Lyn Bishop : Sharing Secrets

The end of the year is always a time where many of us become introspective, thinking about the past 12 months and the upcoming new year ahead. For many years now, I have approached this process with anticipation, sprawled on my studio floor with a large piece of paper, crayons or markers, and mapped out the stepping stones to accomplish my dreams for the year to come.

I skipped over this process in 2009 and 2010. My life was in turmoil at the beginning of 2009 and I had too much sadness and fear in my heart to allow myself the luxury of my yearly dream session. I stumbled through 2009 relearning how to live without a master plan. I lived in the moment, and followed my heart from one adventure to the next.

Then came 2010, and I felt a tugging to get back on my path again. January came and nudged me to plan for my yearly dreams. I had some ideas, but nothing seemed solid, so I let go of all expectations, continued to listen to my heart and allowed myself the freedom to explore without feeling there needed to be some goal at the end of the experience.

This freedom of living moment to moment was refreshingly new for me, and during that time I felt that I could hear my inner voice that had been shut out by all the “you should” things in life. “You should work on your relationship”, “You should go back to graduate school”, “You should move to San Francisco”. I found new ways of being in the world, ways that were more intuitive, more in tune to nature, and to my own rhythms of life.

After this time of living without schedules, goals or objectives, I found a deeper trust in my own instincts, and found I was hearing my inner voice more clearly. That voice continued to become louder throughout 2010 and began to lead me out of the dense jungle of all possibilities and back onto my life path. Those jungle experiences have given me the opportunity to reevaluate my diverse life skills and rearrange them in ways that lead me in new directions that I could never have found without stumbling along without a plan in the jungle of life for a while.

As I approach 2011, I see my vision clearly, and know that the quiet time I spent without a master plan is leading me into my biggest dreams yet as I step out of the jungle and onto the road to manifest my life’s work. I am again luxuriating in the process of designing and planning my dreams.

Resources for Inspired Action or Non Action:

LifeHack: Why Doing Nothing May Be The Best Action Of All

Lisa Sonora Beam’s Goal Setting for Creatives

Have you noticed the number of social networking sites specifically created for artists these days? It seems like there is a new one coming online daily. Could this be an indicator of the growing influence that the Internet offers in showcasing and, dare I say it, selling art.

These online communities are often free services (or pay to upgrade) where artists can showcase their work, chat with fellow artists online, build their network, host a blog, and create an online portfolio without having to build a stand alone website. It offers a venue for the artist to share their skills and receive feedback on their work from an international community. (more…)

On Saturday, San Jose hosted a town hall meeting for artists interested in learning more about the city’s new Creative Entrepreneur Program.

Kim Walesh, Chief Strategist for the city, began by expressing her optimism that today, more than ever, there is more opportunity for artists to be a part of the San Jose economy. Artist based business are growing faster than other segments and San Jose has a high rate of independent creative entrepreneurs.

The Silicon Valley companies that are really succeeding — think Apple– understand the intrinsic aesthetic value that creativity brings to their product. San Jose’s future plan now includes steps to honor both the the left brained technologists and the right brained artists, and recognize innovation in all their various aspects. Walesh suggested that city government was crafting a future plan where not only arts and cultural facilities were included, but now individual artists were encouraged to think together with them to build an artist friendly San Jose. (more…)

Today’s New York Times article on cruise ship art auctions is pretty scary. It discusses big name artwork (mostly prints) being auctioned for many times over their land-based market price. The work is often sold to first-time bidders who may not really know what they are buying until they get home and suffer buyers remorse after doing more research and finding out signatures may be fake or that the print is nothing more than a quality poster.

This is the kind of story that makes everyone uneasy. It worries me, as a printmaker myself, that some unscrupulous art-dealers-turned-snake-oil-salesmen will take advantage of naive clients. Thankfully, there are websites like Fine Art Registry where artists can permanently register their art when they create it and where collectors, museums and galleries can register their collections.

While the big name artwork may be appealing, why not consider collecting artwork directly from living, breathing artist alive today. Not only can you collect some amazing work, you’ll support a living artist in their career. And if you’re lucky, you may, in the process, develop a one-on-one relationship with them, too. Now that’s priceless.

(Art: Missing Threads, by Lyn Bishop)

The Los Angeles Times reports a lawsuit filed against the temporary Louis Vuitton boutique created to sell Takashi Murakami products in the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art. According to the Times, the Vuitton luxury shop failed to provide the collector with the proper documentation in the form of a Certificate of Authenticity for the the Murakami prints he purchased there.

Do you know what a Certificate of Authenticity is? Did you know that it is required by law to be provided upon collector request when purchasing a multiple in the State of California? Why should you care?

A Certificate of Authenticity, as defined by California Civil Code Section 1740-1745 is a written or printed description of the multiple sold, exchanged, or consigned by an art dealer.

A Multiple, as defined by this same California Civil Code is any fine print, photograph (positive or negative), sculpture cast, collage, or similar art object produced in more than one copy.

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