干支 • Eto - Coming soon to the Art•Shop - Part 2 - The Journey
干支 • Eto
opening November 5th
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Bringing the original Art•Shop to life, with or without the 干支 • Eto series, has been a long, twisty ramble through a giant briar patch. Like, the kind of briar patch that surrounded the castle in Sleeping Beauty. Not even a patch at all, really. More of a briar field. Maybe a briar county. My point is, there have been a lot of thorns and any help extricating myself from them would be appreciated.
But first, a recap!
My 干支 • Eto collection is coming to the Art•Shop on November 5, 2021
Subscribers to my newsletter, A Pulse Afar get early access to see and purchase the art.
There’s still a little time left:
A brief outline:
the essential details (you read this part above)
Some interesting tidbits about the 干支 • Eto series (Part 1)
The expansive, sordid backstory behind this long-delayed yet oddly hurried event (Part 2 - this post)
and finally, assorted miscellany and some paths I’d like to explore in the future (Part 3)
I moved to Japan in 2007, and started to explore new worlds of art-making and of galleries.
Working with galleries is a time-honored, traditional business arrangement with a lot of positives. The artist makes the art, the gallery handles the business. Reality is a little more grey, but that’s the gist.
Since then, a couple (humongous) things have changed:
the internet
people’s relationship with the internet
the art world
my plans
Poking a stick at the Internet
After moving to Japan, I taught myself html and CSS and built my website myself. I had a lot of free time. It was a portfolio site, just displaying my work.
I can’t remember what year I sold my first piece of art directly to a collector. It was shortly after I moved to Japan. MySpace was the premiere social network. Online shopping was for the brave and foolhardy.
I’d get an occasional email asking about the availability and price of a piece of art, we’d chat for a bit like friends (some are actually still friends!), and we would come to an agreement. This went on for a few years.
All the while, my art was getting bigger, more complicated, and more time-consuming.
At the same time, the internet was evolving around us.
Javascript became a thing one needed to know. But I didn’t know it. Nor did I have the time or priorities to learn it. So, I switched my website from home-brewed to Squarespace. Moved from Myspace to Facebook. Ignored Instagram for far too long. Still haven’t really gotten into Twitter.
The Internet was becoming a more civilized place - or at least a glossier, easier-to-use one. It was also becoming much more populated.
People + the Net = Question Mark
When the internet first popped up, nobody quite knew what to do with it. And certainly, nobody trusted it. Then came Paypal, Amazon, and eBay. Suddenly, we were cautiously dribbling money into the ether and watching to see what would happen. Social Networks got easy enough for my mom to use. The iPhone accelerated the trust factor exponentially.
With trust, people’s expectations of websites began changing.
Coincidentally, the moment the internet began really taking off lined up with my pulling back from it a bit. Maybe the cleanliness of the new web was a little less exciting? Less of an adventure? Maybe I was just busy with other stuff. When my mom started talking about websites I’d never heard of, I knew I had to pay more attention.
The Digital Art World
Art and the art world has always been its own special little animal.
There had been a lot of attempts to get the art world online. Most of them lasted about a year. I don’t remember the names. I do remember days of futile effort offered up to false digital demigods.
Eventually, someone got it right (Maybe Saatchi?). And then everybody followed.
How This All Applies Here
Around the time MySpace was just starting to give way to Facebook, I decided to try an experiment. Rather than wait for art buyers to contact me, I opened up my first original art shop on my website. After all, I was already happily selling postcards and prints online.
It was a ghost town. Not a single sale.
Nobody was ready to buy art that way. It was too early and I was too tentative. I took it down and went to play in other online sandpits.
Which brings us to today. It is a very different world than it was only a couple years ago. People have very different expectations and needs. Online shopping has gotten so big that nobody even questions it anymore.
So here I am with my fingers crossed, ready to try again.
More than ready, actually excited.
I’m a little nervous. Mostly about the option to buy the art framed. The commerce system I’m using doesn’t allow for add-ons (like a frame). The only way to offer framed and unframed variations is to sell them as separate items - so it’s possible that two people could buy the same piece of art, unfortunately. In which case, the first person to purchase gets the art, and I’ll have to disappoint the second buyer.
Right now, I’d just like to say thanks for enjoying my art, whether you’re new to it or have been with me for years.
I hope the new Art•Shop makes it easier than ever to find artwork you love and want to make a part of your life. And if you prefer the more traditional way of buying art, well, that’s cool too. I always love to hear from you.
I’ve got ideas for the future which I have no clue how to realize yet. But that’s for Part 3.
