Just one week left until school is over for good! I'm glad to finally be done with most of my work. I finished all my liberal arts work today and it's the best to be done. Now I just need to deal with installing my big lint piece for the senior show on May 1st. Also I have to write a page for Bradley but that'll take 30 minutes tops.
The only reason I'm feeling anxious is because I can't get into the space we're having our show and start working. I have to wait. I only have to wait until tomorrow afternoon but I had to wait all weekend is the point. It's kind of nice to be forced to slow down and relax because there's nothing to be done about it. I just need to keep making lint all week and steadily install my piece so that I'm ready to go by Friday for my final crit. At first my crit was going to be on Tuesday! Luckily it was moved back because some things got messed up and moved around. Yay for me!
I have this nagging feeling like I have something more to do, but I think that's because for the last month I've been crazy busy and my brain hasn't caught up with the notion that there ISN'T anything left to do. So catch up with reality brain! I need to get some sleep.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
SCHOOL IS A KILLER
AAAAAHHH!!! I have 3 weeks of college left and I'm excite but also freaking out because I have all this obnoxious work to do and only a little bit of it is actually FOR my major. All the other work is for stupid liberal arts classes where the teachers don't seem to understand that no one cares. Granted I would probably enjoy these two classes if they weren't at 8:30AM, but they ARE. So it doesn't really matter what they're about. I knew I wasn't going to learn a thing from them when I signed up, but they were the only classes that met the requirements and fit into my schedule. Ringling is retarded like that.
In a lot of ways I wish I had gone to a bigger school. Not a university, but a bigger school with more reverence for Fine Arts and their contribution to world culture. I wish I had gone to a school with enough enrolment to warrant a few different sections of each class. Most of the classes I'm taking are only one section, so that means you can either fit that one section into your schedule or you can't. If that one section doesn't work for you then you don't get to take that class. A lot of the interesting classes, like Dangerous Ideas and Ethics for Artists are held during my classes for my major. All in all Ringling College of Art and Design is never inflexible when it comes to scheduling. All classes (accept one or two of the freshmen level English classes) are 2 hours 45 minutes long, most of them are one section (I don't remember the last time there was more than one section to chose from), and most of the one section classes seem to only be held at 8:30 in the morning! I have no idea who decided this was a good idea, but I would like to personally punch them in the nose.
This Week in Resin:
In other news, I've been pouring more resin stuff! I've started on a whole bunch of littler hearts that will have stickers and insults embedded. I think the right price for them is $10-12, maybe $13-14 if they have a whole bunch of sweetness in them. I've been doing my Etsy research and I have to say I'm really disappointed in a lot of the other sellers of resin cuteness. They price their pieces WAY too high. They do this because epoxy and polyester resin are pretty mysterious and unknown. People just don't know that liquid plastic exists and they certainly don't know how much it actually costs. Let me demystify this for EVERYONE. 8 oz of resin at Michael's costs $11. That's it. I've found a gallon kit for epoxy resin for $50 online. There is NO REASON for a necklace that has maybe 60¢ worth of stickers, 50-60¢ worth of glitter and $1.30 worth of resin to cost $22 just because it's in a cute heart shape. That's ridiculous to me.
The only reason resin jewelry is expensive is because of the time that goes into making it. While creating each piece doesn't take THAT long, there's a lot of waiting that has to be done. Making a heart pendant that's just solid glitter takes at least a day and a half, maybe more. First the resin must be mixed then poured. You let that gel, and that can take all day or all night if you poured later in the day. Then you have add the eye-pin to the back of glitter resin and pour a layer of clear resin to hold the pin in place. That has to cure for several hours (depending on the temperature wherever you're pouring.) Once that's done you can pop the piece out of the mold, trim the excess off the edges and hang it from a chain. While you're doing all of this you can't really make more pieces because all your mold cavities are filled with half finished and curing pieces. That's the ONLY reason resin is expensive.
It upsets me a little to see all of these high priced resin pieces on Etsy and the Internet in general. I can really understand someone not wanting to pay $20 for a plastic pendant. I can even understand someone not wanting to spend $18 on my pieces. I started them all at $18 because I wanted to be competitive but still look serious. If i price everything at $12 I thought people might worry that there was something wrong with me or the pieces. If nothing else sells at that price I'll think seriously about bringing it down. I want to have jewelry in everyone's price range. I think anybody who likes what I'm doing is a potential customer and shouldn't I want to please them? Shouldn't I want them to feel like they're not throwing their money away?
The more I learn about resin casting the more I think most people's prices are pretty outrageous.
Anyway I'm going to be posting some more pictures to my DeviantART and I'm going to be posting a new listing to my Etsy Store sometime tonight (if I can get some homework done before it's time for yoga class that is!)
Wish me luck getting everything done!
In a lot of ways I wish I had gone to a bigger school. Not a university, but a bigger school with more reverence for Fine Arts and their contribution to world culture. I wish I had gone to a school with enough enrolment to warrant a few different sections of each class. Most of the classes I'm taking are only one section, so that means you can either fit that one section into your schedule or you can't. If that one section doesn't work for you then you don't get to take that class. A lot of the interesting classes, like Dangerous Ideas and Ethics for Artists are held during my classes for my major. All in all Ringling College of Art and Design is never inflexible when it comes to scheduling. All classes (accept one or two of the freshmen level English classes) are 2 hours 45 minutes long, most of them are one section (I don't remember the last time there was more than one section to chose from), and most of the one section classes seem to only be held at 8:30 in the morning! I have no idea who decided this was a good idea, but I would like to personally punch them in the nose.
This Week in Resin:
In other news, I've been pouring more resin stuff! I've started on a whole bunch of littler hearts that will have stickers and insults embedded. I think the right price for them is $10-12, maybe $13-14 if they have a whole bunch of sweetness in them. I've been doing my Etsy research and I have to say I'm really disappointed in a lot of the other sellers of resin cuteness. They price their pieces WAY too high. They do this because epoxy and polyester resin are pretty mysterious and unknown. People just don't know that liquid plastic exists and they certainly don't know how much it actually costs. Let me demystify this for EVERYONE. 8 oz of resin at Michael's costs $11. That's it. I've found a gallon kit for epoxy resin for $50 online. There is NO REASON for a necklace that has maybe 60¢ worth of stickers, 50-60¢ worth of glitter and $1.30 worth of resin to cost $22 just because it's in a cute heart shape. That's ridiculous to me.
The only reason resin jewelry is expensive is because of the time that goes into making it. While creating each piece doesn't take THAT long, there's a lot of waiting that has to be done. Making a heart pendant that's just solid glitter takes at least a day and a half, maybe more. First the resin must be mixed then poured. You let that gel, and that can take all day or all night if you poured later in the day. Then you have add the eye-pin to the back of glitter resin and pour a layer of clear resin to hold the pin in place. That has to cure for several hours (depending on the temperature wherever you're pouring.) Once that's done you can pop the piece out of the mold, trim the excess off the edges and hang it from a chain. While you're doing all of this you can't really make more pieces because all your mold cavities are filled with half finished and curing pieces. That's the ONLY reason resin is expensive.
It upsets me a little to see all of these high priced resin pieces on Etsy and the Internet in general. I can really understand someone not wanting to pay $20 for a plastic pendant. I can even understand someone not wanting to spend $18 on my pieces. I started them all at $18 because I wanted to be competitive but still look serious. If i price everything at $12 I thought people might worry that there was something wrong with me or the pieces. If nothing else sells at that price I'll think seriously about bringing it down. I want to have jewelry in everyone's price range. I think anybody who likes what I'm doing is a potential customer and shouldn't I want to please them? Shouldn't I want them to feel like they're not throwing their money away?
The more I learn about resin casting the more I think most people's prices are pretty outrageous.
Anyway I'm going to be posting some more pictures to my DeviantART and I'm going to be posting a new listing to my Etsy Store sometime tonight (if I can get some homework done before it's time for yoga class that is!)
Wish me luck getting everything done!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
UP AND RUNNING
These last few weeks have been spent putting together my Etsy Shop. I've been uploading photos of the jewelry to DeviantART too! I'm really excited to get off the ground with all this stuff! Money is nice, but mostly I just want to know that people out there, somewhere, are wearing things I made. I squee every time one of my friends wears their necklace, or whenever someone stops me on campus to talk resin. It's really awesome. It gives people an opening to talk to me (apparently I'm a little intimidating... maybe because I'm the tallest woman in the world?) and it gives me something to talk about endlessly so there's no awkward pauses and all that stuff.
That's right, this creator of cutesy, glittery goodies is actually pretty shy and awkward in social situations. I've been doing a lot to get over my social fears but many of them are still lingering. Doing all this resin stuff has really opened me up though! I know that if I have to keep interacting with strangers on a customer/seller basis my social skills will improve! I'm already much more comfortable talking to Etsy people, and I've only done it a few times.
RANT TIME!
Another thing has been bothering me and that's how closed the internet art community is. No one wants to share their secrets, everyone is so worried about who's copying them. Everyone seems to think that they did it FIRST and anyone who does anything similar after them is therefore a copycat, or just an asshole. Sure, tracing someone's art and calling it your own isn't such a good idea, but does that mean nothing is learned from it? Why can't we learn from each other? Why can't we share our secrets with everyone in the hopes that new and better ways of crafting and creating will be invented? Nothing ever changed by hoarding knowledge!
I know a lot of this attitude comes from this: "I learned on my own so everyone else should have to learn on their own too! No one taught ME how to do this so why should I help anyone else out? What if they do it better and they steal ALL my customers/fans/friends/spaceships/etc...?"
We need to get over this kind of thinking! In Fine Arts one of the biggest topics is that nothing is new under the sun. The only way to be original is to do things from your perspective. No two people see things exactly the same, and sometimes you learn the most by taking an idea and changing it, making it better, expanding on it. It's about the evolution of ideas. How can ideas evolve if we don't talk about them? How will techniques improve if we don't discuss them? If no one knows how to do something then no one will be able to come up with new and innovative ideas.
I guess what I'm trying to encourage here is a more open market, a more open attitude, and more open communication between artisans and artists on the web. And not to sound preachy, or like I know everything, but the contemporary art world that artists like Tracey Emin, Mike Kelley, Annette Messager, David Altmejd (and other people you would see in prestigious galleries and curated museum shows) don't hoard ideas. They don't gaurd their art making processies like Cerberus guards the gates of Hell. They speak openly about how they work and think because that's what art IS! It's the process, it's the materials, it's the IDEA!
Also, those secrets you guard so jealously aren't really secrets. There are so many people in this world that eventually someone, or multiple someones, are going to invent the exact technique you invented without ever even knowing who you are or that you "thought of it first". It just doesn't work that way and it's silly to think that any idea is ever completely yours.
I am not advocating copying someone else's design verbatim. I'm not advocating tracing as anything but a learning tool. Creativity DOES exist, you can be creative and unique, but there are going to be people just as creative and unique as you. Just be yourself and you'll be golden. No one can ever be JUST like you. So don't be afraid to share! If someone rips you off, so what?! If someone does something similar to you, don't think that they're copying, be amazed at how intricate this world is and how we're all connected in some way. Be fascinated! Not angry or upset! Be happy!
Share! <3
Rant is over :D
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