Monday, November 17, 2008

Mail! Artist Business Cards



My business cards from Moo came in the mail today. They are terrific. The images on the front sides printed very nicely...

...and all my website and contact info is on the back. I'm really pleased.

It was a good mail day; I also got a used book I ordered from Abe books and a package with a couple of little stocking stuffer type gifts from an Etsy seller...so something handmade. I like that. I am shockingly behind on Christmas shopping. I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week. I'm happy for what I can get accomplished online.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

New Poetry Anthology by Incarnate Muse Press


Michelle Rhea and Anita M. Barnard of Incarnate Muse Press are proud, pleased and relieved to announce that the second Volume of the poetry anthology, Above Us Only Sky, is now at the printers and will be available soon through the website, and in time for the Los Angeles reading on Sunday, November 23 at 11am. Center for Inquiry Los Angeles, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. The event including lunch is free and open to the public.

I will not be attending because of various family responsibilities in Texas and Iowa that week, but Michelle will be there, a few of the poets appearing in the anthology, and a couple of guest readers who will be reading poetry from both volumes 1 and 2.

This is one of my favorite poems from the first volume of Above Us Only Sky.


I am always amazed


that most people
believe in that which
they cannot see

and belittle me
for being agnostic--
a coarse, flip-flopping description
of omission

they do not understand

not knowing
is beautiful
it opens the world
to me like an iris

I am not adrift but in search
not for an end but a be-ing
in harmony not with the river's
source but its flow

we are surrounded by
mystery
only believers surrender to it
and I yearn to divine it

the point is not
where the spirit
comes from but
where it leads

which for me is
to earth
and I have no need
to worship it



Dan Logan



© 2003. All rights remain with authors.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Art Prints and the Business of Art

Over the last two days I have been selecting and loading digital images of a few of my paintings, collages and photographs to the website Imagekind. I have been noticing a number of artists with their own sites and with gallery representation directing possible customers to this site to purchase art prints.

From the site: Imagekind (www.imagekind.com) is the world's fastest-growing art site offering over 750,000 high-quality fine art images for sale. Imagekind gives consumers limitless options to purchase museum-quality framed and poster art from over 50,000 domestic and international emerging and established artists.

Serving as a community for professional artists to create and sell their work, Imagekind's goal is to develop a new online art experience that provides both consumers and artists with a new outlet for sharing, creating and buying art from digital files.




Night Flow
acrylic on canvas
virtually matted and framed

One thing that is fun with Imagekind is the ability to see all your work as matted and framed prints in different sizes and with a huge variety of different framing options. Images are also available printed on canvas, as a nice quality card (if the artist approves that option) or just as a simple print with no framing. It has been interesting for me to play around with all the options for my images in my Imagekind gallery.

This seems like a valuable service for artists who may not have large format printers and archival inks and do not have to spend the time away from their art to print and ship, and for buyers who would like a piece of an artist's work, but are not ready to invest in an original.

There are a number of online resources these days to help artists negotiate the business end of their field, prompt them to promote their art and instruct them that they must be business people as well as artists. I am not much of a business person and am definitely a little allergic to financial concerns and anything too much like math. (I also often feel like promoting feels a little bit pushy and full of myself.) But I do read a couple of blogs like Alyson Stanfield's Art Biz Blog. She also has a book about artists self-promoting with a great title, I'd Rather Be in the Studio.

One small piece of advice I picked up from her is to use your name for your art business, and I used that advice a few weeks ago when I opened up my etsy shop for fine art. Yesterday I decided to set up a business email. So, with Edward's help...um, okay, Edward did it all, I just decided on the address name...I now have AnitaBarnard@13moonsgrove.com, just for art matters.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election Day, the Walk to School, and the Right to Vote

This morning I walked my daughter to school, and her thoughts were all about the election. R would like to see a woman elected president, and I hope that someday she will, but this morning I spoke to her about choosing a candidate not just by gender or race or belief system, but because of that person's qualifications and goals. As I was talking about intelligence and experience, R patted her chest and said "Heart. Someone with a good heart." I had to agree that all the native intelligence and political savvy in the world just doesn't matter if the person is not kind and determined to do the best things to help and care for the people in this country and its neighbors. R liked the idea that the country is made of the people all around us, that she IS this country.

She was also amazed when we got to her school at all the red, white and blue signs posted in the lawn.

"Were these here yesterday!?"



At the time our country was established, voting rights, though not dictated by the Constitution or federal law, were held by white men of property.

Before the Civil War some northern states extended the right to vote to free black men. In 1870 the 15th Amendment guaranteed the right vote for all men.


"Votes for women were first seriously proposed in the United States in July, 1848, at the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. One woman who attended that convention was Charlotte Woodward. She was nineteen at the time. In 1920, when women finally won the vote throughout the nation, Charlotte Woodward was the only participant in the 1848 Convention who was still alive to cast her vote. Eighty-one years old, she cast her vote proudly." (by Jone Johnson Lewis)



The women who marched on Washington and worked through education and peaceful demonstration to win the right to vote for themselves and their daughters were often reviled and tortured. A group of these suffragettes, arrested for "obstructing sidewalk traffic", were imprisoned, chained, left hanging in chains from bars overnight, beaten, choked, fed gruel crawling with worms and force fed with tubes shoved down their throats by their jailers when they refused to eat it. All because they wanted the right to cast their vote.

They don't teach us these things in school. The Women's Suffrage Movement and quest for women's rights are glossed over, treated as not so serious as the fight against unfair stamp taxes or the Civil Rights movement, and the torture inflicted on these women completely ignored.

I voted on Thursday, and I'm such a sloppy sentimentalist at times, when I cast my ballot I got a little choked up. Then I walked out of our neighborhood community center and watched a small bent woman make her slow way with her cane and tiny steps to the door to cast her vote. And I thought of both my grandmothers, one who never learned to drive and whose mobility was limited after her husband died, who walked or carpooled to work the elections until she was no longer able, and my grandma who would have been 90 and is missing her first election ever this year, even though, or maybe because, they were born into a world where women were not allowed to vote.

So, moms and teachers, nurses and office workers, women doctors and women CEOs today take that 30 minutes out of your busy schedule, put off the laundry, trip to the grocery store or one last brief to file and go out and claim your hard-purchased right to vote. And if you have to decide between voting and getting your daughter to her dance class or soccer practice, just for today let her skip and take her with you to the polls, let her see you cast your ballot and tell her about the women who went through so much, less than 90 years ago, to insure that you, and that your daughter will be able to vote.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

First November Tomato Harvest and Blog Interview

Saturday afternoon tomato harvest,
mostly San Marzanos


I love getting tomatoes into mid fall. At noon Saturday we were baking in the sun at the elementary school football game (I have a bright pink triangle of skin at my collar bone to prove it.) And I might wish for just a bit cooler, autumnal weather, but I am not in a hurry for a real frost to come along and kill off my tomatoes and herbs. In fact, we've been known to go out after dark with sheets and plastic tarps, and even heat lamps a time or two, to try and protect our plants and prolong the season as much as possible.

Also, this weather just like it is makes it perfect for dining out on the deck - one of my favorite things.

Blog Interview: Fabric artist and doll-maker Donna has posted a very nice feature and interview with me and my art on her blog today. Stop by and check it out.

Here is one of Donna's fairy creations:



Fall Fairy fiber sculpted fantasy art doll