Publicizing and Advertising Your Art Accomplishments

When I have a sculpture accepted for a juried show, I promote the event and typically include a photo or two of the sculpture on my website and/or blog.

However when I have photos of my work due to come out in magazine or book, in contrast to a juried exhibition, I make it a rule not to post photos of the accepted works on my blog or website. While I mention it on my resume and on my website schedule of exhibitions and events (i.e., "2010 Art Glass Today, Edited by Jeffrey Snyder, Schiffer Publishing), I never go as far as to say for example "I had four photos accepted for the upcoming magazine story, book, etc. and here are the photos."

To do so takes away the surprise of the publication. And if your friends, family, clients and the entire world already know which of your art works are going to be in the book, there really is no incentive for them or others to purchase the book or buy the magazine to read the article. As an artist you want to create anticipation for your work and what you are doing next. You can still find ways to promote an upcoming book or magazine without need of "giving it all away."

If you look at the resumes of experienced artists, the standard practice and unwritten protocol is to simply reference the upcoming publication as mentioned above and at most, include ONE photo.

Australia Testing Recycled Glass Mix In Pavement

"A Doncaster East footpath will be made with recycled glass and crushed brick in state-first trial aimed at reusing waste."

"Manningham Council’s new Andersons Creek sustainable pathway is being constructed using a recycled materials mix developed by Swinburne University researchers. If successful, the pavement could help clear the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of crushed brick and glass sitting unused in Victoria. It would also avoid mining virgin stone presently used in foothpath construction."

"Swinburne University civil and geotechnical engineering associate professor Arul Arulrajah said the use of recycled materials would go a long way to reducing brick and glass stockpiles. “In Victoria alone, about 1.4 million tonnes of crushed brick and 250,000 tonnes of non-recyclable glass end up in landfill every year,” Dr Arulrajah, a Lower Templestowe resident, said."

"In the Manningham pavement trial, more than 12 tonnes of recycled glass will be used in the 240m path. Councillor Meg Downie said traditional footpath and bicycle path materials were becoming scarce in some areas. “It makes sense to use recycled crushed glass and crushed brick/concrete in these applications to ... make our pathways more sustainable,” Cr Downie said."

"The trial is a joint initiative between the council, the Municipal and Association of Victoria (MAV) and the Packaging Stewardship Forum of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, which represents a number of beverage companies and their packaging firms."

Read the original story at http://manningham-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/manningham-council-testing-recycled-glass-mix-in-pavement/

Recycled Glass Wall

I am a big fan of using recycled glass in the garden as art with a serious message. I came across this beautiful recycled glass and steel mesh wall that is illuminated from within. It is located in Dallas, Texas.

Project name: House in the Garden
Project location: Dallas, Texas
Architect: Cunningham Architects
Landscape Architect: Hocker Design Group
Photography: James F. Wilson and Gisela Borghi

Read the full story at the Contemporist at: http://www.contemporist.com/2010/06/24/house-in-the-garden-by-cunningham-architects/

Glassline Paint for Glass

Glassline makes a series of paints in 3.5 oz. bottles that are compatible with float, 90 COE and 96 COE glass. I have applied this paint directly to the inside of a cast plaster and silica mold and the glass casting does pick up some of the color but not uniformly. The difficulty is that the paints can be fired up to 1500 degrees an I am typically firing recycled glass over 1500 degrees so some of the color flakes off. You also have to use a large amount of the paint so a 3.5 oz bottle does not last very long. However, if you use too much paint, the paint layer will crack.

The paints work great if you are placing them between multiple layers of glass or using them to outline a design. They can also be spray painted onto glass by mixing with water which I have not yet tried.

Try them out at:

http://www.sundanceglass.com/glassline-glass-line-pens-paints-fusing.htm

Slight Extension for Park Installation

Since the metal fabrication is still ongoing, we are expecting to have everything installed by mid July. I will provide some installation photos when we start to work on the site.

Cutting Glass Bottles with a Wet Tile Saw

I have seen a number of craft and interior design projects on ETSY that are using rings cut from recycled glass bottles. I tried it recently and my glass rings were not very even but it did work.

There is a step by step instruction at:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-use-a-wet-tile-saw-to-cut-glass-bottles/

Weisenbach Recycled Products

Weisenbach Recycled Products of Columbus, Ohio creates a variety of beautiful and useful products made from sources such as recycled currency, newsprint, denim, tire rubber and glass.

Each week, Weisenbach Recycled Products picks up 500 lbs. of empty glass bottles from 5 popular establishments. The glass is crushed, melted, and crafted into beautiful art pieces for the company's exclusive line of recognition awards.

Check out their website at:

http://www.recycledproducts.com/

Artist Email Scams

Since most artists have websites and their email addresses are easily available, it is not surprising when we receive email scams asking to "buy" our work. Here is one that I received below. This person wants to buy my work but does not mention my name, medium and does not even know my website address. The spelling and sentence structure alone makes me cringe.

For some strange reason, I do not think Mr. Matthew Joe and I will be doing any business soon. ;) Maybe I will ask him how many upcoming books on Recycled Glass Sculpture and Design he would like to order?


Subject: art order

From: Matthew Joe

Date:Mon, Jun 14, 2010 12:32 pm

Hi Dear,

My name is Matthew Joe, i will like to order for some piece of your work from your studio as gift for my parent are celebrating their wedding anniversary, so i will be glad to have your reply as soon as possible, i will be glad if you can send me your website address to choose or send me four of your product via email that is available for me to choose.

Waiting to read from you today.so that we can make some progress.

I will be waiting to read from you at you convinet time.

thanks
Matthew Joe.

What is LEED?

According to Wikipedia:

"Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) is an internationally recognized green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED provides building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

LEED addresses both commercial and residential building types. It works throughout the building lifecycle – design and construction, operations and maintenance, tenant fitout, and significant retrofit. And LEED for Neighborhood Development extends the benefits of LEED beyond the building footprint into the neighborhood it serves."

According to the Glass Informational Bulletin from the Glass Association of Northern America, LEED® enables “Credit Points” to be earned in seven (7) categories. One of these categories,“Materials and Resources,” enables points to be earned for “Recycled Content.”

"Definitions:

Recycled content is defined, under the International Organization of Standardization Standard 14021 - Environmental labels and declarations - Self declared environmental claims (Type II environmental labeling), as the proportion, by mass, of post-consumer and pre-consumer recycled material in a product.

Assembly recycled content is the percentage of material in a product that is either postconsumer or pre-consumer recycled content.

Post-consumer recycled content is the percentage of material in a product that is consumer waste. The recycle content was generated by household, commercial, industrial, or institutional end-users and can no longer be used for its intended purpose.

Pre-consumer recycled content is the percentage of material in a product that is recycled from the manufacturing waste stream. Excluded are scrap materials capable of being reclaimed within the same process that generated it.

Implications of LEED® Recycled Content Claims for Glass

Glass cullet, generated in a float glass manufacturing plant, when reintroduced into the original process, does not qualify as pre-consumer recycled content for LEED-certification.

Glass cut-offs, purchased from a glass fabricator/distributor, and then reused by the float glass manufacturing plant that generated it, does qualify as pre-consumer recycled content for LEED certification.

Given that most float glass manufacturing plants primarily combine the glass cullet they generate with virgin materials for use in further production, the percentage of pre-consumer recycled content that would normally qualify for LEED-certification will be, zero."

Glassphemy

Do you like to smash bottles and throw them at people? "The 20-foot high by 30-foot long steel tower is build specifically for people to throw glass bottles at each other - from the safety of standing behind bullet-proof glass. Release anger, see if you can make each other flinch, or simply see if you can hit your target and shatter glass at the same time."

Submitting Photos of Your Art to Artist Calls

I have stressed as professional artists that we all need to have high quality professional images of our work. I use a professional photographer who is well known in the Washington, DC area. However, since you may be provided multiple file sizes by your photographer (a small image for email/websites, a medium sized image around 1-4 MB and a larger Tiff file) you will need to now how to read image sizes for your photos. Most artist calls are not very forgiving if you do not submit photos to their specifications. And artist calls do not have uniform rules for naming your files (i.e. artist name, title, etc.) or the size requested. I have spent many hours adjusting images and renaming photos for various artist calls since you only get one chance.

So how do you know the size and resolution of your photos? If you have an image of your work, right click under properties and you should see both a resolution size (for example 1200 x 800) and the overall size of the file (1.2 MB, etc). Sometimes you can also hover your cursor over the photo and see the same information.

Various email programs like AOL have a maximum total of MBs that you can send as attachments to one email. Some email programs like Yahoo can also compress the size of your attached photos that you send resulting in a smaller sized received than you intended. And if you insert photos into an email versus sending them as attachments, they are almost always downsized to smaller images.

Experiment in sending photos to yourself and friends to determine how your email program functions in this area. This practice will save you a lot of time later on when you are under deadlines for photo submissions.

What Are Google Alerts?

When I was a new artist, it took me about two or three years to get on various many mailing lists of art events and calls to artists. Now I am on so many mailing lists, I can hardly keep up.

However, all artists who wish to exhibit their artwork and compete professionally should always be proactive not only for researching calls to artists for submissions but to also keep up to date in their medium. I spend about an hour or more a week doing this and it has resulted in opportunities for me and broadened my knowledge of recycled glass.

Google alerts allow you to set up fixed search (query) terms where google will search the web for those terms and email you the results daily. For example, I have google alerts for "recycled glass" , "call to artists" etc.

You can choose your query terms and set this up at http://www.google.com/alerts