It’s taken me years to get over the idea that real artists don’t make money. It’s another aspect of the “real” artist myth. Yes, it used to be very difficult to make a living from making and selling your art but that was mostly because the options were limited to pretty much one thing - galleries. Don’t get me wrong, I like galleries. In college, I helped run the student gallery and served on the board of the main campus gallery. But, this was all before the internet was accessible at all times through our phones. The internet has opened up all sorts of avenues to sell your art directly to your ideal buyer.

For my residency, selling my art is not the sole focus but it is something I’m using to measure my progress. Over the past year I’ve sifted through a LOT of content about the art making world. I’ve read Danielle Krysa’s “Your Inner Critic is a Jerk” (which led me to her blog “The Jealous Curator”), Lisa Joy’s “Art, Inc”, Grace Bonney’s “In The Company of Women”, Cory Huffs’ “How To Sell Your Art Online”. These creators made me feel like it was finally okay to say that “Yes, I want to make art for the sake of it….but I would also like to make money from it.”

If you haven’t read the older posts, I have one day off a week from my full time job to pursue my art career. What I may not have mentioned before is that my pay scale was not adjusted. I am bringing home less money and I was the main breadwinner prior to this shift. Since it’s only been a few weeks, we’re not really noticing any big changes…yet. I DID sell a painting at the Jay and Mona King Art Show in Erie earlier this month but I know that I spent more on framing, supplies, and entry fees as that was only one of four pieces I exhibited that month.

Which leads me into Day Three of my Residency. I had always planned to build a website to document this Residency and have a central place to display my work. I had actually purchased the domain ashleyrcloud.com through WordPress back in January. So you can imagine my frustration when I went to build the website and found the functionality I wanted was locked behind the Business plan - which would have cost me an additional $200. I toughed it out and built the page but I was not happy with it. I actually didn’t even TELL anyone about it because I didn’t like it.

I was browsing other artist websites that I liked, trying to figure out how I could make my page look the way I wanted, and noticed that a lot of people were using Format.com. Holy shit. I love Format. It had all the functionality I wanted without needing to have extensive HTML or CSS knowledge. Using the free trial, I built a website in less than half the time it took on WordPress. But, I was still stuck. How did I get my domain over to Format? After what seemed like several hours but was probably just one, I started the transfer. Again, thanks to Format for providing an easy to follow tutorial video. The only hiccup was that I’d have to wait five days or more for the transfer to complete.

WordPress Home Page  vs. Format Home Page

It took all of Day Three to work through this technical nightmare but it was something that had to be done. Creative people aren’t kidding when they tell you how much time they spend on administrative tasks, you really have to hustle. This time next week, I’ll have a beautiful, functioning website where people can actually view and purchase my work. This feels like such a big step forward and even though it left me with no time to create art that day, I know it was worth it.