I regularly organize my studio space. I like everything in its place. But just like most artists we tend to get messy. Usually I organize and clean my space which leads me to be more creative. I can’t work in mess. But that got me thinking about my recording keeping. At my job, I am organized and love, love, love my excel files. With all the neat columns and I can find all my information. Being a retail executive, I am meticulous about my daily, weekly, seasonal and yearly sales, and I can tell you what sales I did last year compared to this year, to the exact day. You name it and I have it. If you worked for me and you lost track of your sales, have no fear, I have it.I know how much inventory I have on hand so I know if I can make my sales plan. It is my daily ritual to look at those numbers. My department has annual sales of $7-$10 million and I only missed sales plan once in 4 years (I use the excuse that I got promoted to a new division in the later part of the fiscal year, and it takes at least 4-6 months to get acquainted to a new area and new people). With all that said, why do I not have an inventory of my artwork and a system that I can search and access of what I need. If I want to support myself with my artwork, I need to approach it the same way as I do for any other business. So I have to remind myself that AJ Grossman is a business.
Yes, art is a business. I say this all the time to young people who I meet that think art and business are opposite and do not mix. Everyone that I know wants to sell their work. When money is involved it is a business. So what that being said, it was time to get my art business organized. Since my goal is to start a marketing campaign to local galleries, I needed to inventory my artwork
So I took out the digital camera and started snapping away. Then Photoshop to create a high resolution .jpg. Many people in the art biz tell me to purchase FileMaker or an art program to organize and inventory your artwork. Almost every book I read, suggests a program to purchase.
Since my husband is a computer architect and builds these systems, I asked him to build me one. He looked at me and I quote ” build you one, you are a wiz at excel and organization, you build yourself one & remember since you use multiple computers, you would have to install that program on each computer you are at”. Well he was right, so I opened Excel, custom made a spreadsheet and now I have a fabulous inventory of my artwork.
Now I just have to make it a habit to update.