Business of art class

I took a class last Saturday from Bob and Kate Burridge called mARTketing-the business of selling your art. It was from 10 to 4 with an hour for lunch. They had previously taught three days of art classes in the same place and were driving home after this class. Bob and Kate are a good team and both taught with Kate teaching most of the time. She is very organized, kept everything on task and watched the clock. They have a book about the class for $25 which is the text they used. There were a few newer handouts too. They teach this class at an art school near where they live and it is an eight to 10 week class so this time on Saturday was not an in depth class. But there is the book to refer to later.

Some of the topics I knew about from prior study and other things were new to me. So I think I'll cover the new to me stuff and tell about the things they didn't cover instead of giving a full report.

Bob does all the photography using an SLR camera with film in bright sun light. They had a couple of techniques that made this workable and rather than try to explain all of it without being able to draw a picture I'll just have to refer you to the book. He firmly believes judging should return to the use of slides. Mainly because of questions about how long digital media really lasts and because people can tweak the photos of their work using digital. I'm sure this is all true but I really hope we don't go back to slides!

They handed out a fairly long agenda at the start of the class. The topics they either didn't cover or didn't cover except for a brief mention were: How does a website help in marketing art? Donations of art work--what can be deducted from our taxes? What's the best way to frame artwork? 

Much of what they taught is exactly what they do in their art business and they had several good examples of what they use to make their business run well. They both have day timers with the same things entered in each one. Kate carries two or three 5X7 prints of Bob's work to show people when they ask what sort of work he does. She can also give them one of the prints to keep and of course it has all their contact information and details about the piece. 

It was generally a well run class and both presenters were prepared, funny and energetic. It's main benefit for me was being around artists and talking about art. I think some or most of the information was new to most of the audience.