Arts N Drafts Festival. Music, Art and Great Beer

In a little over a week, April 7-9 will be the next Arts N Drafts Festival. I was waiting for it since... well... since last summer which was their last show. I'll be displaying my work, both vases and drawings/paintings, I have a few fantasy and abstract drawings I haven't displayed yet, so it'll be the first time they will see the light. Vincent Volya will be displaying his work there as well, unfortunately he will not be able to be there all 3 days since he works overnights, but hopefully he'll make it at least on Saturday. I guess I'll have to come out of my hibernation (I really hate cold and leave the house only when it's a must during winter) and help set everything up. Can't wait to see everyone there again. Arts N Drafts is a really great way to spend a few nights. I love watching artists at work, and there are usually many of them there painting, glass blowing and so on. If you are in the area and don't have much to do on these days, come down there and hove fun with the rest of us. Well, I have to get back to my work, those tags aren't going to make themselves and artwork wouldn't self frame ether... so much work, so little time, but it's so worth it.

Red Bubble Review

Red Bubble is a website where you can buy and sell art prints, t-shirts, calenders and much, much more. I signed up for it and signed my hubby up as well.

As many other websites of this variety, it's best if you promote it. I got a few sales from it without promotion, especially for my husband's shirts, but promoting helps a lot.

Red Bubble has a very strong community, it's another reason I love it so much. I joined many groups already and added my art to the groups. Many of these groups have challenges, that artists can enter. All this helps promote the art and get some recognition. Plus some challenges give Red Bubble vouchers to the winners, which never hurts at all. All in all it's a great place to sell and show your skills.

The way it works is: you download you artwork on the website and chose what you want to be done with it. Red Bubble then sells it and when it's sold they print it and send it to the buyer. You get % of the sale. Nice and easy, no need to worry about printing it, shipping it talking to customers about why it got damaged or any of the other unpleasant sides of selling art.

What I like about this site is that you can chose for the image of your artwork to be unclickable, this way no one can copy it and try to sell it as their own. Many sites have the watermark option, but it's not as good as unclickable, for me at least. The way I see it watermark can get in the way of seeing artwork when it appears in certain parts of the work or if can be cut out and only a part of the image can then be used by others. Surely most people wouldn't try to pirate your work if they know it's copyrighted, but you never know. In most cases watermark will protect your art.

They have a section for writing there too, I wish they would give an option to buy non exclusive rights to post the stories and poems as well, but so far you can just read them for free.

Speaking of copyrights, I always read copyright section of terms and conditions and very often I end up not posting on some websites because I don't like that exact part of the terms. Red Bubble asks for non exclusive rights, which means that they have the right to print your work and sell it (giving you money for it after it sells) but you can post the same artwork on other sites too and sell the same painting/drawing/photography/design on a number of sites.

In short, Red Bubble is a great place to buy and sell art. It worked for me at least.

The Lost Era in Art

Communism has helped Russia in many ways, it brought education, scientific development, gave people better living conditions, but it suppressed a lot too. To this day there are many great movies that have never been seen because they were "put on the shelf" as it was referred to in those days. Party found them to be unworthy for one reason or another and they have vanished. Similarly a lot of art has vanished. Realism was the only respected art in those days. Many artists kept painting avant-garde. Their works were left hidden and forgotten until Igor Savitskiy started collecting them. He gathered a huge collection, 40,000 works, which he kept in Uzbekistan, one of the republics of Soviet Union. When USSR fell apart and Uzbekistan got it's independence this collection was finally seen and noticed. Many countries expressed a desire to exhibit it, and France and Germany got a chance to display a part of it, but this is where it stopped. Nukus, Uzbekistan, the very city Savitskiy kept this art collection, is now the only place to see it.

Uzbek government doesn't seem to understand why this collection is so important and why anyone would want to see it. They are not letting it be displayed in any other country. Honestly, I'm not surprised. I lived in Uzbekistan for a few years and as much as I love the people, I am not a big fan of their government. Uzbek government is trying to distance themselves from their past as a part of USSR. There is unfortunately a lot of prejudice against Russia and everything that is associated with it. For a country where a huge amount of people speak only Russian it's rather unfortunate for the people. Uzbekistan seems to be taking after USSR though in the way it handles this collection. Those who work on preserving it are now questioned about their traveling to other countries and were forbidden to go to the USA for a screening of Desert of Forbidden Art, a documentary about this collection. Not only that but the government all of a sudden decided they need to demolish one of the buildings the collection is being displayed in. They gave the workers 48 hours to move all art from there. So far this building is exactly where it was and new space was not given as it was promised.