Visiting Artist Lecture: Jackie Battenfield

On Wednesday, January 27, 2010, Jackie Battenfield held a lecture on her new book, “The Artist’s guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love”, and also revealed how she was able to do the same. She started off her lecture with an insight of what had happened to her to make her realize that she needed to do something to organize herself. Her work in the Rotunda gallery and the start of her family made her realize that she had a lot of work and no organization. Wanting to continue her painting, Battenfield decided to manage her time and still keep the work she was doing for the gallery nothing less than how it was. When she finally knew what she wanted to do, she quit her job at the gallery and decided to start to paint more. She looked outside of New York to find galleries where she could find potential buyers. Even when she had failure, she continued to pursue her goals until she was able to find someone to give her that chance.
Jackie Battenfield’s advice to follow up on all meetings and write thank you notes is noteworthy because she teaches the audience to always make an impression and not to surrender when there is a possibility of a great opportunity. Her book is also a constructive and positive way to pursue the goal of making art a living. Being written as a guide, the book teaches the reader by example what to do when they are stuck in a corner. She splits it into sections that demonstrate how to plan out goals. Even though each person and outcome it different, it still proves to be useful. I would take into great consideration her words and wisdom.

My goals.

My goals:
Graduate with B.A. or B.F.A. (long term)
Travel around. (long term)
Travel specifically to Germany, England, France, Canada, Argentina (again), India, New Zealand, and smaller states in the U.S. (long term)
Learn to paint with oil paint. (short term)
Continue with watercolors no matter what. (long term)
Keep in touch with those who have influenced me most and who I dearly care for. (long term)
Purchase a kiln. (long term)
Keep making sculptures. (long term)
Clean gerbils more. (short term)
Potty train my new puppy. (short term)
Keep my room clean and organized. (short term)
Organize back room to create a studio. (short term)
Finish crocheting my sister’s purse. (short term)
Quit smoking. (long term)
Study more efficiently rather than more often. (short term)
Understand art history. (short term)
Teach my mother to play saxophone. (short term)
Either sell or use flute. (short term)
Open my own cake decorating business. (long term)
Get an apprenticeship for a cake bakery. (long term)
Get a job. (short term)

My Obituary

Today, January 26, 2091, Daniela Mora died of natural causes. She was 99 years old. She was an artist, wife, and mother. Having an artistically inclined mother and a brother and sister also involved with music, Daniela was truly destined to be an artist. With a degree in art from the University of South Florida and years of experience, Daniela was a memorable artist. Her passion of nature truly inspired and influenced the majority part of her work. Living in various countries like England, France, and Germany, she was able to learn and observe different techniques and materials from contemporary and past artists. The artist was widely known for her outrageous sculptures of human bodies and combining them with nature. Her background of Mexican and Argentinean culture assisted her to create the style of her work as well. Her experience with music has added to her work not only visual, but musical and entertaining art which inspired others to create whatever they can. Her motivation for art was to hopefully influence young children to pursue their dreams and goals, even if they seemed unrealistic. She was a great asset to the art community and will be greatly missed.
In her personal life, Daniela was a loving mother of 3 children, and a grandmother to 5. Her husband, also an artist, of 65 years unfortunately passed away 12 years ago. She spent the last few years of her life traveling and created one last piece before her untimely death. It was ironically named “The Ending” and illustrated the way Daniela wanted to die: happy.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Sarah Sands

Sarah Sands is a painter from California and is currently working for Golden Artist Colors, Inc. She has been working for the acrylic paint company for 8 years. Her earlier work consisted of large painting, average 5’ x 6½’, with oils but after being involved with the company, her paintings shifted to acrylics and made on much a smaller canvas, average 12” x 12”. In the beginning of the lecture, she talked about the start of enlightenment in painting. She lived in Spain for 6 months after undergraduate school and saw what a great painting really is. This inspired a whole new spectrum of painting she was willing to attempt. The painting that influenced her the most, as she mentioned it a few times during the lecture, was Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. She continued painting to show depth and tried to paint only what she saw, not what she thought she saw. There was no specific meaning for each painting; she was merely trying to find what she really wanted to paint and create space in each painting. Approaching 30, Sands decided to go to graduate school at Yale. Eventually, her painting started to become mundane. She left paintings unfinished. After graduate, she taught at the New York Academy of Art. There were tensions in teaching styles, so she left for Indiana. In Indiana, she realized that her students were free and more open to abstract, which she had envied. She decided to draw. This created a major change in her style. Her paintings looked like “scribbles” but look at it long enough and the real picture pops out. After a while, her paintings, and materials, shifted. Her paintings were greatly influenced by African marimba music. Each line was an addition of a beat to the rhythm. The paintings were also smaller. Scale was very important to Sands because it tells the appreciator how to look at the painting. Sands is currently working with acrylics and creating paintings consisting of lines and dots, which tell a story if looked at long enough.
Before ending and allowing students to view actual works by her, Sands left some wise advice. Paintings become meaningless without anyone actually looking at them. The meaning comes from the act of painting and the act of seeing it and understanding.

Chapter One

The first chapter of the book The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love by Jackie Battenfield talks about the importance of making a plan. She teaches through her own experience of being unorganized and how it jeopardized the quality of her work. Time management and tasks became easier with each check list she made. This chapter persuades the reader to make a plan of their own. The process takes steps which she listed in the book. In order, the steps are dream big, write your obituary (made to make you see what you value most in life), set your goals (both long term and short term), establish action plan, and, finally, take action. She tells the reader that the plan is made by you; therefore it should only be viewed by you. Battenfield even revealed how she was embarrassed by some of her plans, so she decided to include only a select few to know about them when she was ready. The plans were made to be adjusted according to events that show up unexpectedly.
The next sections focus mainly on how to exactly follow through with her suggested steps. For “dream big”, she inspires the reader to write down anything they want to be. She uses examples of Olympic competitors. The next one, “write your obituary”, is to show the reader what they really want to be. It helps to realize which goals are more important than others. “Set your goals” is made just to help organized and view what needs to be done. “Establish you action plan” comes with a how-to on making a timeline. These timelines will give a ballpark figure of when and how the plan will be done. She even encourages creating a yearly plan as well. Finally, “take action” is meant to motivate the reader to act upon their plans. The plan wasn’t made to look at. Overall, the chapter is very useful for artists to value and think about often.