The Changing Art Market

Sunlight in the Valley
SOLD print 1/20

I quit being a project control engineer for a major international construction firm and returned to New Mexico with no solid plan on how I was going to support myself beyond an advantageous marriage. I did manage a fairly decent income with freelance writing, and then stumbled into a mask making business because of my association with the costumer for a dance company in the state.

Lunacy Limited was quite successful until I literally fell on my head after being hit by a skier. Up to that point I had broken into all the better fairs, several good galleries around the country and a wholesale market which came too close to feeling like a slave shop. Recovery from the CBT took longer than I wanted and threw me out of step with my "business plan."

Fortunately two therapies I had picked for myself, photography and watercolor painting, opened new opportunities just about the time the economy crashed,  galleries began going belly up, and art fairs became more entertainment that vendor opportunities. By then I had my studio which was open to the public and easily was accepted in just enough fairs to cover costs with my sales.

Now the art market has returned to begging for space on restaurant walls. If you are lucky they ask you. One of my venues is the Enchanted Circle Brewery in Angel Fire, New Mexico. The owner wanted me to hang my photography, which to that point was winning awards in exhibits but I thought second to my painting, which had a higher price point because of where the market had crashed. I resisted doing giclee prints of my original work but photography was different. I fell in love with giclee prints on canvas of select photographs. No broken glass or scratch frames and if the print is damaged just reprint. And if print one of 20 is sold print number two.

The economy seems to be picking up a bit and happily so are sales of giclee prints from the Brewery. Sometimes you just get lucky. At a younger age I might have wanted to be Ansel Adams or Georgia O'Keeffe. Now I am just happy to have local recognition and a market. And to sell a painting now and then because I love to paint.

Big Blue 1
SOLD print 2/20

Clouds' Illusions
For Sale Now

Week 36 - 2018 in Photographs

Day 245
Skeletons of Cottonwoods

 These photographs are still from the brief vacation on the Rio Grande shore. Vacations are to refresh the spirit and I believe this is particularly true for artists. As a photographer being able to focus on different subjects from time to time is important. 

I normally argue that it is my familiarity with a subject which yields the best photographs. Ansel Adams believed that. He went back again and again to favorite subjects. It helps to discover just went the light is the best.

I often feel after a series of photographs of a new area I need to go back; do it again. I feel that way about the Bosque. The light is so different from my mountain home. And during my four days at Tamaya Resort the air was smoke filled from the California fires. That did add to the dawns but it generally flattened the light.

Day 246
Cottonwoods along the trail

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New Mexico Olives

Day 248
The tangle of the Bosque

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High Desert Bird of Paradise

Day 250
What was the one "clear" day

Day 251
Dawn at Tamaya

Week 19 - 2018 in Photographs

Day 126

This week was devoted to black and white explorations. Black and white shows the basic bones of a photograph. Ansel Adams was the king of recording the southwest without color. But no color does not mean less. It can mean more. Next week I will be posting both the color and black & white versions of some photographs.

For me this week was an exercise; a chance to hone my skills in a week where color is not a major distraction. 

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Best Black & Whites - 2017 Photographs

Wheeler Peak in the Clouds

Photography 101 in college at University of New Mexico was all about black and white. And darkroom. I liked black and white when I could manipulate the images in the darkroom. After college, with no darkroom at my disposal, I didn't much like black and white any more and immersed myself in color photography.

My sister does the most awesome black and white photographs of flowers but I was reluctant to let go of all my colors. Bored one day while photo editing I reduced the saturation on a few photographs. Not totally no color but just a hint. Together below was one of my first. It was easy to play with snow because the world is so white to begin with. Together sold promptly.

Together

And lots of snow launched my exploration in earnest with black and white, Ansel Adams inspired. I even printed up a series of trees in the snow for a Ralph Solano exhibit. Memory of Trees was a four photograph series. Memory of Trees 1 is on exhibit at Enchanted Circle Brewing in Angel Fire. The other three, featured below, are hanging in Binford-Bell Studio in Black Lake.  Come visit.

In Memory of Trees 4

In Memory of Trees 2

In Memory of Trees 3

Shadows figure large in my explorations of black and white. But so do trees as they cast long shadows. Photography is about light and ergo shadows but black and white is also about patterns made by branches, backgrounds, clouds or reflections.

Standing Tall

Lying Low

It is easy to delete color when you are dealing with the whiteness of snow or the monochromatic world of a sandstone canyon but I knew I had been totally seduced back to the now digital world of the darkroom when I took a picture of yellow cottonwoods on a blue lake and deleted the color.

Reflections of Light

I have printed four of these photographs and three remain in my to be printed folder. The last photograph, Reflections of Light, is also in that folder but in the color version. It is also awesome in color.

Week 44 - 2017 in Photographs

Day 301
St. Anthony Catholic Church

In one of the many digital photography books I have read the writer maintained you should know if you were going to process in black and white or in color. That was certainly true in the days of film. But that decision was largely made for not just one photo but a whole roll of film because it was what you had loaded in the camera.

I will be honest and if it was not a requirement for a photography assignment I seldom used black and white film. Every once in a while I would feel guilty about not being a true photographer like Ansel Adams and shoot a row of black and white.

Digital photography and control of the "post processing" means you can do whatever you want with your images. You can make the decision on photograph at a time. The same rules of composition apply. Images with strong elements are generally my choice for black and white. But I have often taken an image or a subject and processed it in both color and without color.

Color is still my favorite. Black and white is still an exercise I give myself.

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Week 43 - 2017 in Photographs

Day 294

 It is all about the light. Cameras, whether they are film or digital, capture the light. 

One morning, while delaying arriving at my dentist appointment, I stopped at Eagle Rock Lake to capture the colors of the cotton woods. Yellow is one of those colors which captures light very well. And with sunlight streaming through the leaves they seem to glow.

Day 295

 What amazed me once back home and remembering I had taken all those photographs before have the truck not start, five teeth pulled, and lower face totally numbed is that fall photographs look awesome in black and white.

Day 296

 And the light streaming through the leaves and the trees and across the pond's surface is even more striking without the color.

Day 297

 As a landscape photographer who always eagerly awaits the fall colors I surprised myself during the post processing. It seemed like a sacrilege to remove the color. But photography is about the light. And that is so evident, as Ansel Adams proved, in the black and white versions.

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Kasha-Katuwe National Monument in Black and White

Standing Tall

There was something about the austere landscape of the Kasha-Katuwe National Monument which brought out my inner Ansel Adams. The cliffs and slot canyons were created by volcanic eruptions which occurred 6 to 7 million years ago that left pumice, ash, and tuff deposits over 1000 feet thick. Tremendous explosions from the Jemez volcanic field spewed pyroclasts, while searing hot gases blasted down slopes in an incandescent avalanche called a pyroclastic flow.  Wind and rain then went to work sculpting the landscape.

Kasha-Katuwe National Monument is approximately 40 miles Southwest of Santa Fe, NM and definitely worth the side trip. Come prepared to hike the 1.5 mile slot trail which rises 1,100 feet from the trail head.