Creative Cogitation

Just a quick note to say I am off to Italy for the Flo­rence Biennial.

This last week has been very busy wrap­ping up local busi­ness, Turkey Day, then tying up local loose ends and pick­ing up a few final items for the trip.  I pur­chased one of them hid­den cash belt things, a lug­gage strap for my hard case with the stretcher bars and brochures in it, an Ital­ian phrase book, a new pocket-sized dig­i­tal cam­era (my old one doesn’t even talk to a Vista com­puter), a tube to put my paint­ings in (Jerry’s Art-O-Rama had a 4-inch diam­e­ter expand­able one for sale a the local store) and a new carry on (my old carry on was pur­chased in 1996 and was exactly the right size for a carry on at the time; it is now too long by about 2 inches-they keep shrink­ing every­thing it seems).

As for the tube of paint­ings I called Delta and they said I could carry it on as my extra per­sonal items as it is likely short enough (at 25.5 inches) to fit in an over­head bin or stand up in a closet.  So I am check­ing stretch­ers and brochures case and car­ry­ing the major­ity of the other things I will need on the trip along with the can­vases.  I am really glad Delta said I could carry the can­vases as they are the whole rea­son I am going to Italy.  With­out them the trip is a waste.

I have pre­paid all bills I expect to come due while I am away and left DH all other impor­tant things I can think of so this is it.  DH thinks I over pre­pared for this trip, but that is in my nature I guess — why get sur­prised by things you can con­trol. Wish me bon voy­age and good for­tune and I will do the same for you.  I’ll be back to blog­ging in a few weeks unless I decide to get on at an inter­net cafe.

Do you have any last minute tips for travelers?

Yours in art,

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

I am largely over my funk from the last show, and I did another one last night.  Even though we had decent traf­fic, no one seemed to be buy­ing.  It is get­ting cooler at night around here.  I had a long-sleeve shirt on but I was walk­ing around with my hands in my pock­ets for sev­eral hours any­way.  Not that most folks would con­sider a balmy 50–60 F evening cold, but here in Phoenix AZ, which is located just this side of the blaz­ing fires of hell, we are used to the heat and it thins our blood down; when the tem­per­a­tures drop below body temp we start com­plain­ing.  Still it was a pretty nice evening, the vibe was good, we had a nice assort­ment of artists sell­ing wares, but like I said, no one was buy­ing.  This show is prob­a­bly my last for 2009 as I am going to Italy for 2 weeks for the Flo­rence Bien­nial, and after that I will have a week to get ready for Christ­mas and New Years.  I could do one more show, but it would require me to jump off the plane, catch a few Zs then pack up the van for a show the next day. I just don’t think I can do that.

As for the hor­ri­ble show last week, I will attend a meet­ing of the orga­niz­ers who were involved in that fiasco.  It’s not a bitch ses­sion, it’s a strat­egy ses­sion and I feel hon­ored that the orga­niz­ers actu­ally think I have some­thing to con­tribute to the ongo­ing dis­cus­sions.  I hope I can blog about it, but it is next Tues­day and I am get­ting into Holiday/trip pack­ing crunch time.

Any­way, the mar­ket must stink all the way around as I just watched a TV ad that I found hys­ter­i­cally funny.  It is right up there with my dark humor.

Santa goes god­fa­ther on his naughty list

James Pat­ter­son, crime nov­el­ist, whose char­ac­ters fea­ture the Women’s Mur­der Club and Alex Cross, came on the TV pro­mot­ing his new novel, I Alex Cross.  The mes­sage was short and sweet.  James Pat­ter­son holds up his lat­est novel and says, “Buy this book or I will have to kill Alex Cross.”  My spon­ta­neous guf­faw just about had hot tea com­ing out of my nose.  Although I pre­fer to read a book in print, I usu­ally do not buy hard­bound edi­tions; I patiently wait to buy paper­backs edi­tions. I am will­ing to hold out a good long time, I think I had to wait two years for paper­back edi­tion of the last Harry Pot­ter novel, but I did.  I do love the Alex Cross char­ac­ter, but I admit the threat of killing him of is not going to make me change my book buy­ing pat­tern.  So it is up to the hard­back buy­ing pub­lic to save Alex Cross’ life.  I wish him luck.

What are you doing to increase sales?  What do you think of James Patterson’s ploy?  Do you my God­fa­ther Santa car­toon?  Any other thoughts?

Carry on & yours in art,

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

I dunno, how do you react when some­one clearly has taken advan­tage of you and not deliv­ered on what they said they were going to do?  Recently I and other mem­bers of my group were courted by a cer­tain city to do a cer­tain show on a cer­tain day in a cer­tain loca­tion.  We were told the estab­lish­ment that we would be affil­i­ated with & located next to, would be run­ning a spe­cial for the event and that the city would be drop­ping vis­i­tors off right in front of this estab­lish­ment.  I juried in, signed on & paid a fee of $50 sev­eral months ago for a 10’x10’ booth & a one-shot 4-hour oppor­tu­nity to show & sell dur­ing this event.  The down­side is the loca­tion of this spot, which is up an alley and out of eye-shot of the main drag, but given a trol­ley stop, and sig­nage of  an estab­lish­ment run­ning drink spe­cials I fig­ured we should do OK.

In the mean­time the pro­moter of the event who got me involved has been pro­mot­ing, and I myself have done my own mar­ket­ing men­tion­ing the city and the estab­lish­ment, my par­tic­i­pa­tion in it, and that I would be there right next to the trol­ley stop.

Fast for­ward to the night of the show.  I get there after spend­ing sev­eral hours with my roadie (DH) load­ing up my van with art-du-jour, trin­kets, light­ing and all man­ner of other things one need to have to show and sell stuff at night.  It takes a cou­ple of hours.  We get there and it takes another cou­ple of hours to set up. I sell paint­ings, which mean walls, among other things-it is quite nice when done, but it does take time and is labor inten­sive.  When I am done, I decide it would be nice to stop over to the estab­lish­ment and take five, only the estab­lish­ment is hav­ing a pri­vate party which is to con­tinue halfway into the stated hours of the event.

I am feel­ing crabby after to hik­ing to pub­lic restrooms & a might bit parched as well but I fig­ure the trol­ley stop will make it all bet­ter.  You guessed it — there was a trol­ley stop — but it was about half a block away where debark­ing pas­sen­gers couldn’t really see us, not right in front of the estab­lish­ment as our group had been lead to believe. Any­body look­ing for us was going to have a hard time find­ing us if they had never been there before.

I remind you this loca­tion is up an alley and around a cor­ner so folks on the main drag don’t really know you are there with­out decent sig­nage.  Which brings me to the sig­nage: The sig­nage was a large sand­wich board placed dead-center & per­pen­dic­u­lar to the entrance of the alley, psy­cho­log­i­cally block­ing the entrance. It made no men­tion of our lit­tle group, and merely indi­cated that the estab­lish­ment was closed until 8 PM for “pri­vate party only;” from our stand­point it was basi­cally a “DO NOT ENTER” sign.

Need­less to say, traf­fic into our lit­tle cor­ner of this hap­pen­ing scene did not exist-despite music, lights and wares aching to be exam­ined and despite lots of pedes­trian traf­fic half a block away.   A friend of a fel­low ven­dor pur­chased a sin­gle greet­ing card from me; that was it the whole night.  I prob­a­bly had 10 vis­i­tors, obvi­ously brave and curi­ous soles who decided to explore & ignore the pri­vate party only sign.  We folded up our tents as 9 PM instead of 10 PM because there was no traf­fic and the estab­lish­ment in ques­tion closed soon after their pri­vate party let out.

So I paid $50 to be there, plus a sales tax license, plus 20+ man-hours (tear down and put away takes just as long as load and set-up), plus wear and tear on my van & equip­ment, to sell a greet­ing card for $2.88 to some­one else’s roadie. That card cost me about $1.40 and for which the city and state are going to take their $0.24 bite, plus 2-$0.44-cent stamps to mail in the sales tax form report­ing this glo­ri­ous sale; my net on the card is about $0.30. Basi­cally I paid $50 for the oppor­tu­nity prac­tice set­ting up a show and to sit there in the dark for 4 hours. Those sit­ting there with me at this non-event were equally dis­en­chanted; the pro­moter was also in our num­ber, and hav­ing a hard time look­ing us in the eyes.

The day after the event, the pro­moter offered us a free show in the same loca­tion.  Yeah.  Right.  OK, the pro­moter is look­ing for another place for us to put down our stakes, but at the moment…  I have avoided men­tion­ing which city, which event and which pro­moter as I hope sooner or later some­one will make this right, but who knows what will happen-I am not look­ing for any addi­tional trou­ble, just vent­ing.  $50 is a lot of money when you are flat broke.  It could be worse I know, but in the lan­guage of the wild west “I feel road hard and put away wet.” Already fig­ur­ing I shouldn’t throw good time and money after bad.  But I don’t know what I could have done that would have made this turn out dif­fer­ent and feel pretty stu­pid about it.

I guess the worst part is I don’t under­stand why.  Why would the city ask us to do this thing in the first place?  Why would the estab­lish­ment just bail on us like that? What did they get out of our art-show fire-drill? I know the pro­moter didn’t see this com­ing ’cause I sure didn’t and beside the pro­moter was right there rot­ting with us.

What do you all think?

Yours in art,

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

I started ask­ing about what do I do if I need to make a phone call while I am in Italy.

My travel agent sug­gested I con­tact my cel­lu­lar ser­vice provider, so I did.  My cur­rent cell phone is not GSM com­pat­i­ble.  I am not due to renew my plan for another 6 months or so, so the idea of renew­ing that early for 2 years, just to get a GSM com­pat­i­ble phone is not super attrac­tive.  I had decided the next go round I would get a phone that would be friendly for text mes­sag­ing; hit­ting a num­ber but­ton 3 times to pull up a let­ter is annoy­ing.  But in order to get a GSM phone with those abil­i­ties I would have to sign up for more than my cur­rent plan, I’d have to add email-it might not be a bad thing, but I have mul­ti­ple phones shar­ing min­utes and I am not sure how that plays out under the new plan.  The least expen­sive plan I saw was $99 a month which is $40 per month more than I am cur­rently pay­ing for my base plan and I don’t know how much more the other phones are going to run or even if it is pos­si­ble to have them share min­utes under the new sce­nario. This cost is in addi­tion to the $149 to $179 cost of the upgraded phone.  On top of that their roam­ing charge is $1.99 per minute in Italy.  All in all this looks to be a very pricey way to go, but as I said I have been think­ing about upgrad­ing my ser­vice any­way, just not quite so soon.  At a min­i­mum I will pay an extra $240 over the next sev­eral months that I would not have oth­er­wise paid and their roam­ing per minute fees are just about dou­ble the alternative.

The Alter­na­tive: A friend who lives in Italy sug­gested I pick up an inex­pen­sive unlocked GSM phone and get a charge­able SIM card for it.  My first foray into this idea found a ser­vice that offers a phone loaded with 30 min­utes for $179.  Alter­na­tively they sell the SIM card alone loaded with 30 min­utes for $59. This com­pany also rents cell phones, but I have heard there are expen­sive insur­ance con­tracts on rented cells so it is prob­a­bly just as cost effec­tive to buy one.  I can get an inter­na­tional call­ing card with non-expiring min­utes for my hus­band that will run $25. If he were to call me on this GSM phone my incom­ing call would be free and about 28 cents a minute to my hus­band on the call­ing card.  My out­bound calls would be about 99 cents a minute and free to him, which is half of the cost of my cur­rent cell ser­vice provider.  The GSM phone pur­chased this way does not require a plan or incur a future oblig­a­tion to me.  My cur­rent cel­lu­lar ser­vice does not sell unlocked phones so there is no way for me to upgrade my phone and use the recharge­able SIM with it.

Does any­one else have any ideas?

Yours in Art,

-Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Its like a super­nova some­times.  After I wrote my last bitchy blog, I sat down and did what I said what I was going to do.  I cre­ated and cre­ated and cre­ated for 4 solid days, from the moment I woke until exhaus­tion drove me to rest.

It was my annual foray into the silly sea­son, Xmas Demen­tia.  Nor­mally I wait until Turkey Day to do this par­tic­u­lar exer­cise, but given the trip to Flo­rence I need to get things done a lot sooner and so I did.  This sea­son I have done 14 new car­toons.  Its a record for me.  Very sel­dom do so many of my 20 or so ideas make it that far-usually its 1 or 2.  If I were to go back and look at my notes, I might find that sev­eral of these ideas have been “devel­op­ing”; I don’t know for sure as I hardly ever go back and look at things that I “kicked in the corner.”

I will be post­ing the new fun­nies in XmasDementia.com once my Xmas let­ter goes out.   I have enough for an entire gallery page in one shot.  It just feels good.

And now for a lit­tle taste of what is to come…

Santa Jaws — Xmas Demen­tia Car­toon by Jake Beckman

Yours in Art,

-Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.