was as wonderful as I remember it. The City is a very special place and my works reflect my love for it. There will be more SF pictures coming out in the future. But for now, to see my current San Francisco works, go to:

http://www.corkrum.com/jim/sf_gallery.htm

A New, Fiery Painting

Once again, I am off today for another art show...once again in Leavenworth. It's Apple Blossom Festival in the Northwest, although the activity is centered in eastern Chelan County.
Last year, I set up my tent in Wenatchee in the main festival grounds. It was crowded, but very few were interested in art.

Meanwhile, 20 miles up Highway 2 in Leavenworth, the artists at Art-in-the-Park did much better as the more affluent festival goers made their way up Highway 2 to Leavenworth. It was an easy decision for me to chose Leavenworth this year rather than Wenatchee.

Another new work I will be showing in festivals this year is a work I call "The Lost Road, Part 2." I like this one very much as I used a new brush stroke technique that really brought out the life of the autumn colors in the roadside bushes. It almost has a fire-like quality as the red and orange leaves look like they are burning. Much of this is attributable to the new technique, which is not really all that visible in the web site image, unfortunately.

I call it the The Lost Road - Part 2 because I already have a painting called Part 1. The lost road comes from the fact that there are several small dirt roads in and around the Tumwater Canyon, just west of Leavenworth. Many of them are abandoned and overgrown, although the road in Part 2 is not. And yes...there will probably be a part 3 and part 4 in the future.

The Autumn of 2004 was very spectacular in some places, including the Tumwater Canyon area, all the way up to Lake Wenatchee. Autumn colors are very conducive to my own love of colors that is so evident in my art.

Just so you know, I have no wireless Internet connection in Leavenworth, so there will be no blog entry for the next few days. To view the new work, go to:

http://www.corkrum.com/jim/lost_road_part_2.htm

Revisiting Italy...Again

This week, I was honored by Wedge Mountain Winery of Leavenworth by being named the "Artist of the Month" for May. The winery has put me and a couple of my works on their website along with a link to my website. I appreciate the honor very much.

It all came about last weekend when the winery's owner, Charlie McKee, came by my tent at last week's Leavenworth Art-in-the-Park. He fell in love with some of my paintings that feature Italian scenes. Charlie has been going to Italy since 1955 and did much of his wine making training in Northern Italy's Piedmonte district. This also happens to be the same area where Susan and I live when we go to Italy.

So Charlie and I had shared some great memories of the wine growing areas of Piedmonte and some of the small towns like Alba, Barolo, and Barbaresco, to name a few.

When we live in Italy, we live in a house on a hill about two miles outside of the small town of Canale. It is surrounded by vineyards. One day, while on a walk on a road through the vineyards, we came upon a small cluster of houses, only about 300 yards from our house. I saw instantly that this scene would make a great painting and photographed it immediately.

This winter, I finally sat down to create the painting. It struck me all at once that this scene, as I envisioned it, would be somewhat reminiscent of some of the country scenes painted by one of my favorite Impressionists, Camille Pissarro. I have always loved his work, especially his country landscapes.

While his colors are more muted than mine, I created this new painting, titled, "Canale - A Country Road," with Pissarro works in mind. Now that it is done, I have to say it is my favorite of the new works I created this winter.

Sometimes, when I create something new, it usually has to grow on me for a while before I include it in my public collection. Some works I really don't like and they never grow on me. Only my wife ever sees these works. But I fell in love with this work long before I finished it.

Although it appeared for the first time publicly at my show last weekend, it garnered a lot of attention and I even sold one print of the work. If you would like to see it, either come to one of my shows...or view it on my website at:

http://www.corkrum.com/jim/canale_country_road.htm

The Days and Weeks of a Full Time Artist - Part 4

The ultimate aim of most artists is to be in a prestigious gallery, such as those found in the Chelsea district of New York City, where they hope their works will become famous and sell for thousands of dollars. It is a good dream, but most artists have a long road to travel before that happens, if ever.

Galleries can be good, but they can also be bad. Why? Because some are run well and some are run badly...just like any other business. It is the effort that the gallery makes that will sell or not sell your work. Of course, the quality of your art, at least in the public's eye is important. But the gallery must put in a lot of effort for you to be successful. In many cases, the public needs to be told what is good and what is not. And it is the job of the gallery to help make that happen.

Many artists spend many hours sending prints of their works to galleries, hoping to get in. Few do. It is somewhat similar to a writer who creates the perfect American novel, only to be rejected by every publisher. As I wrote yesterday, today's writers have some good self-publishing alternatives. However, an artist has no alternative to these rejections other than to go on the road or open his or her own gallery. But I am ahead of myself.

Although I am early in my full time art career, I made a conscious decision to market my own work via the Internet and art shows. After much research, I decided that I would let the galleries come to me if they were interested. And that is exactly what has happened. I was approached by different galleries to display my work and took advantage of most every opportunity to do so.

Some of my work has been sold by galleries, but not enough to make a living at it. But, I wasn't counting on that. I am just doing everything I can to become more well known. And that is working for me. While my works have not been shown in any major gallery yet, I know that day is coming as I do more and more prestigious shows.

And as I become more well known and my works start selling even better than they are now, I will pick and choose my galleries much more closely.

Someday, like my artist friend whom I mentioned in the previous post, I may just open up my own gallery. While that day is far off, it is a good dream to have. If you decide you ever want to do that, you must think strongly about the old real estate adage..."Location, location, location." It is vital that your gallery be someplace where there are art buyers. Usually that means a big city.

I live in a small town in the middle of Washington State. It is about the last place I would ever open a gallery, unless it were an extension of my studio and guests would come by invitation. My town is not an artist's colony by any means, and the majority of our tourists are fishermen and campers. To open a gallery here would not be a wise use of my funds.

Only an artist's colony, or a tourist-based town, or a large city would suffice for my own gallery...in other words, a place where there are large numbers of art buyers.

You need to take one other item into consideration. To open a gallery is to commit a large block of your time to running it...time that takes you away from the shows where your art really gets to be in front of the public. The good news about that is that you don't have to apply to juried art shows any more and worry about rejections.

The bottom line for a beginning full time artist is to do the art shows and let the galleries come to you. Believe me, they will come if you are good.

I will have more on the days and weeks of a full time artist throughout the year. I hope it has been informative and helpful so far. Any and all questions are gladly answered.

How to be Your Own Publisher

First of all, I am back from my first art show of the year, and today, Monday, my exhaustion knows no bounds. It takes a lot of energy and hard work to not only do the show, but to do your own setup on Friday and takedown on Sunday. Needless to say I am out of shape.

The show went pretty much as expected. It was a slow weekend in Leavenworth as the tourist season hasn't really started yet. Traffic was low, but I did sell some of my works, including prints of some of the new ones.

As I said in my last blog, this show was a good tuneup for when the real season starts. I learned a lot about my setup and will make some changes for next week. The best part was seeing many of my artist friends after a six month layoff. I think we were all glad to see each other and be out in the sunshine again.

Now, about being your publisher.

Perhaps some of you are writers and have tried to submit your works to regular publishing houses. Like most writers, you probably have a pile of rejection slips. Nothing to be ashamed of there.

Perhaps you should consider being your own publisher. In the old days, this was called the "Vanity Press" and was expensive. It was also difficult for authors to get their self-published books into stores and many writers wound up with cases of their unsold books gathering dust in their attic or garage.

Today, self publishing is becoming more respectable, profitable, and less expensive than in previous years. And with the rise of the Internet, these self-publishing print houses are offering better ways to market these kind of books. Vanity press houses can make your books available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other on-line bookstores.

It is amazing how this world of self publishing has changed. The New York Times recently published a great article on today's self-publishing market. If you are a writer and want to be published, I suggest you read it right away.