Creative Cogitation

In 2010 I par­tic­i­pated in the first #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit.  It was a char­ity event set up by David San­dum and oth­ers to ben­e­fit a library in Moss Nor­way.  The funds raised from that exhibit pur­chased 221 new chil­drens books.  David San­dum got over 260 twit­ter artists from 24 dif­fer­ent coun­tries to participate.

Well David is at it again.  This year the #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit will help fund The Women’s Cri­sis Cen­ter in Moss, where abused women and chil­dren can get help. The cen­ter also pro­vides a 24 hour phone-service, coun­sel­ing, food and shel­ter etc.

And of course David came back to the artists who help him before. I thought, “Okay, I can do that again,” but I didn’t actu­ally read his instruc­tions first.  Appar­ently David learned some things from his first event and made some changes to the for­mat. Mean­while I hap­pily crank out Heart of a woman.

heart of a woman, by Jake Beck­man. 8.5 inch x 5.5 inch acrylic paint­ing on water­color paper fea­tur­ing a goddess/woman and a glow­ing fly­ing canary

So after I fin­ished paint­ing my lovely “heart of a woman” I went to the sec­ond #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit web­site to find the mail­ing address, and as luck would have it, I found out David had imposed size lim­its on this year’s sub­mis­sion.  She was nearly twice the size she should have been.  Of course I did ask for a rul­ing from the coor­di­na­tor and he said he really needed the post card sized limit.

(sigh) my bad.  Later on David changed his mind, but then of course “cher­ish” was nearly complete.

So “heart of a woman” is for sale …make me an offer. Ship­ping should be quite rea­son­able as she fits in a cat­a­log sized enve­lope.  She is made from qual­ity pro­fes­sional artist mate­ri­als: 140 cold press water color paper, coated with gesso on both sides, painted in Golden pro­fes­sional grade acrylic paints and var­nished with Liq­ui­tex matte var­nish.  The sub­ject mat­ter was drawn from the char­ity that she was sup­posed to ben­e­fit, but also link­ing to my binary birds social media inspired series.  The col­ors are vivid.  She already as a FAR tag 17563 attached to the back.  The cap­tion with title, copy­right & con­tact infor­ma­tion over­lay­ing the image shown here is merely a water­mark made with Pho­to­Shop; it is NOT part of the actual painting.

As for what is wing­ing its way to Moss Nor­way now?

cher­ish, acrylic paint­ing by Jake Beck­man. 4x6 inches. Image of a child hold­ing a canary in the palm of her hand

I intro­duce “cher­ish.” As much peo­ple liked my “heart of a woman” this paint­ing has also been well received.  I still drew upon the ben­e­fi­ciary of this exhibit for inspi­ra­tion, while main­tain­ing my link to social media & twit­ter via the binary birds con­nec­tion.  I think my child came out equally well. 

Yours in Art

Jake, Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Novem­ber 7, 2011 UPDATE: My Trees For Life Paint­ing did sell at this event along with many oth­ers.  The last tally I read said they had made more than 5,000 pounds for their char­ity.  Not bad. Not bad at all.

I gen­er­ally do not con­tribute paint­ings to black-tie char­i­ta­ble events. There are a num­ber of rea­sons why, but mostly it is because I do not feel char­i­ties in gen­eral play win-win with the artists who donate to their event. The artist gets noth­ing for their dona­tion of time, money, effort except a warm fuzzy and that is a lot to ask when a char­ity is ask­ing for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of an artist’s poten­tial gross income.  (more…)

I have been insanely busy this year already.

First I would like to give a shout out to Two orga­ni­za­tions who have fea­tured me in the last month. Most recently I am the Fea­tured Artist at Artsyshark.com. Also ArtofDay.com included me in 18 Great Paint­ings, Illus­tra­tions, Draw­ings, Sculp­tures & Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy. Both fea­tured works from the Binary-Birds series, which is Art that proudly pro­claims your are a mem­ber of the Social Media Tribe. They are some­what geek-y, nerd-y, usu­ally humor­ous obser­va­tions of Social Media & other forms of elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Thanks to both of these web­sites for includ­ing me in their venues. 

Retweet by Jake Beck­man. An orange canary sings to four other yel­low ones who seem to be lis­ten­ing. The binary in the back­ground reads “Retweet.”

Right away I did a 4-day artshow in the 5th Ave shops dis­trict in Scotts­dale, AZ.  It was lovely weather to be out­side inter­act­ing with the pub­lic.  That was fol­lowed by Art­bridge Thurs­days, which is an event I reg­u­larly par­tic­i­pate in. This week I am tak­ing a week off because I am attend­ing in the SmArtist Tele­sum­mit. I find myself being ener­gized with lots of ideas about how to mar­ket my art bet­ter.  I am cur­rently lis­ten­ing to the ses­sion on Cor­po­rate Art Con­sul­tants while writ­ing this blog.  The same thing hap­pened last year, but I found it hard to sus­tain the emo­tion.  I am learn­ing some new stuff at the 2011 ses­sions, but I am reminded of all the balls I let roll away last year that I must pick up again.  I need to move my newlet­ter to mail chimp, I need to work on this blog a lot more often, I need to keep pro­duc­ing art while work­ing on my mar­ket­ing & sales.  It feels overwhelming. 

Still I guess I should enjoy my lit­tle vic­to­ries too.  I did get more adept as social media in 2010-I am dejakester on Twit­ter & Face­book and I have an art fan­page on Face­book too.  Binary-Birds came to light in 2010.  I did res­ur­rect my newslet­ter & blog in 2010.  I did have my NYC artshow in 2010.  I met all kinds of won­der­ful online Tweet­ies in 2010, includ­ing David San­dum who got me inter­ested in #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit, which is hap­pen­ing in Moss Nor­way through the end of January. All good things I can build on. It looks like 2011 is off to a roar­ing start! Hope­fully I can sus­tain the momen­tum. )

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

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.