John Azoni: Detroit Artist

Following my recent post on the lack of art business taught in art school, I thought I’d follow up with a link to some great advice on pricing work.

Most artists do get this wrong. First of all, pricing their work too low (a struggle for me), forgetting that it cost them more than just raw materials to make the work — time making the work, time documenting the work, time marketing the work, gas/mileage driving it to a gallery, time and expenses working with clients to sell the work — and second of all, not understanding the difference between wholesale and retail prices.

ARTISTS: you can’t sell your work at one price point, then double your prices for commission as soon as the piece enters a gallery. This is a very common and important mistake to avoid.

Read this post by Harriete Estel Berman for why.

Of course I would like this…

This is by far the best and most ridiculous thing I’ve seen on Etsy up until now. I came across it in a treasury one of my “Azoni Briefs” was included in. It’s a freaking floating ring! I wish I would’ve known about this before I proposed to my wife. (jokes..)

This was made by a Japenese artist. Her (I’m assuming it’s a her) Etsy shop is SouZouCreations. She apparently makes all kinds of crazy rings like this. Way too awesome.

I was never all that good at academics. More accurately, I never really tried to be good.

School was just a place I had to go until I could come home and write punk songs, skate with my friends, and paint portraits of celebrities out of my mom’s People magazine (wish I had images to post… they were bad…)

As I entered into the art school environment, not only did I take on the scent of a clove cigarette, but I donned the same attitude as in my punk band Short Fuse in the 10th grade as I turned to my drummer and confidently said, “dude… we’re totally gonna make it.”  To which he replied, “dude…I know dude…”

Hope abounded.

But I soon realized if I was ever going to pay my bills someday I would have to learn how to turn my pretty paintings into pretty pennies. And this, I’m sorry to say, is where art school failed me.

The thing that’s great about being an artist is that there are endless avenues for manifesting the ideas inside one’s head. I loved art school for giving me access to all sorts of classes and equipment I would otherwise be ignorant to. It was as a student that I had the space to paint as big as I could build a canvas for, to drip paint on the floor and blame it on someone from another class, to make handmade prints, and digital art, photography, and weird-looking plaster busts. Art school was a time like no other… being in this whirlwind of creativity with other creative people.

<——  that’s me. In tighter clothes.
But in an environment where endless avenues for creative expression were at my fingertips, I would’ve been left in the dust on the business of being an artist were it not for my own persistence in beating down the doors of my professors for their business advice. And that’s what so much of a non-famished artist’s career is about, as I would later find out. Excelling in getting people to like and support the things you make… dare I say your “product”.

I sat through more than one slanderous conversation about Thomas Kinkade as a student. Artists hate this guy because his paintings are cheesy and he mass produces his work,  generally not even painting his own paintings unless the buyer agrees to pay an extreme amount of money for his direct handiwork.

Thomas Kinkade

But you can’t blame the guy for giving people what they want. He clearly knows how to turn his art into profit, but artists seem to think that if you’re making any money off what you do then you’ve “sold out”. This is garbage, and apparently the world does not suffer for lack of  pretentious artists.

I am not at all suggesting that students should gear their work toward what the public will buy. But if more artists weren’t so ignorant to basic business principals, there might not be such a fear of graduating art school.

It’s my belief that you can’t really teach creativity. You can influence it, but you can’t teach it. You CAN give art students a basic business foundation. You can teach them how to market themselves, how to go about establishing prices for their work, how to keep track of clients and gain new ones. You can teach them how to approach galleries, perhaps even how to build a website, or engage potential fans of their work online. You can build classes around that stuff!

Very few of these things I actually learned in a structured setting in art school, and it baffles me now that this was so.

My advice to art students is this:

1. ASK QUESTIONS. Take advantage of the experience your professors bring to the table. Soak up as much advice as you can from them.
2. BUSINESS IS ALSO AN ART: You get to be creative in how you expose people to your work. Don’t shy away from it because it’s not something you can hang on a wall. If you’re expecting someone to come along and make you a star, you’re wasting your time. Learn how to do the leg work yourself. Consider taking a business class or two, perhaps at another school if your art school doesn’t teach business.

Cedric (pronounced See-Drick) is one of my favorite Detroit artists these days. I love his work, and equally as much he’s such a cool guy. Totally humble and non-pretentious, and I so appreciate that especially in art community. His show, “Accepting Accidents” at Re:View Contemporary Gallery was really well done, and it was so refreshing to see so many red dots next to his paintings! Here’s a sampling of the work:

Cedric’s show will be up through October 9, 2010. Don’t miss it! You can also check out his website for better images.

Re:View Contemporary Gallery
444 W. Willis Street, Units 111 and 112
Detroit, MI 48201
Tel: 313.833.9000

I recently completed this portrait of a good friend of mine, Beau McCarthy.

"McBeau" - 30x40 in., Acrylic on canvas - $2,100

The reference photo for this was taken at my wedding. Beau officiated the ceremony. My best man sent his wife to get cheeseburgers from McDonald’s after the ceremony. There’s really no better way to celebrate the joining of two lives than with a sack of cheeseburgers.