Business Goals for 2021

[RobinZ]

I like to look back and see how I did with last year's goals and look ahead to next year.

My #1 goal last year was to work toward finding more local buyers and I had concrete steps to make that happen. I did get lots more than the year before due to using local place names on my website pix and other pages on my site. However, covid killed my other tasks, like supplying every pet related retail establishment with my cards, attending local events, etc. So that's still on my list for this year.

#2 was to conquer Instagram, still not there. Beginning to wonder if I've got some kind of hangup about it!

#3 was to paint different subjects, including more aimed at prints. I also wanted to master watercolor. Total failure on this whole goal, I didn't work it at all. (I did buy good wc paints and paper, though, lol)

A lingering goal I had that I was afraid to make happen was raise my prices. I finally did that this fall and it worked nicely. I think I'll move them up again. I have just as much income with less work, and more interesting, larger pieces. The end result of this is that I don't have a long line of commissions now, as I have in years pas,t of small pieces, so am refreshed and able to think more about my #3 of last year.

So all three are still goals this year, and I'm adding one of trying to build a local art community here. I walk daily with my dog, and since covid brought more people outdoors, met a lot more people and found lots of part time artists.

How about you?

 

[Artyczar]

I like that you posted this because I used to do this every year, but somewhere in recent times, I guess I just gave up on thinking about it due to a what's the use kind of depression. But now you have be thinking about putting some real though into it. So, I'm inspired. I'll go do that and come back to the thread. Usually, I wrote these goals at the beginning of every new sketchbook I started, so I'll start with looking over those and see how things boded for me. Stay tuned.

 

[Artyczar]

Okay...mine is long, but I needed to do this in order to make my way up to 2021. I'm so sorry! I'll keep the rest (2007-2020) private, but I'm using this one to demonstrate how stupidly ambitious and specific I get sometimes.

At the beginning of each of my little moleskin sketchbooks, I write a bunch of plans and ideas I want to accomplish over the next year or so. They might not get completed, or even started, so I’ll carry them over to next year’s book, especially if they are still ongoing.
I'll make asterisks by the ones I actually worked on or finished.



*American Rhapsody Project (still in progress)

*Get book a show at Otis Persons

*Drawings on pattern cut-outs (still in progress)

*Beginning Ideas for large “Forgive”paintng

*Ideas for dog watercolors (Buddy in licking positions) (still in progress)

*Read Art & Fear

Artist’s Book plan with folds-outs

*Pin drawing plans

*Animals on Thomas Bros. Maps (still in progress)

Create an art exhibit on MySpace

Outsider installation based on what Dad would do (like Finkster-esque)

Propose an art installation to the Hammer’s lobby

*New hand-painted book about nothing

*Painting about a park where people argue

*Propose large wall ColorForms Installation (interactive)/or abstract mixed media wall coverings

Stop wasting time web surfing. Focus on your own art goals.

Limit palette

*Make gouache and typer artist book

*Make artist mentor program (in progress)

*3-panel Motherwell tribute

*Permission, give to self: Devotion – Honesty – Risk

*Permissions: It’s okay not to separate art from my life

*Permission: It’s okay to be vulnerable

. . . .

Here some funny exhibition titles I come up with...just for yucks:

Unhinged

Fleeting Experience

It’s Mostly About Me (Although I did use a version of this in 2010)

Whim

Cuntfukula Pharmacy

Pendulum

The Name’s Mud

Dark Horse

Pain and Able

Unable to Return Your Call

Lamenting Lollygags

Okay, so now (AGAIN, sorry this was long) I'm going to see what goals were pulled over from the last books and reassess what goals I might have now. THANK YOU ROBIN! it's a great exercise for me.

 

[RobinZ]

Wow, you really know your goals!

I didn't even include personal goals. My major personal goal is to get my house in shape to sell. Taxes here are crazy and since neither of us needs proximity to the city to work anymore, do not make sense. Which brings me to a conundrum I always have with house projects: my sweat or my income? As I get older, the sweat is less valuable every day!

 

[Artyczar]

I have no line between the art and the other part of my life, so it's a huge conundrum here.

 

[Artyczar]

By the way, I'm learning a LOT by looking through these notebooks. I'm now on 2015, right before things were so great, and then, everything came crashing down. It's hard to read them as little goal dairies. That's about when I started to have zero.

 

[Artyczar]

Ha...I just went through every year. Some of the goal lists got longer, then shorter. Then shorter still. After 2015, they whittled down and 2020 simply says "Just make art best you can. No goals." Ha ha ha. That about sums it up for me.

 

[E.J.H.]

"Just make art best you can. No goals." Ha ha ha. That about sums it up for me."

That's about it for me too, but as "just a hobbyst" I don't think its entirely comparable....

 

[RobinZ]

I think make the best art you can is a given?

I don't understand no line between art and the rest of my life. For instance, maintaining good health as I get older is huge to me, and what I do for business and pleasure has nothing to do with that. Or with my other smaller personal goals, like learning to cook different cuisines or propagating house plants or being more attentive to the elderly widows I know.

And since I depend financially on my art, the business side is very, very important.

 

[Artyczar]

Hey Robin. I see what you're saying, but I guess you and I are different, and I also shared way too much.

EDIT: I guess what I mean to say is that there is no line between what I do for art and how I really conduct it as a business. I also neglect pretty much everything else in my life aside from the art side (art/art business), re: health, relationships, my plants, keeping the house in order, etc. I do the bear minimum to keep it going. This is the conundrum.

Another goal I have, or am highly considering, is to take my book off the market. There are enough out there on the used market for the story to be out there, I hardly make money from it, and I regret wasting all those years writing it, then publishing it. I don't regret all of it, but enough of it. There's upkeep to that too that I could be spending on different things.

Making the best art I can might be a given, but I get held up with thoughts about my "career." In that, there's always pressure to complete bodies/series of work that are all consistent and work well together in solo shows. I want to throw that out the window (maybe not the best business practice), but it messes with my production so much, that I want to just be happy with what I'm doing while I do it.

Hope that clears some stuff up, but again, I talk too much.

 

[RobinZ]

I love to talk to you!

 

[E.J.H.]

Another goal I have, or am highly considering, is to take my book off the market. There are enough out there on the used market for the story to be out there, I hardly make money from it, and I regret wasting all those years writing it, then publishing it. I don't regret all of it, but enough of it. There's upkeep to that too that I could be spending on different things.

You really mean that? I mean I haven't the faintest idea of time and energy involved in such an endeavor, but writing a book, and managing to publish it does not sound like a waste of time to me. Quite the contrary actually.

 

[Artyczar]

I do mean that it's been a "new years" resolution to consider it, yes. I went through a lot while spending so much time and energy writing it. You're right in that it was no small accomplishment, but I don't know if I'm happy having it out there--it causes me problems, mostly with the people that already know me. If only strangers read it, that would be a different story and I wouldn't feel the anxiety about it anymore. I could change my name on it. Still thinking all this. I'm also not happy with the writing itself.

 

[JohnEmmett]

my goals are too lofty to speak of…

…

 

[PSA3475]

I love love love the large wall of interactive color forms idea! What great fun that would be!