“Moonpots” are my variation on the 1000-year-old Yixing tradition of making lidded teapots. The Jiangsu region boasts a unique purple sand clay which the artisans use to produce beautifully hued ware, but it’s the method and precision of the construction of the pots which first grabbed my attention when I became aware of this tradition.
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How I avoid getting lost on the Internet
Okay, so this blog post is a little off the beaten art path, but I had a conversation with someone today which made me realize that I use a specific strategy…
Read MoreDid you ever think about running away?
There was a poster hanging in the hallway at the art college I attended that was a call for artists/ artisans to come to New York City to apprentice as a mason/ sculptor on one of the cathedrals there in the city.
Read MoreInfluences
Like most kids in the 70s and 80s, I grew up with the traditional and practically obligatory art influences — Norman Rockwell, John James Audubon, Leonardo daVinci— seen as an old calendar page framed and hung on the wall or as a fancy coffee table book (right under the full-color glossy tome of King Tut’s treasures) but it wasn’t until…
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"Should I get a degree in art?"
Hoo boy, I get asked this question a lot. I’d quit the small art college I was attending in the 80s to work for an illustrator as his ghost painter. Back then, I’d have said an art degree was a waste of time. After I’d graduated from college with my bachelor’s degree in the early aughts, I was pretty darned sure that a college degree was the best thing anyone could do for their life in general. Later I earned my master’s at MICA and the experience was…
Read MoreWhy even have an art website?
I’ve had some sort of dedicated art website since 2000. The first one was a basic HTML single-page on my college’s campus server and I experimented with the design for a few years until I set up a templated site on Squarespace and bought my first domain. So very fancy. Until very recently…
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Kest Pottery “Eyeball” mugs. Thank you for a wonderful year!
Mastery in 2022
For the past couple of decades, a late December tradition has been to look back on the past 12 months and give its passing some kind of assessment. I remember all the wonderful people in my year and the “successes” for which I’m grateful, and then there are the things that didn’t go as planned but I’m still happy if I learn something from the experience. This exercise is also accompanied by a list of
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This Steve Buscemi meme is like the Giving Tree.
Wading in on AI
You know that fun little new avatar creator, the Lensa app, that’s exploding in popularity right now? It’s made your new favorite avatars on your social media, it’s cheap, and best of all, you can tell it to make up to 50 avatars in a variety of art styles. Is it just harmless fun?
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Randy is a colorful little guy who likes to sing show tunes at the top of his lungs (usually while in the car).
The Monsterpot Story
The Monsterpots are what you’d call a staple in my Kest Pottery shop. In marketing parlance, it’s called a “signature item” that I make all the time and it’s a unique thing. One might call it a branded work and in doing so, I betray the fact that I’ve been doing waaaaayyyy too much research about marketing.
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A partnership with Wow-Art
I’m excited to share with you that I’ve recently partnered with Ms. Jane Frank of Wow-Art agency , online gallery representative, to offer the original paintings for three of my books:
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Gruber Goofypot and his monsterpot cousins will be changing their address in 2023.
Falling down the rabbit hole
Say “SEO” and my stomach churns a bit and I feel a low grade anxiety, but I can’t place its source. It’s just a phrase that describes the rules that govern how other people search stuff online. According to web wizards like Neil Patel, how your product/ offering/ service is searched by the majority of us humans is the guide by which you should choose your keywords— and not how you would maybe categorize it or describe it yourself.
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Poppies, digital 2019. Available as a print— click on image.
Scaling Up
Lately, I’ve been doing a ton of research on marketing, sales, and passive income, in relation to my art career, so if you’ve also been wondering about this kind of thing for yourself too, then read on.
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Leap, 8.5” x 11”. Oil on board. 2016.
Leap
In a recent interview, I was asked to detail an experience in my life that shaped and empowered me. There were many that formed my early thinking but one really stood out as an “empowering” situation, and really gets at how I move about in the world— then and now, still. I was learning to…
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Ass-in-the-seat Time
Students, artists in particular, get frustrated with the seeming lack of speed on their journey to “success” (whatever that might mean). And I get it. I quit art school (the first time in the 80s) with one semester to go because I was offered a job “ghost” painting with a professional illustrator. I mean, the choice of go to school or make money and art….
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Animal Skeletons interior spread of exoskeletons.
Early Book Commissions: Animal Skeletons
In 1995, Franklin Watts published the Animal Skeletons book which I had immense joy in illustrating. I mean, who wouldn’t luuuurrv painting and drawing skeletons and bugs and hardshelled animals, etc?! When I started looking at the art direction and started thinking about what reference I’d need for the illustrations…
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Just Doing My Job, 18” x 24”, oil on gessoed paper. 2013.
What's your superpower?
What is your wonderful art nerd superpower and gives you great joy in the doing? Do you have a lot of "shoulds" chattering away in your brain, telling you that you need to make one kind of art over another? Is it motivated by the glittery prospect of surface rewards that have nothing to do with the deeper satisfaction of actually creating the work?
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Morels, 22” x 19”. Oils on Olio paper, 2022.
How to think about pricing your work
Are you an artist thinking about how to price your work? Are you a potential buyer looking for art that you like but with "affordable" prices? Here are some questions for you to consider:
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Good Artist statements
Writing a great artist statement can be frustrating and difficult. Being asked to synthesize a body of work into a 2-3 paragraph “statement” is hard because what we’re being asked to do is not a mission statement (ie what we’re going do to change the world) but a statement of our process and why. The point of an artist statement is…
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Secret Forest. Graphite, 17 x 13”, 2022.
Saying the quiet part out loud
Hmmm. What am I afraid to tell you about myself that might make some of you self-select out and say "nope, that's not for me" right from the jump? I thought about it and after a bit of mild cheek-gnawing, thought-- ok, I’ll tell you: I believe in magic ….yes, I do.
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Pressures, 2009. 15ft x 51". Charcoal, graphite with vellum overlays.
The Great Resistance
I've written on this topic before and it's still one of my favorite perennial questions. I ask myself this question a lot when I find myself feeling that little sour churn of "no, I don't want to do that [insert certain thing] in my work.
Then I get to ask myself, "why not?"
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