Web design #1 online!

I finished the web design for The Carter Building Alliance and got it on line for review! Creating the website was a challenge that was very rewarding but getting it online was a nightmare! My web hosting service provider charged a lot for domain names so I bought them through Only Domains.com, $25 for 3 years. My service provider walked me through the process of setting up sub-directories and uploading and I thought, connecting my domain name with the site. The instructions said to give the internet 24-48 hours to complete the location process; so I did. After 48 hours, I was beginning to have my doubts so I called them back. They left out a very important part! I needed to go to the domain site and tell the domain names where to find the sites I’d posted! I received a lot of help from both ends and viola!…the site was online within minutes. So many things to learn…so many things.

I have looked into classes for web design and certification; they cost a small fortune that I don’t have right now. Each class costs almost as much as a semester long course at the university and they only last 2 days! I have done a lot of studying on my own, I know the basics, and the courses don’t seem to cover much more. Yes, I picked up a few interesting tidbits in the HTML class I just took but I don’t think they were worth $600 (the textbook was only $75). Anyway, I decided that a more effective way to go about this was to volunteer to create a few websites and learn by doing. Each step of the way has been challenging and rewarding. I spent several days trying to find out how to set up a table where you could click on a thumbnail in one cell and have the full image show up in another cell. Websites do it all the time. I went through all the Table of Contents and Indexes in my Dreamweaver books, searched online through all the forums, and even printed the source code from sites that did this. Everything pointed to javascript which was then imported into Dreamweaver. I know a little about javascript but not enough; I found a javascript class that taught this exact bit of programming in the 3rd lesson, just $250! My HTML instructor confirmed that I could do what I wanted directly in Dreamweaver using remote targets but she wouldn’t tell me how until the end of a $600 course 6 weeks in the future. I needed to know now. Back to the bookstore….I found Dreamweaver The Missing Manuel; it is set up a bit different from the other books I have and I found it right away. Dreamweaver has a ‘behavior’ called Swap Images! Now that I know what it’s called, I can find it in most of my books and I can’t even remember the search terms I was using before.

Yesterday I began working on the website for a conference next summer in Washington State. I have been trying to get people that live out there to send me photographs to use in the website. Nothing. I’ve searched websites about the area and not found what I wanted and I had tried a few stock photo sites that were supposed to have free images, never found free… Yesterday I went back to a Google image search and found many good images and stumbled on Fotolia, a stock agency that sells use of online images for .75 an  image. I found plenty of images that I can use and they let you download low resolution images to try different layouts. For less than $10, I’ll have what I need. Now I just wait anxiously for the go ahead from the committee….

Building websites and learning the programming is addictive. I haven’t worked on my art all month, next month I’ll need to work on balancing the 2.

Today I need to clean off my desk and start working on a map for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation annual fundraising walk. Another new experience, another portfolio piece, and hopefully a bit of good networking!

Starting to network

I am just beginning to learn how to get involved in the art world. I’ve always been on the outside looking in so to speak. At Meredith College I was an audit student through the continuing education program. It was wonderful, I learned a lot, and was successful in my studies. I even got Best of Show one year in the student show but since I wasn’t a regular tuition paying student, I felt like a fraud. It’s irrational but that’s the way I felt. I would tell people that I was studying art but never call myself an artist. When I got into NC State’s College of Design’s master’s program, I felt validated! The feeling was short lived when I was thrown in with undergraduates for all of my studios (I was the only graduate student in Art & Design!) I was criticized for having great technique and not attempting new things due to the risk of failure. What I couldn’t get across to my instructors was the fact that most of what they were asking me to do sounded foreign and I lived with the fear of failure therefore I worked much harder! I tried many new mediums; I attribute my success with them to my solid foundation from Meredith and my perseverance!  NC State’s instructors main method of instruction was intimidation and when I refused to bow to that, I was shunned by them. I got along great with my fellow students, they encouraged each other and included me; if it weren’t for them, I’d never have made it through the studios!

When I got out of school, I didn’t know how to start plying my trade so I played it safe and continued to work as a tax accountant. I could work hard at my art and stick my neck out with my illustrations; failure was disappointing but not a big deal and since success for an artist is achieved through good marketing, my acceptance (even expectance) of failure held me back.

Enough about how wimpy I am! Two years ago I moved into a studio with three other women. It was so much easier for me to relax and show my work that I actually started feeling like an artist! Two of the women were replaced by my new friend Lee and the dynamics changed! Lee, Julie and I are as different as night and day on the surface but so similar on a basic level that we play off each other in a way that creates a lot of energy! My art has evolved, I have found my medium at last, and I actually enjoy talking to people about my work. Lee knows how to get involved and I am learning from her.

My first foray into networking was to apply for membership in Local Color Gallery co-op. Local Color is a group of women that work together to promote each other. I learned a lot the first year, I mostly listened. Then I volunteered to take over the website! Now I’m an integral part of the group. Next I joined the Visual Art Exchange (VAE). As usual, I was slow to become involved. Lee and I took a class through them entitled Living Your Art; I learned a lot about myself and how I’ve changed over the last decade. I gained courage and confidence as we shared our inner fears and frustrations, I didn’t feel like a weirdo. It was during this class that Lee and I decided to follow our dreams, to just do it! She wants to quit teaching in the public schools and I want to create websites. We have joined efforts and I think that by next spring when she quits teaching, we will be fully launched as web designers! Networking will be extremely important to building a client base.

Our motivation to form a business is helping to define who I am. Last year I decided to get the tenants of building that our studio is in to organize and work together to fix up the building and promote ourselves. It was mostly a failure; we did get the downstairs hallway and entrance painted but that was it. After the VAE class, Lee and I decided that it was time to try again. This time was the charm! The group that we have formed is very enthusiastic and willing to work on projects to get things done. I am the facilitator, I send the emails and delegate the work to keep people involved. It’s very rewarding to see what we’ve accomplished is a short period of time and to have gained everyone’s respect. A year ago, I couldn’t have handled it.

I volunteered to represent our group in the local merchant’s association which is full of very interesting people. Hopefully this will introduce me to a lot of new people, I already signed up to serve on 2 committees. And I applied for an open position on the Board of Directors of the VAE as treasurer…..and I got it! I know that this will introduce me to a lot of people that will be good for my personal endeavors.

In only a few short months, I’ve gone from being a wall flower to being a full fledged participant and sometimes leader. These are big steps for me. It’s scary! This journal is both my means of documenting the journey and a record of personal growth. Journaling has always been an important tool for figuring out life and I hope that this one will be helpful to others that are starting the journey to becoming successful artists (or in any endeavor!).

What is success?

I’ve struggled with this question for years. I studied to be an illustrator, focusing on children’s book illustration at a time when picture book publication was decreasing drastically. I would still like to have my work published but that is no longer my main criteria for success. For me, success will be telling people I am an artist without feeling like a fraud and being accepted into the artist community. Obviously, selling my work frequently would help with my self assessment; in this economy where art is a luxury item, that’s not likely to happen without some work in the marketing department.

I’ve taken the first step toward validation; I rented studio space and began participating in First Friday Art Walks here in Raleigh. I never settled into my first studio very well. I wanted a haven, a retreat to go to on a regular basis where there were other artists working and all I was responsible for would be my books. I had a lovely room with lots of windows and natural light (when the sun was out!). I moved in in October, the sun rarely shone and the studio was dark and cold (my eyeballs got cold!). The other artists had daytime jobs so I was there by myself except for the landlord’s wife. She’s a print  maker with an attitude that was surly at best. She wouldn’t let me decorate my studio the way I wanted to and made fun of my work. First Friday was the main focus of the building, turning the space into galleries instead of working studios. I felt a lot of pressure to produce new collections of work each month and didn’t have the time or energy to work on my books. Long story short, I got out of there! I wanted to give up but I felt that I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try again in a more positive atmosphere.

I have been in my new studio at the Carter Building for two years now. I share a two room studio with two other women. and it is wonderful. It took awhile for the fear of showing my work to subside but I enjoy First Friday now. I don’t work at the studio, I’ve found that I work best at home and that’s okay. My studio mates both paint there so it has a creative feel that I find nourishing. I’ve finally settled on a medium that I enjoy, hand coloring black and white photographs with colored pencil, so I am not bouncing around from one medium to the next. I still paint in watercolor and do pen and ink but I am happy to stay focused on colored pencil for now.

I have made it past another big hurdle; I am finally comfortable using the appellation ‘artist’ among family and friends. Yesterday I was taking a computer programming class and we had to introduce ourselves and tell what we did, it was the first time I have introduced myself as an artist! Proclaiming myself an artist around all those good artists out there still makes me very nervous……

I have found that the best way for me to grow personally is to journal. I have books full of my thoughts and frustrations, some whiney and some full of dreams. It makes sense to combine my writing with developing a web presence. I promise not to whine (at least not much). I know that keeping this journal will help me in my quest; I hope that those that stumble across this will in some way benefit too. Sharing the journey will be hard but nothing comes without hard work!

 

 

“Fear begins to melt away when you begin to take action on a goal you really want.”

                                                                                                             Robert Allen