Chasing numbers and social media burnout had been on my mind for a few days and it’s not the first time either. Years ago I had a creative blog for 3 years which I stopped writing. Originally it was called ‘Not Just a Mummy’ when I first started college and changed it to ‘Canvas and Thread’ when I started to establish myself as an artist. Then someone decided to use that as their website name without clearly doing any research. I didn’t have the time or energy for it anymore when I was in my last year at university and I felt it had run its course. I was so caught up in tracking the views and promoting and then my dissertation zapped all my time. I’ve have had so many different art accounts to promote my work I struggled to keep track of where I was and which I had updated. It was always about the numbers game, it wasn’t all that enjoyable when it started to become about the numbers and less about the engagement so I just cut my losses and deleted the blog which I do not regret doing. Although I am obviously blogging again now sometimes posts will be read when the subject matter is relevant to the right person at the right time and therefore I don’t beat myself up about the numbers at the end of the month. I now mostly use Instagram; it’s a brilliant way to share visual snapshots of my work and studio. I also like to be able to see what other artists are up to and what galleries are showing. Why the Burnout? I was following nearly 1500 people on Instagram but seeing the same 10 -15 accounts all the time. The algorithms were only showing the same few accounts based on my usual clicks, likes or views whether that was in my feed or the stories across the top so it was a bit like a vicious circle; I am only seeing the people who I interact with the most but who has time to view every single account so you don’t miss anything? I became fed up, it was the same on my personal account too and I stopped using it so much. This week I have cleaned up my Instagram social media and it is now working much better for me and I do not feel guilty for what I have done! Where had I gone wrong?
The benefit
What about other social media? I use Pinterest A LOT! As a visual person it just works for me, I have my boards of inspiration all sorted according to categories I want and I have my own work on there too. Anything not art related I keep private. I don’t see it as a social thing so much as I don’t look at the follower feed often or chat with anyone. However what I did find helpful was to follow individual boards over whole accounts unless you like every topic someone has created a board for, I found myself spending a lot of time unfollowing every board I that wasn’t my niche. Many people follow the odd 1 or 2 boards of mine rather than all of them and that is absolutley fine and Pinterest now promote ‘boards like yours’ which is helpful. Again it comes down to organising what you want to see. On Facebook I have an art page that has just over 500 fans, I share my blog posts there and a few images and promoting of exhibitions I’m in. I don’t rate Facebook very well as the statistics tell me that my reach can vary from 0 to less than 100 and they continuously try and get me to pay to reach more people. I can only assume they are purposefully not showing my posts so I pay which I refuse to do. Another artist I know did this and they found the unpaid reach was getting worse and got into a habit of having to pay every time when sharing. I am debating whether its worth keeping this account. I used to have a Twitter account with the first blog, I followed everything creative that was local to me but the feed moved so fast I missed a lot and my posts were missed by others. Different accounts work for different people and there may be platforms out there that are great and I haven’t discovered yet, maybe what works now won’t work in the future. Regularly reviewing what we want from them seems to be the way to go before we burn out trying to keep up with them all.
0 Comments
This week Tate St Ives are hosting an exhibition showcasing the creative talents of its staff based on the theme environments. I am really pleased to have a painting on show! The exhibition also includes sculpture, jewellery, photography, painting, performance, film and more. The exhibition runs from 24 - 29 September 2019, Foyle Studio, Level 3. From Trevalgan with Lanyon by Stephanie Croydon My exhibition piece is mixed media on wood and was made during a mentoring session with artist Liz Hough. We went to a high point in St Ives to sketch; between rocks, fields and with the sea at the horizon. Nearby is a memorial plaque dedicated to St Ives born landscape artist; Peter Lanyon. Statement; 'The coast, woodland and the countryside are places I often use as inspiration to create, working outside directly in the landscape. Primitive places unoccupied by technology and consumerism; particularly up on the hills and in fields where the landscape still feels raw, still bearing traces of how our predecessors occupied and moved through the landscape'. 'I use these areas as a place for quiet contemplation, places where we can be still from the world. ‘From Trevalgan with Lanyon’ is taken from a larger body of work; Out West, and was created with the starting point of looking in more depth at the ancient Cornish landscape. Following Peter Lanyon’s map along the Penwith Coastline, I started from Trevalgan near Lanyon’s memorial plaque, information gathering directly taken from my surroundings'. 'Evolving from my previous work; looking at how the world touches us on an emotional level, working outside leads me to question our movement in the landscape at a time when it has become critical to question the future of our environment. How we move through the landscape every day; our footprint and the wider impact we are creating with consumerism, waste and the impact of climate change'. The private view was really busy and there were performances of music, poetry and other reading on the night. On Friday there will be another performance at 12.30pm by the wonderfully talented Alice Ellis-Bray which is not to be missed! The show has numbers next to each piece rather than text but there are sheets and a booklet available for visitors to find out which piece belongs to which artist, the booklet gives a short statement about each artist. The exhibition is family friendly and free with a paying ticket which will give you access to the rest of the galley. Modern Art and St Ives and Otobong Nkanga: From Where I Stand are the exhibits currently on show. Although this isnt a selling exhibition, there are no prices listed, I am happy for this piece to be displayed in a permanent home should a collector be interested. The exhibition is featured on the Tate website Whats On section HERE The instagram page for the exhibition which also features more artists can be found HERE I recently travelled to London from Cornwall to take my painting ‘towards Zennor’ to be exhibited at Tate Modern and spend a few days in the city. The exhibition was the Tate Staff Biennale by the Inside Job Collective and based around the theme of Movement showing work by collegues from all 4 Tate sites; St Ives, Liverpool, Tate Britain and Tate Modern. The exhibition was held on floor 5 of the Blavatnik building from 28th august – 3rd September 2019. The private view evening was really busy and although it wasn’t a selling exhibition my painting sold that evening and has now gone to its new home! In total 6,070 people visited the exhibition and was featured on the museum and heritage advisor website. The work varied from painting, sculpture, film, textiles, prints, photography and also workshops. I attended 2 of the workshops by my colleagues; Annabel who lead a cyanotype workshop and Sayra who lead a comic book making workshop. I interviewed Sayra recently in another blog post. There are more photographs on my instagram page. |
Archives
February 2021
Categories
All
My Spoonflower Shop
|