I love collaboration, so bringing together a group of professionals who can help you move your career to the next level suits me just fine. That was the whole point of the smARTist® Telesummit.

And now it’s the point of the smARTist Career Blog too.

This blog is for your art career, and I’m far from the only game in town. ;-) So, I’ve convinced a fellow artist who is articulate about the creative process to join us. Between the two of us you get a coach and an artist like yourself. Now all you need are the golden keys to your art career kingdom.

We hope you’ll find them here.

• On Tuesdays, I will post from my extensive reading, Internet surfing, or conversations whatever has struck me most that I think will ignite your energy for presenting yourself and your art in fresh ways, or just get you thinking as wide as the sky.

• On Thursdays, fellow artist Lori Wolfson will post some yummy tidbit about creativity, art, and how we see the world around us.

• On Friday’s Featured smARTIST, you’ll get to look at a work of art from one of the participants who attended our annual smARTist® Telesummit.

Please… don’t be shy — come join the conversation.

The New World we’re living in is all about connection, collaboration, and conversation.

It’s where we learn best and expand our options as far as the eye can see… and beyond.

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On Tuesday, I’ll post whatever has struck me
about how presentation impacts you and your art.

Every morning I get up, do some yoga stretches (spinal twist and downward dog are my favorites – besides standing on my head). I drink a cup of green or black tea, swing my arms around in a little Qigong dance, lift free weights or run, and then bow my head in gratitude for a life where I can go to work for you.

As a writer, art-career coach, and entrepreneur who grew up in a family of artists, I have learned that it is possible for your creative right-brain and your career-strategy left-brain to become smooth-as-silk dancing partners.

I am also your ally, especially if you get that presenting your work with confidence and credibility is as basic as good art supplies.

The key, from where I sit, is our ability to pay attention to the tangibles and the intangibles, the nitty-gritty external world, and the often-hard-to-define-or-articulate internal world of self.

Gifted by life and hard work, artists illuminate our world.
But if this work is not in the world and of the world,
the candle sputters and dies.

Learning to nourish and shelter the offering that is your art,
with knowledge and action,
keeps the artist and the art shining for us all. —Ariane

For some of you, messing around in your interior landscapes feels like a waste of time, wishy-washy, trivial, woo-woo land, and literally immaterial.

And you may be right.

But it does bring up my most skeptical self: what might be behind Door No. Three?
And how might that impact your creative self in ways that are not helpful?

So I own my prejudice up front: I am a gal who loves to explore both worlds. The good news is, if you don’t, there’s plenty here to feed your love of action and practicality and you can ignore the rest (don’t peek!)

The only book ever written on artist statements is mine. Writing The Artist Statement, Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work has been recommended coast-to-coast, from the President of the Federation of Canadian Artists to the Career Center for Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

I coach a small handful of private clients, who nourish my desire to be of service, and keep my neural networks sparking like crazy as I use just about every skill I’ve ever had in the work we do together.

I use the knowledge base from my doctorate in Human Development and Creative Behavior to create a wide range of art-career materials, and events, to help artists take their careers to the next level.

Once my website launched — artist-statement.com — I watched my income triple in 3 months, and realized that I’d hit on critical pieces about website and Internet marketing, from outside the artist community, that would benefit any creative professional who is hungry for practical, solid information.

And I wanted a way to get that information into your hands.

From that desire, the smARTist® Telesummit was born. This annual art-career conference, with a dozen or more keynote speakers, now reaches 22 countries around the world, and 44 USA states.

And from the telesummit this smARTist Career Blog was born, as artist after artist asked me for a year-round way to stay in touch.

This blog needs you, so please stay in touch too!

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On Thursday, I’ll will post some yummy tidbit
about creativity, art, and how we see the world around us.

I live in a forest in the mountains of Santa Cruz, California where I make art, tend my property, and spend time listening to Nature, music, and the inner songs.

I take trips to great museums and spend months studying from the Masters there. I write. I dance. I ride my bicycle along the bay. I talk with friends. I keep my mind, hands and heart open and roaming while meditatively tending to home fires and routines.

I spent my earliest intellectual life acquiring the skills, and exploring the disciplines, of science. If it were not for a chance art history course, I might have ended up a biologist or physicist.

But some shimmering slides of prehistoric cave paintings on a college classroom wall riveted my attention and sent me reeling. From then on, I crossed over into territory of a different sort. And I have meandered back and forth between these two worlds ever since, gaining experience and, through practice, a bit of wisdom and facility.

I draw in my studio almost every day. Currently a new body of work is emerging, one that is concerned with Movement/Stillness, Luminosity/Density. And I seem to be exploring what it’s like to make pictures appear from a place of Don’t-Know Mind.

You can see some of what I have been up to on my websites: wildsight.com and loriwolfson.com.

I appreciate being invited to participate in this blogging community. For me it would provide an opportunity to grow beyond what is achievable individually and join forces with others of like mind (heart). I heard a saying the other day: ”If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I embrace the chance.

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