So, I left Winthrop, WA, this morning after a fantastic workshop yesterday. I’m always psyched when artists get together and talk about marketing their work. There’s so much sharing. So many ideas floating around! THIS is why I do what I do!
I headed back to the coast, but this time I took the route over the Northern Cascades.
WOW! How amazing! So, I’m talking with my husband tonight and he said, did you see Liberty Bell? Well, I don’t know if I saw it or not, but I took lots of pictures. As it turns out, he climbed Liberty Bell two years ago with a friend. It didn’t mean much to me at the time (except, of course, to congratulate him heartily) because I hadn’t been anywhere near the peak.
Guess what? I had snapped pictures of this fabulous peak (above) without even knowing Rob had been here before. Sometimes, you just have to experience something for yourself in order for it to be meaningful. I know there is a lesson here. Something like this: You can read a lot about marketing and self-promotions, but you really just need to test it out yourself in order to understand it.
I was also taken with Diablo Lake and the canoers (rowers, kayakers, scullers???) below. I love nature, but I always enjoy finding unexpected intrusions like this.
I hurried my way through the Cascades in order to reach LaConner this afternoon before the Museum of Northwest Art closed its doors. What a treat. A nice, small museum devoted entirely to the art of this region. I wish there were a lot more museums that would pay homage to their local artists.
I learned more about two artists I knew of: Morris Graves and Mark Tobey. And also got to know Guy Anderson and Kenneth Callahan.
I was going to stay in a different town, but changed my reservations as soon as I arrived. This town is too darling to leave.
1 thought on “Sometimes You Just Have to Experience It Firsthand”
The Liberty Bell Mountain story created in my mind such a moving analogy, that I had to share it with all of you. I, too, have climbed Liberty Bell in the North Cascades. It invariably happens that when you share information like this with someone not involved with rock climbing, that it gets completly lost on them. How can you blame them? The layman cannot possibly be expected to know that Lib. Bell is a technical rock climb, much less that “technical” means the use of ropes and figety little widgets that one places in cracks in the rock as one progresses. Highly exhilerating for the participant; confusing and may be even boring for the bystander. The same is true for the “art speak” that we artists inadvertantly use in our artist’s statements! How does one know that the arts professional, be he a gallery owner or museum curator, has the foggiest idea what your statement is trying to convey? In my own statement, the term “technical means”, may be fine shorthand for speaking to another artist. It has zero meaning, and maybe even off-putting, to an important art jurist or gallery representative. Worse yet, think of your poor, bewildered patron! Alyson taught me at the promotions workshop in Winthrop, that my statement isn’t a pesky detail required by jurys, but an important vehicle for explaining my art to important and critical people who will either display, promote or buy my work. Get it said properly in the statement, and that is the foundation for defining your work in words, verbally and otherwise. By the way, since I’m now a “shameless self-promoter”, as the workshop is entitled, I won’t hesistate to tell you that I am pictured in Alyson’s photo of the Winthrop worksop above. I’m the bearded fellow on the left side. And, if you write me, I’ll let you know why my friend’s sixty-foot “grounder” and near death on the face of Libert Bell, led me to attempt the same face the very next weekend!