I am currently involved in an online voting competition.
Having created an artwork, I now have to promote it online and coerce/entice/invite my readers, whoever they may be, to click a link and cast a vote for me. I will do this everyday for the next 32 days.
“Without promotion something terrible happens—nothing.” - PT Barnum
I've done this for others, voted on their links or commented on their posts, all to let that person know that I support them. In person, we can have that conversation, the sharing of the burden, or triumph, or anticipation, but we are limited as to how many people we are in contact with in Real Time/Real Life. I'm just stating the obvious here.
What I want my readers to know is all the artists worked on their murals. They didn't exist before we made them. The organization gave us an opportunity by choosing us, by jury, as the 20 to depict our idea of The Perfect City. Our works are as varied as we are.
Our material was difficult, and new to most of us: dibond. An aluminum coated with a plastic, which did take the acrylic paint but also had a surface where paint peeled easily and could be scratched off by a fingernail. Our 10' x 8' sheet was given to us in two pieces, having been sliced horizontally through the center, so most of us never saw our work, or worked on it, with the top and bottom as a unit, unless the were laying flat on the ground.
We worked outdoors, or in a tent, or both. It was 42C with the heat on one end of the week, 10C and driving rain as the week ended. We had project time constraints: 9-5 Mon - Fri. Some of us had other obligations: jobs, family obligations, prior committments further eating into our creative time.
This is not a complaint or a woe-is-me, but I just want you, dear reader, to know that art IS work. Whoever wins deserves it.
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| my self-made shameless self-promotion-- go vote! |
1 comment:
Good luck, Katie! I tweeted this and I'll do that a few more times.
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