Warehouses

i spent the day today riding around town looking at dilapidated spaces. warehouses, old factories, and abandoned garages. any place like that today caught my eye. i'm just thinking of the potential that any of these types of places might hold for hosting the group show. one place is actually not in a terribly bad part of town and... if rent was cheap enough, i might consider renting to form a studio. then i'd just have my own space to do as i please. i thought, "how cool would it be to just put the kind of art that i like on display whenever i want".

i mean, i walked around to some of these, "fine art galleries" that are established in downtown bethlehem, pa and if i see one more fucking painting of christmas time in bethlehem i think i will vomit. i would love to just turn my nose down at any one of those artists and say, "we don't show that kind of stuff here!

Exhibiting - Venues

well, the coffee shop/book store/gallery place decided to go with the original artist they had scheduled for june. this is actually the, "right thing to do". apparently, they had booked an artist for the space in june and were beginning to have doubts that she could pull it off. they wanted to know if i would be interested to take her place. of course. the hard part of prepping the artwork is all but finished. i would only need to make some prints and frame them up.

so, i started to get really excited about exhibiting in just a few months. but talking to them this week, they seem to think that she'll be able to pull off the show, so they want to know if i would be interested in their next available month which is January 2009. 2009?!? that's like... next year! i hate not having instant gratification anymore. the internet has decimated my patience. but i'll take it and it'll serve to give me focus over the next couple months, carefully planning out shots that i think will work well as a collection to show in january.

in the meantime, there is the Lehigh Valley Skin Industry Invitational. I'm thinking of reserving a booth there since i've goto so much tattoo themed work. for now, i'm thinking to concentrate on showing some fine art pieces along with some portrait work. the goal would be to sell some prints-only (unframed, in poly envelopes) cheap. framed prints at an affordable price. then try to sell some portrait bookings as well.

Exhibiting

I've been working with several local galleries here in the Lehigh Valley, trying to find a outlet for my work. The ultimate goal, of course, would be to sell some prints. But truth be told, I really just like to show people my work and get feedback from their reactions. However, it really seems to be a difficult sell, trying to exhibit fine art nudes in public galleries. One gallery owner I talked to explained it to me in a very rational sense. In his experience, exhibiting and selling photography as art is much more difficult than just about any other medium. The reason seems to be that everyone these days has a digital camera and "taking pictures" is easy, right? So why would I want to pay someone else $500 for a photograph of a nude woman crouching in a stream. "I could get my girlfriend to do that. She's hawt!" So, selling fine art nude photography as art tends to require a much more sophisticated art crowd. And I'm not sure the Lehigh Valley has this kind of crowd.

But right now there's one gallery with a high level of interest. When I sat down to show them my work, they seemed to be impressed. When they asked me if I would consider showing in their small book store/coffee shop/gallery I asked them if they were certain that they would have no problem showing nudes. Their reaction was simply, "controversy is always good for business!"

My kind of people.