Perception is Reality

Remember who you audience is.

Sounds simple but if you (as an artist) want to make enough scratch from sales to buy a delivery pizza and a six-pack, know whom you are selling to.

If you are an artisan with a tented booth at the rural volunteer firefighters and library craft fair bazaar and book sale, don’t expect the local newspaper art critic who has been educated with ‘Art for Dummies’ to give your talent front page review that will increase sales.

If you want to make some dough, create for your audience.

You can fake it and trick most people all of the time, but only a few will buy it.

If you want to present interpretive innovative dancing check your booking. Don’t plan to play soft folk songs at an arena fronting heavy metal. Don’t set your amp stacks up at a senior center birthday party.

If you are presenting your artwork at outdoor crafts fair or a school auditorium, make small landscapes, trinket jewelry, cute animals and items that can take a few sickles.

If presenting in a well-defined artistic venue like a gallery, be prepared for a different audience asking informed questions with different persuasion techniques to make a sale. Also be prepared for smart phone payment technology.

Remember perception is reality.

If the viewer or audience or reader or listener believes what they are seeing or listening to is art…. Then this IS ART.

Create your dreams for yourself, but to make a living selling your creations know your market.

Know the latest trends and adapt.

Everyone recognizes Leonardo Da Vinci as a renowned artist written about in all artsy-fartsy volumes and placed on the museum exhibits, but he had a sponsor.

Make your brand, promote your product, present to your audience and know that what is your perception is not always reality.

Fantasy

We seem like to enjoy getting lost in fantasy. Look at the books and games and movies (and politics) we lose our reality into worlds of make-believe.

Children create fantasy worlds and adults wonder where they get the ideas. Now those fantasy worlds invade out laundry, banking, education, transportation, manufacturing, entertainment, faith and yes, politics.

To follow or becoming fanatical engrossed with ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Twilight’ or ‘Friends’ can go from enjoyment to emotional fascination (addiction?) to create Comic Cons and theme parks. Beyond Halloween, social media has promoted these fantasy characters to become part of our family.

Quotes and images appear in our language for others to relate too. This is similar to quoting passages from the Bible.

Fantasy can spark the imagination to come up with space ships, cell phones, giant flat screen television, microwaves and clogs or crocs. Fantasy can be innovative.

There are no zombies. There are no giants or vampires or things that go bump in the night. There are no space aliens (yet) except us. There are no people who can fly or shoot rays out of their eyes. There are no rom-coms where they live happily ever after.

When you close the book or put down the remote, that stack of bills is still sitting there. Your daughter’s unwanted pregnancy has not gone away. Your front tire is still going flat and hole in your roof is leaking on a day like today. You son is still flunking out of school and your mother is still drinking. You’re dog just barfed on the floor and your toilet is clogged.

You will never be invited to beam up with Captain Kirk or have a cup of java with Rachael and Ross. You can have dreams or delusions, but you have to wake up.