Marketing and selling art

We have made it to Pirlangimpi on Melville Island and are settling into work. Its monsoon season still so we are spending each afternoon inside doing the paperwork. It rains here. Real hard, real heavy.

In chatting thru how we might manage the 'art' sides of our lives during these trips away, we reflected how focused on production our blogs had been as we prepared for the exhibition; and figured that the next little while they may end up being a bit more observatory in nature; a bit more reflective - not all about doing.

So having gone thru the exhibition process I wanted to stop and think about, and ask questions about, how do we sell our art? How do we market ourselves and our art?

We try to be thoughtful in our approach to why we have or do things:

• Our websites are showcases of our work; a place where people can stop by and see a full range of what we do and get a sense of our style;
• Our blogs are for sharing information, processes, progress and for connecting with others and having conversations about arty things that matter.

We think we might try an online selling presence for certain types of work - but haven't yet had a spare moment to really engage with the research or the conversations with others who do.  Why do people choose to sell on line? What do they choose to sell online and thru which forum?  We need to nut out what we hope to achieve by doing it and hopefully find the approach that suits us best. Will be back at some point with questions and ideas!

For the exhibition we shared costs with the gallery for a half-page advertisement in a glossy kind of magazine that circulates across the Sunshine Coast - the catchment area for the gallery.  This is always hard because you never know where you'll end up - and we had a lifestyle image on the opposite page which was quite OK and a sand and gravel business above us!

We also felt there might be benefit from an advertorial in a local monthly newspaper - it was out for a month and a number of people who didn't know we were artists commented on seeing it. I don't know if this translated into visits or sales tho.

The gallery also sent out an e-invitation to their mailing list which we forwarded to a couple more mailing lists we are members of. We tried to keep the imagery similar or the same for a sense of continuity or recognition if people came across them all in the different places.

We also decided to do a Mail Chimp newsletter advice from our selves - they look professional and once you set up the mailing list it's not too tricky (but I bet I forget how to do it by next time!).

What I realised right at the end was that we didn't have any hard-copy things to leave with folk or in shops or to handover when we ran into people in different settings and I think for me, this was something that we missed, and also that the Gallery didn't supply.

We developed a catalogue (A4 pages with names, prices, thumbnail, dimensions, materials) in case people wanted to take it home and measure up a space; we put all the exhibition pieces on our websites with similar info and a link to the Gallery; and linked between our blogs and websites and the Gallery as best we could.

Sometimes doing the art is only the beginning...

Do people have other thoughts about how to promote their work or exhibitions?  Or what we could think about for next time?  I'm weary just writing about it!