Intellectual Property

My Business of Art class had an excellent lecture last Friday delivered by the teacher and it revealed her knowledge and grasping of the concepts involved in legally protecting your art and you as an artist.
What you create is called 'intellectual property'. Protecting your property involves copyrights and trademarks, and a lot more. I am not going to reveal the details of the lecture--that is probably copyrighted by 'Teach' and I know she doesn't make available her PowerPoint slides. Just our fast scribbled notes survive.
A lot of the aspects of being a successful artist involve spending time and doing things we don't want to do. We just want to spend our time creating art.
Not creating a business.
But the two must go hand in hand.
So, in your pursuit of a successful art career, I hope YOU don't have to spend too much time learning about:

• 'Cease and Desist'
• Intellectual Property
• uspto.gov
• 'Look and Feel' lawsuits
• trademark infringement
• 'tangible expression'
  
• trade secrets
  
• trade dress

Maybe Mother was right, after all. Maybe I should have been a Lawyer.

Business of Art Class visits Contemporary Arts Forum

Field trips have the potential to be interesting and there was no disappointment when the SBCC Business of Art Class went to the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum this past Friday. We had the pleasure of listening to Executive Director Miki Garcia devote way over an hour to talk, and talk fast, with continuous ideas and revelations, and commentary on how things really happen in the art world.
How building a network and staying in touch and keeping the network updated on what you are doing seems like the important thing to do.

We live in the time of constant generation and sharing of media files and various groupings of individuals to exchange data and information instantaneously. It's not only What media-OBJECT the artist generates, it's which of the many channels do you want to use to distribute it and to whom? Virtual galleries and virtual interviews are virtually happening as we speak. Did YOU send out a VIDEO today?? Do your part to live beyond your time.

Glossary

I am studying HTML working my way through an excellent online tutorial. The topic is "dictionary list" and I am told that this is an excellent way to make a Glossary.
Now, every time I think of "Glossary" I have a fond flashback to grade school and my first remembrance of our textbooks. Not that I remember exactly what content was in them (bad stuff like Religion, and Grammar I am sure). I remember making covers out of some plastic/oil cloth type of material, folding and taping, to protect the used book's actual cover.
And more fondly I remember being told that these books had a "Glossary", usually near the end. This was a special section because it was filled with many new words and what these words meant. This was a learning process I enjoyed and even today I daily go to the dictionary to find out the meaning and origin of some word.
I have in my box of old family photos, a couple of report cards from when my dad went to the one-room Bean Schoolhouse for his grade school education. I have a 'brown book' (before 'blue books' I guess) that he has written in a numbered list of words and definitions and the books they came from. He must have used a nibbed pen and ink from a well at his desk to make his Glossary. At that time the handwriting is unhurried and neater than his later style, when he had six children and a wife to be thinking about.
Today on the radio I heard a report announcing that by now Google has scanned the entire contents of millions of books. A claim of '100 years of knowledge'. Of course all the text is searchable, and the radio announcer promised 'a new way of reading'.
I see it now. Instead of coming across a word and looking up it's meaning in a glossary or a dictionary, you click on it so some money changes hands and you are offered a chance to buy whatever it is through Google AdWords. Pig in a Poke, anyone?

html class update

last Monday was the labor day holiday so we didn't have class, even though the first assignment was due on that date. It's pretty cool because we can do assignments and turn them in from our home computer. If we don't need help from the instructor or a tutor we don't need to go to the computer lab.
I had finished the first two assignments and turned them in so I am ahead of the game. I am using the break to work through the tutorials and a couple of HTML books I have at home. I want to get a good grasp of the procedure to 'mark-up' the document, and how the different tags are correctly used.
With this more methodical study I have learned a few things already. I don't want to get behind.
I am actually enjoying this learning. I find it so important to be learning something especially where there is some technicality involved. And even though the 'design' part comes later with study of CSS-(style sheets), I am enjoying using the tags by hand and making a simple web page.
I made a web page for the Open Studio Art class I teach in Adult Ed. Check it out.
http://www.bobmask.com/workshop.html

visit to local art gallery

Today the business of art class had a field trip to a local gallery. Actually, two galleries in one. there is a vintage side, almost all dead artists, and a contemporary gallery, for the living stable of artists. We had a wonderful presentation from the gallery owner and from the contemporary curator. It is all about business. these people are in the business of selling art and they have big time expenses to cover each month like rent, staff, marketing. They know their clients and they know what their clients are interested in buying and THAT is what they put on their walls.
It looks like I might have to come up with some landscape paintings.
That CAN'T BE ME talking.

I like the way teach's ART looked on a GLASS PLATE

So, I did attend the first Business of Art Class and listened to the teacher's presentation. I think pretty much all 30 students were enthused by the positive energy and success story of Professor Nicole. Her background and success in Business is evident and what we want to feed from. She promises to show us different approaches to try, some of which we won't like and some of which we will. She didn't promise any miracles, only that we must be fearless and keep trying no matter how many rejections. She has been working her methods for several years now and she will help us develop an approach or pathway.
A key element is to develop 'the incredible power of flexible thinking' and we have a written assignment to use the Internet to research Free Art Opportunities. So I'm buying into Prof Nicole's process. What does it mean that I actually think HER ART-work looks GOOD on the GLASS PLATE she showed us? Can YOU see some of my FAMILY PAINTING images on a Back-to-School Backpack???