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HOW TO SURVIVE AND PROSPER AS AN ARTIST

(Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul)

By Carroll Michael

"Generating Income through the Printed Image"

Mail art, book art, rubber-stamp art, photocopy art, postcard art, and digital art are art forms created by artists exploring new communication tools and resources of mass communication and the electronic age. Not only do some of these art forms respond to the aesthetic sensibilities of mass communication, they are mass communication and are mass-produced. Thus, they are art forms with nonexclusive price tags and have the potential to broaden the art-buying market.

A market and marketing vehicles for these art forms have developed over the last twenty-five years. This can be attributed to the efforts of Printed Matter, which was founded in New York City in 1976. This retail store and gallery also offers a mail-order service. It exhibits and sells a vast range of artists' books and other types of artist-created printed materials. Although Printed Matter is considered the largest distributor of artists' books worldwide, artists' books are also sold through retail stores, galleries, and distribution outlets throughout the United States. Their names and addresses are listed in the excellent publication The Book Arts Directory (and in Carroll Michael's book). The Directory also includes information for papermakers, calligraphers, paper decorators, printmakers, book designers, fine printers and publishers, traditional bookbinders, and makers of artist books.

PRINTMAKING

Creating lithographs, etchings, woodblock prints, serigraphs, and giclées offers artists opportunities to generate income and exposure. Painter Toby Judith Klayman, the author of The Artists' Survival Manual, writes:

The idea of "multiples"—of having many prints of the same image—fascinated me. I liked the possibility of having my work in many places: whereas a one-of-a-kind work can only be in one place at any one time, a print can be in several places simultaneously. It's possible to be selling a print in your studio and have twenty galleries around the country selling them at the same time as well.... Since multiples also tend to be priced lower than one-of-a-kind works, more people can not only see your work, but buy it as well. There's a "democracy" of pricing possible with prints that appeals to me. ( T.J. Klayman)

There is a large demand for works on paper, and sales do not necessarily depend on working with art dealers. You can be your own publisher and do your own marketing or go through a print publisher and/or print distributor. The names of print publishers and distributors can be found in the publications Smith's Printworld Directory and Art Marketing Sourcebook (and in Carroll Michael's book).