The Context Your Art is Shown Within
Art Marketing Circle III - Stories
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Free and Open webinar for all visual artists this coming Thursday, September 14th at 11:00 AM CDT!
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Thursday, September 14th at 11:00 CDT
ATTN: FASO Members!
You have access to this full article, as a part of your paid FASO account, at the following link:
https://marketing.faso.com/c/members-only-articles/stories-context
We’re continuing our members-only series outlining our Circles of Art Marketing framework. If you’re a new member, or missed what we covered previously, I recommend you catch up on the series at the following links:
Art Marketing Circle I - The Sovereign Artist
Art Marketing Circle II - Your Art
Alright, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at Art Marketing Circle III - Turning Your Art into a Saleable Product…
When you decide you want to sell your art, everything changes. Prior to that decision, you are creating solely because you have the insatiable hunger to create. You are feeding your soul. You are making the world better, from your perspective, because you are making yourself better. As I said before, an artist cannot serve two masters, so you must serve your soul first, before you sell your art, so that you have no inner conflict.
Once you decide to sell your art, however, you walk a fine line. You must, in short, turn your offering which consists of you, your art and the stories and context in which you talk about all of it into a product, without losing your focus on your own vision and your own inspiration.
Now, to sell art, it’s of critical importance that your art is inspired and that there is something of you in it that makes it unique. And if you’ve done your work properly in the previous circle (Art Marketing Circle II - Your Art), you’ve already nailed that aspect.
In addition to you unique art however, there are five business elements that you must think through to turn your art into a product:
Your Offerings - the mix of products and services you offer (covered here)
Reputational Power - The reputation you build up via magic interactions with people (covered here)
The Category or niche that you mostly work within (covered here)
The Price you charge for your art (covered here)
The Stories you tell about yourself and your art (the current article series)
Nail these five elements and you will give yourself a huge tailwind when you start offering your art for sale.
Now, the stories category is by far the biggest category precisely because stories are important. So we’re going to break up the stories section into several articles.
The main elements of your artistic stories:
1. The importance of stories (review here)
2. Your origin story (review here)
3. Your ongoing public story (review here)
4. The specific story between you and each of your fans. (review here)
5. The context your art is displayed within (today’s article)
Upcoming posts:
6. The story of each particular artwork
Today we’re going to look at the context your art is shown within
So let’s dive in……
Story Element 5: The Context Your Art is Shown Within
“Imagine a flower in an open meadow. Now take the same flower and slip it into the barrel of a rifle. Or place it on a gravestone. Notice in each case how you feel. The significance changes. In new surroundings, the same object can take on considerably different meanings. The context changes the content.” - Rick Rubin
"Words matter. Artists love to trot out the tired line, 'My work speaks for itself,' but the truth is, our work doesn’t speak for itself" - Austin Kleon
The Power of Context
In the book The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell, one of Gladwell's observations is that humans act very differently toward the same inputs in different situations.
In other words, context matters.
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https://marketing.faso.com/c/members-only-articles/stories-context
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