blog.edmarion.com . the blog of Ithaca artist & painter, Ed Marion

I need your help

So, Ithacans and those who just want to be Ithacans, I need your help.

Ithaca’s Community School of Music & Arts is hosting the CSMA Post-It® Art Show as part of the Arts for All Marathon from September 28^th to October 24th.

Here’s the idea. All of Ithaca is invited to make art on sticky notes (or more familiarly, Post-Its®). Folks bring (or mail) in the Post-It® art, CSMA displays the art on their gallery walls. Big opening/closing/purchasing night at CSMA on 10/23 when we sell these great miniature works of art for $5 per Post-It. Undercurrent: everyone (ages 1 to 92) is an artist and everyone can collect art, especially at $5 a throw.

On 10/23, crowds of people will jockey before thousands of works of art to be the first buyer of the next big (ok, small) thing. Basically, organized mayhem. Prior viewing hours & days will get people into the CSMA gallery to stake their claims, and, at the appointed hour, we need tight organization on sales.

So, locally, who wants to help me organize this baby? There are so many ways to say "yes."

We’re envisioning thousands of submissions and hopefully hundreds of sales on the night of 10/23. Immediately, we need help in:
– getting the word out starting August 18^th (blogs, e-mail distribution lists, twitter, facebook, Flickr; and
– commitments to staff the purchasing party on the night of 10/23.

Additionally, I (and more importantly, CSMA) needs all your ideas and help as this great Marathon raises scholarship dollars for students who could not otherwise afford the great arts programming that CSMA offers. Please e-mail me with your thoughts, ideas, and offers to proselytize/staff the event at ed@edmarion.com.

Thanks.

CSMA Portrait Drawing & Painting class cancelled

Oh well.  Bad news from CSMA.  The Portrait Drawing & Painting class I was scheduled to teach this summer has been cancelled due to low enrollment.

June 2009

Whoa.  So June finds me awash in exhibits up to my ears.  My show of NYC cityscapes will be up at the Starbucks on the Ithaca Commons until June 30th.  Then, it's 2 shows in July -- some older works in Binghamton at the Cube and some new works at the gimme! Espresso Shop in Trumansburg.  Finally, I'll be hanging a show of new larger paintings at Ithaca's Moosewood Restaurant in August.

Despite the shows, a few items have rocked my own little art world recently.

I am just jazzed to be painting a portrait of a mother and son over the Internet using Skype.  It helps that my 2 particular sitters are very captivating and interesting people, but the experience of working with portrait sitters in another part of the world is downright exciting.

I was also privileged to be included as a legal consultant to the New York Foundation for the Arts' MARK Artist weekend in early June.  Lucky to be part of the 2008 inaugural year as an artist, I had the benefit of seeing the work of some great and talented New York State artists from the 2009 class.  Follow this link to check them all out and then just google the heck out of them to find their work.

 I know this may seem trivial, but someone in the UK bought a necktie of mine from my zazzle page (and/or the "swag" link on the navigation bar at www.edmarion.com).  How cool is that?  Answer: tres.

 
And, oh yeah, I went a little self-portrait crazy in the last week in preparation for teaching a class on Portrait Drawing & Painting at the Community School of Music and Arts in Ithaca.  Seriously, it's not narcissism, it's just practice with a free model.  The 4 portraits done in June were each from life and took under an hour to complete.

Art as a Business, and Skype as a way there

Having spent 15 years of my life as a practicing lawyer, I'm always fascinated by the dichotomy of treating law as a business or as a profession.

Art is no different.

Quite often we think of artists as starving artisans who do what they do for the love of it.  My recent take, however, is that any artist working full-time is essentially running their own business so that any time I try to tweak my practice of painting, I like to think of myself as a business owner first, and artist second.  If nothing else, it helps me define my market and further helps me assess the viability of my art going forward.

Which leads me to tell you about Skype and theportraitpaintingproject.com.

I've decided to start painting oil portraits via webcam and a Skype video feed.  Why, you may ask?  Well, using webcams and free Skype video software, I get to paint people all over the world from the comfort of their home while they get to visit with me in my rural art studio in Ithaca, NY. On the one hand, while painting by webcam is limited by lighting conditions and the quality of an Internet connection, it also opens my art studio to the world and avails me opportunities to meet and paint people I would never have known otherwise.  It's also rather cool that, using Skype, the portrait sitter gets to see themselves on their monitor so they actually collaborate on portrait composition.

Also, if you're a collector of emerging artists, looking to get to know artists and their work, what better way to spend time with someone whose art you admire?  As long as you have a webcam, a Skype account, and a reasonably good Internet connection, I can paint you from Barcelona, Macedonia, or even nearby Cazenovia.

So the next time someone asks you for a recommendation of a local portrait artist, if they live on planet Earth, please remember me and theportraitpaintingproject.com.