2008 CLASSICAL MUSIC CALENDAR

Yesterday I published my Great Composers 2008 Calendar on Zazzle. It looks great. I was flattered to get an email last night telling me that it was selected as one of 'Today's Best on Zazzle'.
I was also astonished to find that within 24 hours it was ranked on the first page of a Google search for Classical Music Calendar. That is truly impressive SEO by Zazzle.
I am getting the hang of Zazzle and I will be putting more work on there soon.

Jacques Henri LARTIGUE

On Thursday night BBC4 transmitted a documentary by Nick Danziger called "The Boy Who Never Grew Up". It was about Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894 - 1986) one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. While I was already familiar with many of his photographs, I was completely unaware that many of his best known ones were taken at the age 10 or 12 years old. He started at the age of 6 with his father's camera.

He was not really known until 1963, at the age of 69, when the Museum of Modern Art put on a retrospective exhibition of his work
In 1979 he donated his meticulously archived collection of his life's photographic work to the French State. It is called the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue
A fascinating life, I must read his biography.

New Wagner Portrait

Here is the portrait of Wagner I have been working on. It is a 2 plate photoetching from my pencil drawing. The coloured surround is a collagraph printed at the same time on Somerset paper. Prints and merchandise are available as follows:
Fine prints (framed or unframed) from Imagekind
Poster from artist-rising.
Giftware from Cafepress

Kids with Cameras

This morning on BBC Radio 4's 'Midweek' programme there was an interesting feature about the educational benefits of photography to deprived children.

"Sue Carpenter is a journalist and photographer. She recently led a photographic project in Nepal for the charity Asha-Nepal, in which girls from desperately poor backgrounds were taught to use a camera to remarkable effect. The photographs can be seen in My World, My View available from Asha-Nepal. You can also view them on the BBC News website. "
You can 'Listen again' to the interview on the BBC website for the next 6 days at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/midweek.shtml

This is very similar to the project in Calcutta: subject of the 2005 Oscar winning documentary "Born into Brothels" by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski.
a moving and inspiring film which I highly recommend if you are interested in children and in photography.
Following the success of the Calcutta experiment Zana set up 'Kids with Cameras' which runs workshops in Haiti, Cairo and Jerusalem and the original Calcutta workshop.

Having first seen 'Born into Brothels' on BBC TV I tried to get the DVD but it was only published in a Region 1 format not compatible for UK/Europe. Now I am happy to say that since August it is also available in Region 2 format so I have it at last.

Jeans for Genes

Today I was in Paternoster Square (adjacent to London's St Paul's Cathedral). There is a beautiful sculpture there by Elizabeth Frink called the 'Shepherd and Sheep'. Today however it had been 'denimised'. The shepherd was wearing jeans and the sheep had blue denim bow ties.
Today apparently is Jeans for Genes Day "Raising funds for today's scientist for tomorrow's children' - an important fundraising organisation for research into genetic diseases in children. See www.jeansforgenes.com for more information
I am sure Elizabeth Frink would be happy to see her sculpture used in such a creative way to help such a good cause.

New J S BACH artwork ready
I have finished my new print of JS Bach. I kept putting him off as he was quite a challenge. However I have been asked by an American symphony orchestra if they can use my portraits for a series of educational cards and Bach features in the first, to be published this month. So here he is. It is available as a fine art print from imagekind and will be sold as a poster print from art.com.
I have also added it to my cafepress shop - great presents for Bach lovers!

Which CALENDAR printer to use?
It's time to prepare and publish my 2008 calendars. Following the success of my 2007 calendar I have decided to try publishing some online. But which service to use? I have found three sites which I will certainly try out: cafepress, Zazzle and Lulu. I'll write here my experiences.
Today I have just published my Great Composers calendar on cafepress.

• There are 4 styles: a single page calendar print and three spiral bound 12page wall calendars.
• You have the option to set your own selling price which is good.
  
• It is a US based service so postage is likely to be expensive for international orders.
• Quick and easy to implement.
• Affiliate program available
• They take the order, print, ship, collect the money and pay you your markup.
  

You will find it on the front page of my cafepress store here:
http://www.cafepress.com/paulhelmshop

Henry Moore at Kew
Today we went to Kew Gardens, always a great experience. An added bonus was that we were able to view several of the Henry Moore sculptures that have already been installed in readiness for the exhibition that opens on September 15th. We were also able to see some of them being transported and installed.
This is an ideal location for a sculpture exhibition, there will be 28 large scale sculptures. I believe it continues through the winter until March 2008. There is no extra charge on top of the normal garden entrance price.
For more info see the website: http://www.kew.org/henry-moore/index.htm

Grieg's Centenary
Edvard Grieg died on 4 September 1907 aged 64.
I made this etching and collagraph earlier this year. I have just added it to my cafepress shop and uploaded it to art.com. It is already available as a fine print at imagekind.com

The Holidays are over - Back to Work

OK - so the holidays are almost over and it is time to get back to work. This summer has been great but I have fallen badly behind my plans for developing my web presence and I have not produced as many new images as I had planned.
We are already in September so I must get ready for the preChristmas selling season. I need to upload more images to Imagekind and art.com and to enlarge my Cafepress store which is doing quite well.
I plan on using eBay a lot more - not so much for selling as for driving traffic to my online stores.

Artists' Self-Portraits from the Uffizi
I've just been to the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see the new exhibition of self portraits from the Uffizi. A few outstanding ones such as Lippi, Thayaht, Annigoni and Volpedo.
It was a small exhibition of only 49 pictures hung in a long narrow gallery. The price I reckon was excessive (£8) for such a limited exhibition. But that is probably just the miser in me!
I would really like to see the Uffizi collection - the largest and most famous collection of artists' self-portraits in the world - over 1600. But they are not open to the general public - you have to make an appointment to see them.

Exhibition open
Well the exhibition is open and we spent last weekend hanging it. I have got a prominent position so you see all my prints as you enter the main gallery.
The opening party was very crowded, which was good.
It is a good show with lots of variety. So let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for lots of red dots.

Art Alarm
protecting artists against scams
Today a gallery made a post in the onlinevisualartists forum which I follow. One of the forum members was suspicious so I Googled and sure enough came up with information confirming our suspicions. The site which had the information about the suspected scam calls itself Art Alarm
Run by artist Robert Coane it is a useful resource for artists to safeguard themselves against dodgy galleries, websites and internet scams.

Edward Elgar portrait
This week I managed to complete my portrait of Edward Elgar. This year is the 150th anniversary of his birth (2nd June) so there will be a lot of Elgarmania later this year especially at the Proms.
The central portrait is an etching on 2 zinc plates. The Union Jack border is a collagraph print.

Thankfully I have finished jury service so I can get back to 'normal'.
I've been asked to do a portrait of Monteverdi so I have started researching - very interesting - I am looking forward to working on it.

ArtistsOnline
Well, well well! I'm Featured Artist of the Month at artistsonline.org.uk
So I'm busy uploading images.
I really like the Virtual Gallery feature on this young site, it really does give an impression of being in an art gallery. It is more refined and stylish than the galleries ound on zazzle or eBay.
It is a very young site and shows lots of promise, so let's give it plenty of support.

Jury Service
I have been called for jury service and yesterday was my first day, so work is somewhat disrupted. Anyway it is another experience, interesting but quite appalling how much time is wasted. The normal length of service is about 2 weeks but some trials can go on for many months. I was on the bus with someone on a 15 week trial. The jury selection is supposed to be random so it is all in the luck of the draw. I feel lucky!

BEETHOVEN print now ready
I have finished the print of dear old Ludwig. He looks rather fierce but then he was a rather grumpy old man.

The 3 dots and a dash of the coloured border recall the opening bars of Beethoven's 5th Symphony and are also the morse code for the letter V (for Victory) which made it a popular work with the allies during World War II.

Sixteen@MorleyGallery
16 of us from the Thursday printmaking sessions at Morley College have hired The Morley Gallery for a week to exhibit our work. We had a meeting in the gallery today to sort out the finances, publicity and timetable. Spreading the cost between 16 of us means a total cost each of under £100 including printing, drinks at the opening and importantly staffing the gallery. Excellent value.
As we are hiring the gallery the gallery is not taking any commission on sales.
So now down to work - a lot to prepare for the opening on March 5th . I think I will exhibit 16 composers
Above is the invitation.

Leonard BERNSTEIN

This week I finished my print of Leonard Bernstein.
It turned out quite well and the collagraph surround is very strong.
It is on my website. I tried uploading it to art.com but the site won't let me in to edit the information, which is bad considering that this weekend is the deadline for uploading images before the big transition to their new site 'Artists Rising'. I do hope their new site works better than the disasterous revamp of the art.com site.
Anyway I have uploaded it to imagekind with no trouble at all. What a difference! A great site - they are doing nearly everything right and deserve to be successful.

Back to School with Offenbach
OK the holidays are finished, back to normal. Today I started back at the Morley College print studio and produced the Offenbach print illustrated here.
I plan on continuing with the series of composers and have made a start on the next one - Leonard Bernstein, which hopefully will be ready next week.

I'm EBSQ's Featured Artist of the Month
Well 2007 has started off really well with my being EBSQ's featured artist of the month for January 07. Very flattering. An interview and some of my images are published in their monthly ezine on their site.
You can read it here

HAPPY NEW YEAR
Best wishes for a happy and successful 2007 to all.
Today being New Year's Day I have put Johannes Strauss Jr. as Image of the week. On the radio I am listening to the Vienna New Year's Concert. This annual event is broadcast around the world to an estimated audience of 1 billion in 44 countries. It began in 1939. Predominantly music by the Strauss family, it ends with the Blue Danube and the rousing Radetszky March.
While Strauss isn't one of my favourite composers, somehow on New Year's Day with the lively spirit of the audience it takes on another dimension.