'Rationale'

Initially I thought to name my website willowstacey.wordpress.com which would have been logical, as when you are researching an artist the first thing you do is type their name into Google. I then considered existing online presence I have created, in which I have branded myself as Yecats Wolliw, simply my name spelt backwards- although a friend thought it was because I was crazy about cats. As this name already exists in relation to my work I thought it apt to continue with it. I though it sounded more memorable and intriguing. Than my name in its original state, this may have been a mistake, only time will tell.

Before embarking on wordpress I had already considered the minimal layout that artists tend to use when promoting their work, allowing the artwork to speak for itself without getting distracted by extravagant fonts, layouts and colours. I chose the theme titled Chunk for its straightforward look, with bold typography and use of one colour throughout. It has a strong and prevalent font making titles stand out. I wanted my site to be logical and easy to navigate, this was considered in both choice of theme and when creating pages. Each page is distinctly labelled with an appropriate name found in an easily navigated drop down menu.

When selecting images to upload I wanted to depict as many different aspects of my artwork as I could to show diversity and flexibility. I have combined images of works that I make at college, that I consider to be Fine Art and the more commercial pieces that have gained commissions. These are two very different approaches to working, the commissions are generally much more illustrative, combing pen and water colour, whereas the ‘fine art’ pieces are much more abstract in use of materials. To create order within the wide variety I have created individual pages dependent on medium, initially I had mixed medias to a page but I thought they looked too mismatched. The initial categories were drawing, painting and sculpture, the three main aspects in fine art, as I put more work up I felt there needed to be more categorisation to make it easier to navigate and find images. I created sub categories for drawing and sculpture, the two aspects I adhere to most. Sculpture was divided into three additional pages, cerae, aliquam and poculum, the Latin names for wax, latex and glass, the materials I am most fond of working in. The individual pages act like exhibition spaces, each with there own distinct theme or title, filled with pieces of work form a series. Although there are a lot of different things going on within the pages of my website I feel it is true to me, with a large part of my practice material based.

I primarily use social media to circulate my works, I post images and links to my wordpress via Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. The instant gratification you feel when someone likes, pins, reblogs or tweets a piece of your work is irreplaceable. It reminds you that people are interested in your work. One thing I do worry about with the mass circulation of work online is that it is easy to lose ownership, someone copies your image and reposts it as their own or take an idea and rework it. Although I worry about this I have not done anything to combat it, I could consider water marking my images or reducing resolution so that they are not easily reproduced. The use of the internet as a promotional tool means that anyone, anywhere can access your work. It is an easy and fast way to reach a wide range of varying audiences; location, gender, age and race do not come into play, internet access is the only requirement.

A combination of a wide audience and a wide range of works are part of my aim in reaching audiences, having two large variables increases the likelihood of overlapping. In that the more people who see you work, the higher the chance that someone will appreciate it. 
Currently I am only using online methods to promote my work, to target the audience that are not online I will need to approach publicity in a material, tactile way. I have started to looked into ideas for printed media, in the form of business cards and posters, as of yet I have not produced any. This is an aspect of my personal professional practice that I still want to develop. 

I have kept text on my website to a minimum, I feel that the work should speak for itself without influence. I have used language that I feel to be appropriate for its use, the language is straight to the point, informative without excess. 

Although I have found wordpress relatively easy to use I found the free theme had constraints, the format of the sites primarily blogging. Once I become more established I would consider paying for a theme that gave me more freedom and in turn buying the domain yecatswolliw.com or looking at a different provider that works to your specifications. 

Artist statement

After considering what to write in my artist statement I have made notes about my practice, considered what I do and why. I have found it very difficult to summarise in a way that others will understand. The most important aspect within my work is repetition, I want to write a bold sentence about repetition rather than a whole body of text. 

"Repetition changes nothing in the object repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it” 

(Deleuze, 1968, pp.90) 

I have browsed the Internet in search of a humorous phrase and through my essay for an intellectual comment. I have not come across anything that I could use as my own, instead I have been playing around with words, hoping for something to jump out at me. 

Repetition is key.

Repetition is life.

Repetition is art. 

The phenomena that is repetition. 

The phenomena of repetition. 

Sculptural sub categories

To further categorise my works I looked through my sculptural pieces to see which materials I use the most; wax, latex and glass. I felt as there were quite a few similar pieces it made sense to create individual pages. Naming them logically I researched the latin name for each material. 

                Wax - cerae

                Latex- aliquam

                Glass- poculum

Creating sub categories has allowed to to upload images form a series of works without them looking too repetitive, contrasting lighting and compositions create more variance. I kept the original sculpture page to show pieces that were one off uses of a material, pieces that do not link to one another. 

Talon - Photographing two dimensional paintings

I created these two paintings a few weeks ago, Ihad the intention of saving them in the hope of having an exhibition in the summer, so that no one had seen them before, but looking at the 'Painting' page I did not have enough pieces of work. This just means I will have to produce more work for an exhibition, which is a good incentive to make art. 

Documenting older work

At the time of creating these glass pieces I documented them photographically, but unfortunately I cannot find these images anywhere on my hard drive. Instead I have had to retake the images, due to being back at home, away from college I have had to create a make shift studio. The images are not as good as they could have been using specialist equipment, but I think they work well enough. Within wordless I am using a combination of detail and full photos to show of both the sculptural and aesthetic qualities. 

Home Page

In the time that I have been producing my website I have altered the home page multiple times, from a basic text 'home' to an image of myself and bio. I have put a great deal of thought into the homepage as it is the first impression some people will get of me and my work. 

After trying out different ideas I thought the best introduction to my works would be a brief overview, a montage of the different mediums I work in. I also decided to include an image of myself that I took as part of a project two years ago, a self portrait, without it being too obvious that it is myself. I chose a different composition to that of the pages so that it was less formal and showed the images in sizes that balanced each other out. 

This is how my website is first viewed. 

Printed media research

I spent my Saturday afternoon wandering around a fantastic Christmas market in Sleaford, unlike many Christmas Fayre's this one was filled to the brim with quality products. The market was arranged at The National Centre for Craft and Design, displaying a mixture of local artists, crafts people and designers.

Whilst resisting the temptation to buy something from every stall I picked up a variety of business cards, postcards and fliers. I looked like a serial hoarder, but I was doing it to compare different approaches to self promotion.

  Email, phone, site.                                                          Three different online contacts. 

  Centred text, easy to read.                                              Typewriter font links with quirky, vintage                   

  No image on the reverse.                                                theme of work. 

                                                                                        Photograph of work on reverse. 

  Drawn logo.                                                                   One sided.
  Online and postal addresses.                                          Image and text intertwined - looks busy.
  Image of ceramics on reverse.                                       White text on black background.

  Bold images on both sides.                                           Blue and white colour scheme.
  Bold divide between image and text.                           Mixed fonts.
  As many different contact methods.                             Multiple contact methods.
                                                                                      Image on reverse

  Typewriter font links with vintage theme of work.     Colourful.

  Multiple social media contacts.                                   Text on reverse (company name)

  Detail of work on reverse.                                            Mainly text to imagery.

 
  Mainly image to text.                                                   Illustrative design.
  Three points of contact.                                               Text hard to read.
  Monochrome.                                                               Same image on revers - bolder colours.

      

  Crudely hand cut out.                                                    Bold colours.

  Name, email, tel.                                                           Front and reverse don't work together.

  Weak colours.                                                               Small image compared to text.

                                                                                        Not representative of his detailed work. 

Each of these business cards are different, from the minimalist, decorative, playful and informative. There are some ideas I would take from examples, and others that I would learn from. In the past I had experimented with hand cut, moth shaped cards, but after seeing this example I do not think it is an effective medium. In general I think the more minimal designs work better,, with a limited colour scheme.