NameThis

A couple weeks ago, I signed on to NameThis.com. It looked like fun. I know imagination is one of my strong points. When I've had small businesses, folks have always commented on the names I've chosen, enjoying them a lot. The one in which I made sweaters and such was called "Sheep Appreciation Week" and the one in which I sold beaded jewelry I made (while living in NYC) was "Manhattan Trading Beads" (with reference to the fact that Manhattan was traded for beads). Then came "Loom-atic A'Stylin'" for my handwovens, and the latest, so that I can sell everything I make is "Maniacal Makers Amalgamated".

So I thought I could recognize a good name when I saw one. Apparently I can't.

As an example, I'm going to go over one of the most recent projects on NameThis, one for which I proposed what I thought was a really good name. It was the name for an award an Aussie firm was going to give employees who performed outstandingly beyond expectations. There was also to be some money involved in the reward.

I knew that one phrase Aussies use to complement someone on their performance was "Good on ya!" I proposed the "Gold Onion" award. I liked that it sounded like Good on ya, that it included gold as an indication that money was involved, and I could just visualize a "gold onion" on someone's desk as a mark of their merit. I saw it as a sort of trophy that people competed for, to see who would be the holder of the "gold onion" next week, or next month, or next year as it passed from person to person.

It wasn't among the top three. What were the top three?

Transcending Excellence Award HOW BORING!
Kudos HOW OBVIOUS AND NOT STRONG ENOUGH!
Altitude Award HUH? HOW OBSCURE!

I wouldn't have minded a whole lot if the winners had been one of the other good ones, which I just looked over and see none that I consider even close to mine, but that's bias, I'm sure.

This sort of thing has happened time after time.

I knew their formula for choosing winners was not entirely without problems. I also knew I wasn't alone. I did an experiment by investing all the "watts" I had in one of my ideas when the amount of watts I had seemed a good proportion of all that were being put into that project. And I wrote about my experiment in a comment on their blog. I knew it would shake things up a bit.

Back came a comment from someone whose names are chosen pretty often that said "Don’t forget that Kluster has always been clear that “who you are” matters when it comes to “influence.” Furthermore, I believe our relative “importance” may change with each project. So perhaps a 25-year-old male has more influence on a name for a beer company, but a 40-year-old female would have more influence on a “name this baby bottle” contest."

Ah ha! Now I understand. I'm a 57-year-old woman. No wonder the members they recommended I connect with were always basically non-participators who had signed on (you get 1000 watts for each friend who joins) and done little else. Whenever "who you are" matters, we 57-year-old women don't matter one whit, and it makes me mad. Hence this posting.

My next action is to begin messaging the folks whose names I do like to let them know that someone appreciates their efforts. I will also check to see if I'm still the only person over 50 signed up.

It Seems I Spoke Too Soon

Everything looked so good when I posted last,....

And every single thing fell through.

As we worked on setting up the gallery, I was the practical one, looking up all the information I could gather on how to run a successful gallery, what was important to artists and to customers. I was determined not to do it unless we could do it right. As time went on, one artist found a better cheaper local opportunity. Another decided there was just too much dissention going on. Another decided to get more involved with a local organization's marketing opportunities. And so on. And so on. Then the proposed landlord started making demands we would not meet, and it all went up in smoke. His building is still empty, by the way.

The Fringe barely came off at all. Not that the organizers told us this, but they seem to have pretty much told all of us that we would have to find our own venues for our work, thus scattering them all over the city with extremely poor publicity. The local arts organization that I was doing the "Livin' la Vida LOCAL" project for, decided to commission someone they were acquainted with to find a venue, only they didn't. The nearly empty mall was willing to supply space as long as nothing was sole out of it. Can't have the local makers competing with the franchises or the already established local buy-in, sell-outs, of course. And I was not able to recruit a single other local artist to participate in my Artist's Olympics. They all thought it was a great idea, and that is all. So there was no way to hold it either.

The gold embroidery project did come off, halfway. It came to me late, and I worked it halfway, sending it back in a condition that it could be worn in, and it never came back.

I've had two other commissions, a tatted necklace, and a crocheted snood. Both times, I requested that pictures be sent to me, but they weren't.

The small group of women entrepreneurs I was involved with also disbanded.

Finally, I decided that I must be fighting the wrong fight for my specific locality and state of financial well-being.

I have now taught myself Illustrator, since that is what I lacked for what local jobs doing art that there are. But just so it would be useful to me in any case, I've learned it by using a book in Illustrator for fashion flats, along with doing fashion sketches based on model pictures in the weekend Guardian, and developing motifs for textile designs, with the objective of building an entirely digital porfolio. That way, even without money for travel to London, I can show a new improved portfolio that will even include the prints as they might be used in fashion.

I've also been concentrating on my writing. First, it was by writing an entire novel with the NaNoWriMo, and now I'm trying to figure out how to make money with my blogs.

In the last week, this has been stimulated by the new rules for immigrants to the UK. Under these new rules, since my husband and I are in our 50's, are not presently working in our chosen fields (not by our own choices, but never mind that), and would not be earning the large amounts they deem deserving of a place in their fine country even if we were (aside from my science, but having been out 15 years, I don't think my job prospects would be better in that anyhow), I think our chances for getting to stay when our visas run out in two years might be dwindling. I decided that our best prospects might be to find ways of earning our living that could be done from anywhere. Bless this web.

Harvesting seeds long planted

I know it's spring, but I must have been planing banana trees for the last two years (Do I remember correctly that banana trees don't produce fruit for three years or some such?). Some of the things I've done that I was sure had had no positive effect as far as my being able to earn my living as an artist here in the Norwich, UK, have suddenly and finally bourne fruit.

Th art center I envisioned may be coming into existence through two other WEETU women with similar vision and our prospective partners. Its form is still not clearly defined, except for it being a gallery where local work can be found, but it will be more, and actual locations have been scouted and numbers calculated. I may actually be a part owner in such a business after all, which woud be a major joy and might help my prospects for staying here.

I'm going to be participating in the Fringe again, but in a new way. I'm organizing the Produced in Norfolk participation. I've got what I think is a great idea, but it would need a tremendous lvel of participation to carry off, and I have to be open to the ideas, comments, and suggestions, and objections, of the members.

My idea? Do you remember that Ricky Martin song "Livin' la Vida Loco"? And of course you must be aware of the new impetus for the idea of trying to reduce the energy input into what you buy by buying (buy by buying? I'll be lucky if someone reading this doesn't say bye bye and move on at this point, but I'm using that praseology to build impact for what's coming. Stay just a bit more, won't you?)...

As I was saying, you must be aware of the new inpetus for the idea of trying to reduce the energy input into what you buy by buying from sources closer at hand. Well, my plan is for the PIN Fringe contribution to be a performance piece featuing all the things that its member make, to be titled "Livin' la Vida LOCAL!" What do you think? Isn't it brilliant?

Last... but there is no least because I'm so chuffed (sp?! That's local English, or maybe Iceni considering it's Norfolk, for delighted and energized, as far as I can interpret it.)...and not last because I just remembered one more...

I've got a big embroidery job coming to me after the commissioner went to a company that does machine embroidery and got a price that was 3 x my hand embroidery price. It's embellishment of a reproduction gown in gold and will be a joy to do. And there is more coming.

And really last. I'm finally getting to try out precious metal clay. I used my first batch to make rings for my husband and I (since we didn't have them yet), but since I had to estimate the shrinkage and work it out by mistakes, I ended up making five. This batch, I get to PLAY with!

It time to access my progress again

After all, that's what the end of the year is for. If I jugded by my results at the Mediaeval Fayre, for which I had great hopes, there has not been much. I had three sales, one of them perhaps a mercy sale from the woman running the booth across the way. What is worse is that my friend who makes glass beads, whose booth was right next to mine, did great, as did others, the first day. The only mitigating factor is that there was a beading hobbyist upstairs selling her work for perhaps twice what the beads she used to make the work cost, deffinitely no more. I heard that she was a retired person happy for any little amount that her work brought in. I could go off on one of my classic rants about how charging so little for your work not only harms others trying to get paid at least minimum wage for their hours of work, but contributes to the loss of the craft itself, since it results in the craft only being practised at a low level, since developing higher levels of skill produces no rewards. I'll try to leave it at that.

But I do have to lay some of it at my own feet, even if I'm not sure exactly what I do wrong. There's a lot of admiring appreciation of my work, a good deal of interest in learning to do what I do, but very little understanding and almost no recognition that there are as many as 10 different techniques on exhibit but no buying. The evening of the first day, having sold absolutely nothing, I was reading about Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. He recommended never telling anyone they are wrong. But when they think all the pieces are crocheted and there isn't a single crocheted piece on the table? When they are constantly even mistiaking the threadwork for beadwork and vice versa? I did my best on day 2.

I also took my weaving and embroidery work in the hopes of commissions. And this is where the worst thing of all happened. A woman was looking at one of my scarves and I told her that it was the very scarf on which my article in Handwoven was based. I showed her the article. She saw that the article was by me and that the picture was that very scarf. I told her how I had invented the procedure for dropping beads into the waffles of the scarf and getting them to stay put and that was the reason that the work was worthy of inclusion in Handwoven. She asked me for a price, and I said that I hadn't put a price on it. What did she think was reasonable?

She offered £8.

My jaw dropped and I turned it down. She offered £10, and I turned that down too. She said she couldn't go above that. I said I was sorry.

A little while later, she was back. She said she hopped I hadn't been insulted, that she hadn't meant to insult me, that she hadn't realized what scarves were going for. Would I take £25? I said no, that I didn't really want to sell that particular scarf but that I would do one like it. How much? £50. (Which considering it was 100% silk with the labor-intensive beading was quite reasonable. Actually, I must have remembered that last offering wrong, because I'm pretty sure that it was at this point she said that she could poosibly go as far as £25, By this time, I will admit that I was determined that not a single item of mine was going to end up in her hands no matter what was offered.

By the end of the second day, having sold four buttons, two small peyote pendants, and a bracelet, I was discouraged.

The next day, I got a call from a gallery that had had some of my work there for a long time. They had a woman who had just bought the rest of my work and wanted to know where she could find more. they put her on the phone and I told her. A few days later, I took more work to the shop. It turned out there was still one piece left, my most expensive one, but still, this raised my spirits enough to call up my other galleries to see how I had done over the Christmas season.

Not well.

Is a change desperately needed? Is my marketing entirely wrong? Is the beadwork market saturated to the point that already it is not worth practising? Should I be teaching instead of making and selling?

Still, I've got a website that people think is good. I've taken a course of photography which should make it better. I've learned to do several new things. I've exhibited more and sold more and taught more and generally brought in more than last year.

Frankly, my mind is in a muddle. I am thinking of turning myself entirely loose for a while. If I feel like doing patchwork, hever mind the prospects of any market at all for it. I'll do it for the sake of my joy in the making and give the powers-that-be time to show me which way to head next. And I am thinking that I need to take my work more seriously, to do fabulous, meticulously planned elaborate work that cannot possibly be mistaken for kess than it is. (never mind how long that will take and whether there is a market for any such thing within my access.

Comments and advice encouraged.

The Mediaeval Dress

I have an upcoming fair that is sponsored by the Mediaeval Trust and will be at Dragon Hall in Norwich. This is a recently restored building that was a merchants hall in the 1500's. Mediaeval Trust itself is an organization working toward creating a reenactment village in Norfolk. We merchants all have to dress mediaeval style, though they are not being that strict about just how authenticly we do it.

In any case, I see it as an oportunity to make contacts in the whole area of reenactment, which is a direction I want to take my makings because I could give free reign to the old handskills I love practicing and even maybe have the oportunity to pass them on.

So I've been making myself a medieval dress using a very basic pattern, all triangles and rectangles, that I found on the web. The fabric I'm using can not be said to be authentic. I went with a cheaper option for this first dress. But then I'm handsewing it. I have a sewing machine, but it's US electricity and getting a proper transformer has not been a financial priority. There are all too many of those. (So, of course, I find the time to handsew a medieval dress.)

And thus my eternal dilema enters the picture once again. I find, as if I couldn't have expected it, that I enjoy handsewing. In fact, in case making a mediaeval dress for the first time wasn't challenge enough, I've taken an interest in the seaming techniques of the time (I blame this on Felicity Withers, my friend the glass bead maker, who introduced me to a whole section of books in the Forum library on fashion and dress, including one on the subject of all the ancient textiles that have been unearthed and what can be told from them about techniques that were used.) Next, I shall be dagging all over the place. And no modern person should even know that word. It's downright dangerous for folks like me.

I hope that people who come to this show will take an interest in all the old hand techniques that I use in my craftwork, enough to buy something, or better yet (dare I hope?) commission something fabulous!

And now for photography

I have several current projects, but the one taking priority just now is the digital photography class. I have had a digital camera for a couple of years now, but my success with it has been intermittent, particularly in taking close-ups and macro-type pictures of my jewellery work. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. And it seemed like it especially didn't when I was on a deadline or had some immediate purpose for the pictures.

I still have my old camera. It was a pretty good 35 mm Pentax with macro lenses that I could add on. I had learned to use the F-stops and the apeture settings and had one particular film that worked very well for me. I could bracket. I did tend to waste some film and have to shoot a bit to get good pictures, but I figured that was pretty normal. I didn't like the costs and the wait to get good development, to turn the best of the work into slides. but I could get results with it.

I waited until i read that I could afford the level of digital camera that was needed to get quality equivalent to the film pictures I was taking. My camera is 5 megapixels and has lots of different things you can adjust by moving around on the little screen. It draws graphs sometimes that are of no help to me whatsoever. And generally it has taken about a half hour of boning up on the instruction book before each shooting session with more reading up as shots didn't go the way I expected.

So I'm taking a photography course.

I've had two sessions so far, and I've learned some useful things, particularly regarding the use of Photoshop to improve the pictures I've already taken and accepted with frustration at their quality. I can't help the focus, but I can help some of the other things. But I'm still frustrated with the camera.

The frustration amounts to the same problems I have with word processing programs that insist on trying to correct my writing. When I set things a certain way, I MEAN to set them that way. I know that may give me an underexposed picture or overexposed, or wrong in some other way, but mostly the reason I am doing that is that I'm trying to get a sense of how different setting affect the picture I get under different conditions. But the camera thinks it's smarter than me. It chooses to focus on the back of the bracelet rather than the front. It shifts the focus of macro pictures at the last moment. It refuses to take some pictures. It flashes when I don't want it to flash. I know it's trying to help. I know that the way to get around that is to put it on manual and individually set each of the 97 variables I have in Manual, But I'd like to get a handle on one variable at a time with the other variables staying put while I do that.

So far, I'm assuming that this will get better as I do my homework for the class and become more acquainted with the camera. It's certainly time.

And I also have to admit that today's session included a distraction that made focusing on what I was trying to accomplish harder. The water was high, and the swans kept clambering out of the water and wandering over to look you in the eye at eye level. In their experience, anything humans have in their hands when they approach the water is swan-edible. They've never tried this weird squareish metal food, but they are perfectly willing to give it a go. And when they weren't going for my camera, they were going for the toggles on my shoes, which tends to work against steadiness. All of this when the day's lesson topic was working with a slow shutter speed. Someone else could probably have gotten some interesting live action shots of me.

So, did you see my Fringe piece at the opening?

If you did, you came early. How do I know? They didn't turn on any lights on the porch where it is!! So when the sun went down, it was in the dark. Yes, I should have asked them to turn on some lights, but by the time I came outside and noted this, I was tired and freezing from standing outside guarding the back door and pointing folks to the front. I volunteered for that, thinking I would be near my piece and get to hear what people said about it, but i wasn't really.

Besides that, there's another thing I'm not happy about. I understand about having to put up the piece with a rope across with just a few eye-screws for support when I originally wanted to use one for each string of "beads". But that had the result that the different strings tend to congregate in the center of each space between the eye-screws leaving uneven gaps and making the whole piece look pretty straggly. It's the entrance of the whole Fringe at the factory site. So why does no one but me take the trouble (about three minutes worth) to even out the distances between the strings once in a while, especially when there are large numbers of people coming in that entrance? Before I got there yesterday, there had been an opening for VIP's. I guess it must have looked fully straggly for them.

I can't go down there every day and do this since i work and travel by bus. On the whole, it it's going to look scraggly, I'd as soon people not notice it, so I've decided not to ask that the porch lights be turned on henceforth.

I am full of complaints today. My jewellery for the auction? Well, I guess I should be thankful that it's on the lighted side of the auction room. Half had no lights during last night's opening. Or at least it was. Each piece was laying in the box I brought it in, still on the dilapidated desk in that region, though with a label. I just hope it's still there for the auction itself.

Is there more? Unfortunately yes. Yesterday morning, I went to the BBC radio station for my interview that Produced in Norfold had arranged as a part of their series. Turned out the series had ended the week before! Luckily, I said the right thing when they told me this. I said " I'm sorry, too, because I was offered two dates and I chose this one because of the Fringe." They perked up and said that if i was part of the Fringe, they wanted to do an interview on that. It was very cool. I got to mention several other things and plug my classes and my website and the Fringe and such. They said it would be on later in the day, An irony, huh? An interview about my piece that no one could see.

Lord bless me, there's one more thing. While I was at the BBC, a couple came in. They had heard about the Fringe on the radio and come to the Forum (where the BBC and the library and the tourist information office for Norwich is) looking for information on it. The tourist information office of Norwich had not one single brochure or schedule of events. The woman at the desk looked that the web site on her computer. She found information about events, but no directions to the factory or to any other location. If they had even made web pages of the brochure pages, that would have been there. I knew and helped them as much as I could. Yes, I should have been carrying my brochures and invitations. I'm not perfect either.

OK. That's all out of my system. On to my next adventure as an artist in England. I'm letting this one go and simply trying to make sure I hold on to all the lessons I've already learned:
Fight for a proper set-up for your piece.
Fight for proper lighting.
Acrylic-painted cardboard tubes DO stand up to rain.
And, should I ever actually be the organizer of an event (which I am wishing more and more that I could take a crack at) (and they should immediately call me up and offer me next year's Fringe so I can get my come-uppance for all these complaints) MAKE SURE THERE ARE BROCHURES AT THE TOURIST OFFICE.

Oh, and one last parting shot. I just picked up the latest AN magazine for October, which has listings of all the art events all over the country and some beyond. Is there any listing of the Fringe under Norwich? OF COURSE NOT!

There! I'm finally done.