Wooden birdhouse, cotton rope, self-adhesive rhinestones, approx. 4 1/2” x 3 1/4” x 2 3/4”

We’ve been trying to buy a house for the last nine months, so I’ve had real estate on the brain.  This is one project I felt compelled to do after seeing wooden birdhouses in the 99 cents bin at Jo Ann Fabric.  I photographed it with a fake bird and one of Elvis’ manzanita perches.

I had been saving some stick-on rhinestones from my xmas stocking for just such … Read more »

If I want to transition into doing more editorial-prop-type work, I’m going to need to beef up my portfolio.  I’ve already done some work for book publishers like Chronicle and Scholastic, but most of it’s not very sophisticated, being geared mainly toward the kindergarten crowd.  My portfolio needs a lot more examples of the kinds of projects I’d like to get hired for.  It needs to demonstrate that I’m capable of handling more complex work of various scales, while appealing to the needs of marketing and art directors.

I’ve therefore begun an on-going … Read more »

How do you make a living off your art?  That, my friends, is the $50,000 question.  There are the standard models we all know about, but they’re all deeply flawed in the same way: in order to be successful, you need to spend most of your time on non-creative endeavors.

Take the typical gallery model, for example.  Unless you are sponsored by some incredibly well-connected patron, you need to go to graduate school, network like crazy, and then apply for shows, grants and residencies with the hope that you will secure one out of fifty.  All of this while maintaining some … Read more »