Technology And Small Business: Spur Gallery

When I last sat down for coffee with a certain friend of mine, my eyes locked on her beautiful new necklace. “That’s gorgeous! Where did you find it?” I asked, always intrigued with her unusual and delightful accessory finds.

“Etsy,” she said, and began to fill me in on the details of this great artist she found on the site, along with the other pieces that the jeweler had posted for sale online.

The advent of the artists’ online marketplace has occurred rapidly, as though overnight. Artists who, at one time, were struggling for a gallery presence are now following the stream of new artists embracing the DIY marketing mentality through online tools such as Etsy and Flickr. The days of laboring through endless costly photo shoots and waiting for slide processing have passed, replaced with the point-and-click ease of taking a digital photo of your artwork, uploading it to your website, and marketing it on a global level, all within a single afternoon.

I wanted to get some input on the effectiveness of this newest technology from a few artists themselves, so I got together with Norah Caldwell, owner of Spur Gallery, who is relatively new to online marketplaces, as well as one of her friends and partner within the Spur collective, Chris Milk, who has been utilizing online avenues for marketing his paintings to a global audience. We sat down over some craft beers at Tarrant’s, less than a block away from Spur (which is located at 321 Brook Rd), and they discussed their experiences and opinions of the latest in the online marketing arsenal available to artists.

Jaime Turko: Has your way of selling your artwork changed since the advent of online selling marketplaces, such as Etsy?

Norah Caldwell: Etsy has become huge—so many artists create an Etsy store to sell their work, and so many people shop online regularly now. I’ve had success mostly with my larger, higher-priced items selling on Etsy--not so much my smaller items. I’m currently building my online presence, which is new for me. I take a lot of photos of my work. I used to only carry around images of my work in a physical portfolio, and I still utilize that regularly. I do think that artists miss out on the impulse buy without the web presence—there’s a lot of people out there purchasing tons of stuff online.

Setting up an Etsy account is pretty easy. After registering a login name you'll be able to shop, set up a user profile, network and view seller options. There are great tutorials on the website on how to become a virtual success. There are also loads of benefits for Etsy sellers through the site—some example perks are free photo editing software and a discounted FedEx account. Diligence, I'd say, is the key for a successful online business. Frequently "renewing" and "tagging" your items also increases your daily product audience and sales probability.

Chris Milk: I’ve always found it interesting that Norah’s success with Etsy has been mainly [with] her higher priced items, where people will put down more money for something that they haven’t even held in their hand. I haven’t sold a lot on the web. The web works as a good middleman for me—people will seek my work out through the web, and then they will go to my website and contact me. I actually feel uncomfortable selling paintings directly online because I feel like people may get something that they didn’t expect to get. Seeing work online and in person is vastly different, even comparing a beautifully-photographed painting to seeing the same painting in person.

I tend to take details of paintings and post them on Flickr. It’s a good way for me to organize what I have. It’s easier than constantly updating a website—like an online portfolio. I can tell people what is available through the online channel, but I don’t list pricing, or have any direct selling setup online. The online presence is a way for people to contact me and see what I have for sale, and I’ve gotten several new galleries from using the online presence. I have a client in Italy that found me through Flickr, through linking [from] another Flickr contact. She bought a fairly large painting, and had it shipped to Italy--we’ve never even met. I have a website, but it’s tough to keep it constantly updated. People tend to come back and visit it again and again, and when it’s not changed, or updated, it can seem stagnant—websites constantly need to be updated.

JT: I think back to a time before the artists’ online marketplace, when some artists actually posted their work on eBay for auction, with very limited success. Do you think that more art lovers are utilizing Etsy to shop for art now that there is an online component specifically for artists to utilize to sell their work, even though Etsy hasn’t really been advertised widely in the media?

NC: Definitely. There are so many artists now that have set up their small Etsy shops. Some artists choose to only do their business through Etsy, but most have the Etsy shop on the side as one component of their marketing. It’s a way for them to curate a collection of their work, allow global access to their work, and to actively sell to new customers. There’s definitely a science to using the site. When you’re posting, you have to learn to tag your work so that it will come up in the search.

CM: I’m intimated by [Etsy]. I find it so huge and overwhelming. It’s similar to Flickr in that respect. The artists that have 10-20 tags are getting found. On Etsy you get known for your personality through your curation—customers can count on certain Etsy stores always having good work. Etsy seemed to build with such great popularity so quickly. Now it seems that every artist, every crafter, has an Etsy site. I wonder, from what I know--and I could be prejudiced being a painter as opposed to a jeweler, or craftsman--it seems that there’s a lot more painters on Flickr versus Etsy. Flickr’s groups are a science of exposure--like searching for tags like “giant bike” or “pink bird”--but groups are more specific, and broader. But the bottom line is how to find and maintain maximum exposure through tags and circles.

NC: Etsy has a lot of two-dimensional art as well, but it’s mainly prints or stickers. But the larger focus is on crafters of all types.

CM: I’m wondering if people find it easier to purchase craft online rather than paintings online due to paintings not transferring as well, due to the need of larger file resolution.

JT: Do you feel that your sources of your artistic inspiration have changed with the internet now being such a vast and available resource for ideas?

NC: I don’t really like to use the internet for inspiration. I feel like now with all of the crafting websites, artists sort of get stuck on making just one thing and then it just floods the market. I utilize other resources for inspiration, but I do sometimes use the web for quick tutorials. Oddly enough, I learned how to knit from an online tutorial.

CM: That seems crazy to me, to learn how to do something from a video online. Even something like learning how to knit from watching a You Tube video online is crazy. But I hear it more and more, this idea of doing, then hitting pause. I go back and forth with using Flickr to see new work. It’s nice to see what other painters are doing, and contact them. The more I’ve gone through it, I’ve found ways to sort of hopscotch around on the site and find cool artists that I like. It’s more inspiring in terms of seeing artists in other part of the world doing great stuff, seeing their collection of work, and learning from the online component how they’re doing it. I found that inspiring—that worldwide artists are making work, choosing what work to group together, and then posting that curation online. It’s inspiring to know that there’s comrades out there—that I can find people doing cool stuff everywhere, and knowing that they’re checking out my stuff too, and that we’re able to check each other’s work out.

Before I was a painter, we would just get in a group and take out our sketchbooks and show each other what we’re up to. That’s how I was inspired as a middle school kid who wanted to draw cool stuff, and that’s how we worked to out-do each other. That’s the same sort of feeling I get when I look online—I keep looking at other artists’ work. I make a comment on their work, they make a comment on mine, and that’s how we now compare sketchbooks. I keep working to be as bad-ass as I can…so I can impress some dude in Spain. And then we can say, “Hey, let’s do a show together.”

JT: Do you feel that the online portfolios and marketplaces give artists more liberation and freedom for online constructive criticism?

NC: It’s much more non-confrontational, and I find the way of giving criticism much more sculpting. There’s definitely a community in a place like Etsy. There’s a lot of artists looking at other artists work, and thinking about that curation, and commenting on it, and reaching out to explore other work through it. There’s a huge benefit in being in the circles—if someone is looking within the smaller communities within a site like Etsy, they’re going to be connected to you via that community and find your work. It’s exposure via association.

CM: With such a huge distance, you don’t feel that you’re in competition, because they could be in Germany somewhere. You’re not on the same paths, and you won’t be in the same galleries, but who knows?

JT: Do you feel like the days of needing an artist website are slowly being dissolved?

NC: Customers are becoming much more interested in who the artists are as people and what they have to say on their blogs, or in the comments of their work. The only thing artists are really concerned with about websites is the desire to own the official domain name. The other artists’ sites are nice because they can also act as a little punctuated flattery that keeps you going sometimes when you need to go back and look at your friends and what they’re doing and their feedback.

CM: Official websites are definitely phasing out. My next site will just be a Tumblr blog so that I can just use it, I don’t have to maintain it as much, and I can update it and keep it constantly fluid. I think we’re moving beyond the need for a formal website. They’re too static for today’s mindset. But right now I enjoy having all of the online components because they work together to give an artist a solid presence. They all fulfill different areas, and do slightly different things for an artist to develop an online presence.

JT: Within the Spur artist collective at your gallery, do you feel that the online marketing tools allow the artists to feel more at ease during their shows knowing that they are actively marketing? At the Spur openings, the artists seem much more confident with selling their work than what I see in the other galleries.

NC: It depends on the climate—the artists invite their customers and post on their online sites to announce the shows.

CM: Especially being a startup business, it’s not intimidating, and doesn’t have that feel that there’s only a certain way to do things. With Norah’s gallery, all of the artists have the freedom to work as a group when they’re hanging the show. I’m able to hang my own show, versus some galleries that hang the show. It’s a true collective. It feels like the people are part of the gallery. Being in there with 10 different artists that you don’t know to hang a show, you have to be friendly, and get to know each other really quickly.

NC: Spur Gallery is, [and] has been, a perpetually evolving space/idea/concept. Originally I planned to get myself a studio space, work in the back and have a few displays up front; nothing more than a personal show and tell area. As I was setting up, I talked about it a lot. Seeking opinions, advice or assistance, I don't know. Then, I incorporated my friends. They all have great work and since I have a storefront, why not? I'd allocate them a task or two and in return give space to show work. It just keeps evolving.

You definitely need to check out October’s show. It’s going to be great!
[Spur Gallery’s Featured Oct artist: Anthony Hall]

Norah Caldwell:
Spur Gallery on facebook
Cowgirl Electra Designs on Etsy
Cowgirl Electra Designs on facebook

Chris Milk:
Chris Milk on flickr