Potter

How to Sell Art in Ottawa and 2 Musicians I Like

1) Today I discovered the key to selling art in Ottawa. You may not like this, but this is a little sad reality I witnessed today at the Old Ottawa South Art in the Park.
So here it is: find a well-heeled white-haired woman with alcohol on her breath. She will spend. Believe me. She will spend. And she'll say things like, "My kids are going to kill me." I watched an artist navigate this situation very very carefully and ended up making a lot of money.

2) DM pointed out today that I like an anglo musician who writes very much like a francophone musician I also like. Both are pretty rough writers, and both have moments of fucking brilliance. The anglo musician is Dan Reeder, who has lines like this: "I don't really want to talk to you/But my business requires that I do." Who can't relate to that? He also has a song entitled "I drink beer", which I appreciate as a song title.

3) The francophone musician is Cayouche. He is ugly. He has a big ugly growth on his face, and apparently smells in person. But he is brilliant. My favourite song of his is -- my translation in English -- "You broke the chain on my tractor". Some other great lines in the song are (my translation):
You don't want to castrate the horses anymore
You don't look after the pig.
You say you want to go to Montreal.
Take your bags and get the fuck out of here.

You can watch Cayouche in action here.

Close-up

This is a close-up of the vinyl tiles used in the beach installation. This is a part of a photo series of the project taken by Coyote. My friend pointed out that the irony is the rock motif in the tiles themselves.

Impermanence and Change

Undeniable truths perhaps, but I still have trouble with impermanence and change. There is a control freak living inside of me.
As part of my art therapy this summer, I (with a friend) made this lovely little beach pathway out of washed up fragments of some kind of vinyl flooring. We carefully placed each piece to create (im)perfect Wabi-sabi beauty. Then, the tide came in and ruined it all.

Doing Art

One more tip for surviving the eternal winter: do art. Do any kind of art that works for you. If you feel you lack "talent", call yourself a "concept artist". Form an alternative band. Sew. Knit. Write. Dance. Paint. Flirt.

When things turn ugly in an art class

As I have mentioned a number of times, I love my art teacher. He is my dream teacher. He walks around saying brilliant things, and seems to say just the right thing at the right moment. Tonight, one of his comments to me was "The key here is to keep this thing kicky, while staying coherent." He also compared painting to writing and target practice.
While he is my dream teacher, it seems he is someone else's nightmare. One of the students in our class is a woman who hasn't seemed happy from the get-go. She was hoping for a technique class.

They got into it in our last class, and things turned ugly. She said, "You are trying to make me into an abstract painter." His response to this was, "Everything is abstract. Language is abstract. I'm not trying to make you into anything. I'm just trying to help you look at things." I thought that was a fine response. But, then things escalated quickly, and resulted in her saying something nasty about his ability as a teacher. The conversation continued to take a bad turn, and he ended up saying to her - "Maybe you should not paint." She said, "Maybe you should get a life." Then, she walked out. My dream teacher looked a bit sick and was clearly rattled. The rest of us were working quietly and intensely on our own paintings during all of this.

After class, I walked out with a fellow student who was concerned about the woman who stormed out. She said, "Painting is all she has. She's one of those traditional women who has just followed her husband around." I thought to myself, maybe this woman does need to expand her horizons a bit. You see, my teacher may have intuitively sensed that this woman needed to have a break from the painting. That is how fucking brilliant he is.

Why I love my art teacher - Part 3

I love my art teacher. Here are some great things he said this week:

There is fine line between the beautiful and the crude. They are closely intertwined.

Try this technique. And, if it doesn't work out on this painting, it might help the next time you're painting a window frame.

Your style reminds me of a lesser-known pop artist who did a lot of paintings of cakes and pies.

Why I love my art teacher - Part 2

My art teacher has boozey breath with coffee overtones. His latest bit of wisdom was the following:

It's difficult to find solutions if you are still searching for the questions. Stay with the questions. And if all else fails, just make a bold broad stroke in a bright colour and hope for the best.

Here is a sampling of some questions that came up for me today:
Is John Baird the missing link?
Why can't I remember to bring my lunch when it's sitting there all ready to go on the table?
Why do I like huge American cars when I'm supposed to hate them?
How could a person lose a completed passport application before sending it in to the passport office?
How do people have the energy to jog?
Do I have any clean socks for tomorrow?

Reasons why I love my art teacher....

1) He has boozey breath.
2) He tells me to push the paint around and see what happens.
3) He says supportive things like "I see transformation in this piece. Bring it back next week. We can work with this."
4) When I responded with, "Yes, I'm seeing some addition of red in this piece", he responded with a punch in my arm.
4) He encourages us to get out and look at a lot of art.
5) He hates Renoir.

Come up and look at my etchings....

For those of you who have wanted to use that line, I recommend checking out Julie's Maas' studio on Patrick Street in the Market. She has beautiful work in there, and is a lovely person to talk to. She and her partner, Bart, are former Americans and political activists. I went there today with a friend who saw a work that inspired her so much, she bought it immediately.