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coldcode 3 days ago

I make an unusual kind of art, but I haven't tried selling it, as you need a stable of interested people, and I can only post it in one place at the moment (a Facebook interest group on tiling, Instagram is overrun with AI, you can't start a new profile without lots of existing supporters). I've considered opening a gallery in my local area just to sell my art (5 million people in the metro, and barely a real commercial art gallery). My overhead would be just me and a location. The idea of selling art for tens or hundreds of thousands seems nuts.

I do see that there are too many galleries in places, selling too many artists, to too many people, with massive overhead (in the story, the gallery had $100k+ a month in expenses). Also, it's hard to make something new that is still saleable, almost every kind of art is basically something people did 50 or even 100 years ago; I look at art people are selling all the time, and most is not anything different. The best stuff is from people that hardly anyone knows, who like me just make something different because they want to.

I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit. I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there. Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries). Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!

Mentioned it here before, https://andrewwulf.com if interested.

zer00eyz 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Your site is very much letting the work down.

You dropped me onto a page with no sense of range or scope. Clicking around results in some very "odd" perceptions about what it is your putting out.

Categorize them so they can be filtered (colored, geometric, organic), load randomly by those tags or at least put a breadth of samples out front.

I like your stuff, but you need to have a better introduction and better access for it.

JKCalhoun 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have heard, and believe: successful galleries are a location thing. People with deep pockets will pick up a piece by anyone in Aspen, Colorado, and probably not look twice if they (somehow) saw a Koons in a Topeka gallery.

blitzar 3 days ago | parent [-]

Gallery owners are taste makers like stock brokers used to be before people could just point and click directly.

They put you into a good piece of artwork at a good price, build a raport, look after their good clients, perform well over time and take a couple of points on the way in and out

mulmen 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Many local businesses in my neighborhood (there are very very few chains) post art for sale from community artists and the chamber of commerce for the neighborhood sponsors art walks. In that situation you don’t even need the overhead of the gallery. Local shops, bars, and restaurants are the gallery.

dublinben 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What do you think the market is for this kind of digital art? Do you see this style of work attracting an audience elsewhere? How much is it selling for?

I'm far from an expert, but I do occasionally buy original artwork. The sheer multitude of works you are displaying (more than one a day!) devalues what you are doing. It suggests that these can be churned out with relatively little effort.

If you are really posting this for other people, and not just yourself, try posting fewer pieces. If you had to pick the single best work from July, which one would it be? If nothing stands out to you, then how is a potential customer supposed to pick you out from the crowd of similar artists?

I personally like the Persistence of Structure series, but they're each pretty interchangeable.

fluoridation 3 days ago | parent [-]

I didn't want to criticize, but since you've already opened the door: these are interesting to me as sheer sensory stimulation, but the problem that might dissuade a lot of people is that there's no structure to most of the pieces (save for the ones that are based on distorting an existing image). Without structure there's no narrative, and no reason for someone to become interested in any given piece beyond, as I said, sensory stimulation. On that note, most the color palettes are very tasteful; if coldcode is picking them algorithmically, that's pretty impressive.

Let's be honest here: the craft here is not on the images themselves. It's on the algorithms that are producing them. A solution to the problem of quantity would be to make the algorithms available to play with. I could see someone going "okay, I want something sort of like [1], but made my own. I'll toy with the parameters until I get something I like and then order a print." Two or three sample images for each algorithm, instead of six years' worth of images, would work way better.

[1] https://andrewwulf.com/detail/the-pinecone.html

mkl 3 days ago | parent [-]

They're not just algorithmic. There's a lot of manual effort in each image: https://thecodist.com/my-art-and-color-after-tiling/, https://thecodist.com/why-i-use-swift-to-make-generative-art...

> In my process, generation is supplemented by many manual processes, including image manipulation, digital painting, and occasionally even AI

slaughtr 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have no idea how it works, but if you sold/licensed/created your art to fabric patterns, theres almost certainly a small market there. Clicking through your site (others are right, you could present your work better), I see plenty of “I’d buy a decently priced cool shirt of that pattern”. Sample size of one and all.

DrewADesign 3 days ago | parent [-]

You’re much better off selling shirts. The markup on custom printed fabrics isn’t great, and there are plenty of professional fabric pattern designers out there which companies that commission fabric hire as-needed.

Honestly though, unless you’re pretty much only selling in person or too small to notice, someone is probably just going to rip you off using AI and sell shitty knockoffs on Etsy

rsynnott 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you considered making _actual tiles_? Not sure of the feasibility of this, but some of these would make great designs for tiles.

Guestmodinfo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you please let us see your art and enjoy it

andreareina 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Images partially load and then turn into placeholders

h4ny 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Take this as a additional point of reference: I don't have formal education in art and not an artist, but I find your work interesting enough that I would stop at a store to look at and probably buy something (printed and fabric) if I can afford to (especially the cover art on the home page).

Reading your comment, it sounds like you are actively sabotaging yourself by convincing yourself that you shouldn't just try (perhaps due to a subconscious fear of rejection). How do you get an audience if you don't actively promote your work and/or try to sell them?

There is no guarantee that you will "succeed" (whatever that looks like to you — success could mean having a lot of people appreciate your work and/or selling your art for lots of money) if you try your hardest but if you don't try you will never succeed at all. I'll break down the second last paragraph as an example below.

> I'd love to sell it online, but without an audience, no one will visit.

Audience don't just suddenly appear because you have created something. You need to put in the effort to create an audience to begin with.

> I could sell it at https://www.saatchiart.com, but they don't really market most of what they have. You have to drag people there.

You need an incredible amount of luck for people to just "discover" your work and just suddenly like it (especially with abstract art?), so having need "to drag people there" is just what you should do if you want exposure for your work whether or not you host them on saatchiart.com.

Don't fall into the trap of "if you build it, they will come".

Focus on creating a compelling narrative behind your art and keep iterating to attract a small, loyal audience first (1000 people is already a lot).

> Plus they take 30% or 40% (50% is normal for galleries).

This is irrelevant if nobody knows your work and would buy them to begin with. It's just another excuse to not try. By the time this is a problem you can migrate to something more personal. Many people that support independent artists want the artists they like to get more money from them.

> Locally, in the right location, people see your art, and stop by. It's just the pain of setting it up, and then sitting there while you wait!

I enjoy engaging with artists at markets because the personal connection with them is actually the most valuable thing for me and the most compelling reason for me to make purchases. I also appreciate the artists who show up consistently at related events particular those who remember me well, which also becomes a reason for me to introduce their work to my friends.

Good luck with your work and I hope you will find success with it! ^^