Art Wortd Coop

Yetti, Man Eater and Argonauta By Eve Lynch

This is a random wall in my kitchen. The top 3 mosaics are by Eve Lynch and the bottom 3 robots are my own.  I purchased the little tiny Yetti from Eve's Etsy shop years ago, the Man Eater was a trade, and The Mermaid gal was a recent purchase. I love my new Mermaid gal and bought a frame for her so she may be relocating to a bigger wall space soon. Eve is such a talented artist, you can follow her blog at http://creativenonconformity.blogspot.com/.

This weekend I did not post any artist tips or resources so today I will offer up a word of advice for artists and that word is on-line "communities", ok maybe that is 2 words.   I know a lot of busy artists over the age of 40 that will never find any pleasure in making on-line artist friends or visiting on-line communities of any type. Some people just do not like the computer and I do have to respect that. Other people find that they like the box way too much and have to try to stay away from it so that it does not become a huge time grabber. Chances are if you are reading this post then you do spend some amount of time on-line.  

The thing to understand is that if you do make a few artist friends on-line with similar interests and similar taste there is a strong likely hood that eventually you will make a few sales to people you meet in on-line communities. That is of course not the sole reason or benefit from knowing people on-line, but it is a very nice perk, and I think it clearly shows that the computer is not a waste of time. 

Last week I posted about Andrea, who I met via the Flickr community and the pet portrait I did for her. It was such a real treat to meet her in person, she is such a bright positive happy gal. Next year there is a Mosaic convention in Austin and I am so eager to meet many of the mosaic people that I admire on Flickr. Later this year Dan and I are going to go to New York for a writers event and Philadelphia to see the mosaics of Isaiah Zagar, we are planning to meet one of Dan's cyber friends from his on-line writing community along the way.  So I guess my point is that your on-line worlds and off-line worlds can overlap. You can meet and discover fun people that you are eager to support and that will be eager to support you. I know it may seem as though I am singing to the choir, since blog readers are web users, but a lot of people reading this post will never come out of the shadows to post a comment here or anywhere else on-line.  Don't be shy! Start making friends on-line!

All over the place really. I love Flickr and have met both pet lovers and Mosaic people there. My husband enjoys the community Gather and there are some great writers over there.  I also visit the Contemporary Mosaic art Group over at ning. The entire ning network is a great place to start in looking for a group or community that may have similar interests to your own.  Facebook is of course a great place to find community and to connect with many different types of people you know all  in one place. Facebook's only fault is the size and weeding through posts about people's farmville games before you find some news that really interests you.

So ... in summary, if you are going to be on-line anyway ... then start connecting with people.