Socially Ept

One of the key things that all artists are being informed of these days is that they must use social media to promote their work, and not only that, but link all those social media to each other so they all connect like some M.C. Escher loop. I was quite proud of myself (perhaps even a tad smug) when I attended the SAQA conference in Santa Fe last month and could confidently check most of the boxes off that they mentioned. Facebook page: check, Pinterest page: check, Tumblr blog: check, personal blog: check, Etsy shop: check,Website: not so far, Instructional videos: nope. Now I basically have to cross reference them all, reminding everyone that yes, I do make art, and no, it's not free anymore, (unless your 100th birthday is coming up, or some such special occasion) plus I am supposed hand out business cards like candy, until I irritate everyone I have ever known and they flee as I approach.
I'm still not savvy about setting up a website but if my children want to create it for free I would not turn that down. As for instructional videos, well, even though it's a better moneymaker for many artists than actually selling art, I don't have the time and patience yet to fumble around with supplies while my daughter points a camera at me and tells me not to 'pull that face' or stop mumbling 'ha ha, this is so awkward' as I wipe a smear of paint across my cheek. Besides, those How-To videos require nicely manicured hands for those extreme close-ups so basically any profit would be fed back into my mani-pedi routine. And, if I messed something up, remembering to say "Oh Whoops-a-Daisy!" rather than "Oh F**k!" would be a challenge.

   However, it got me thinking (about five a.m. this morning) about how I perceive and use each of those social mediums, metaphorically or symbolically speaking. For instance, Pinterest is that nice pretty scrapbook where each page can be turned to view lots of pretty, well-organized pictures. Pretty pretty pretty. See and save all the Pretty. Oh look, here's a page of tasty recipes! Oh look here's a page of tasty men! And so forth.

Tumblr is like that box you keep in the attic where you toss all the stuff you 'might need later'. And then later you forget where you put it, as in "I know that picture of the Hedgehog with the chocolate Doppelganger is in here somewhere."

Facebook is more like that roll of toilet paper the cat just unraveled. It goes on and on forever, leaving behind the minutae of your life, sort of like the way Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, only less memorable. If I want to find something brilliant I said two years ago I will need to hire our neighbors cat for assistance.

 The actual On the Road manuscript...........

Etsy is like a cute little lemonade stand where you sit hopefully waiting for customers to drop by and realize sometimes they only stop to buy things because they are your friends and you are starting to sweat out there.

As for this blog, it's like combining the toilet paper roll with the lemonade stand and a wee dash of Show-and-Tell, only it's all free. However, the artwork is not.