It is interesting owning a business. I never thought of myself as a business person. As I was studying fine arts and then fashion design, my mother kept telling me to go for MBA. I suspect she had any idea what MBA stood for, or even the fact that it is a master's degree which comes after the bachelor's degree. She knew you'd make lots of money if you had one.
Now that I "own" a business of sort, people are asking me things I never thought about. I am even invited to a small gathering around a local politician. I am going to attend, just so I will hopefully learn the kind of things I need to be wanting from the government as a small business owner.
In my mind, Creators' Co-Op is a community, where we the artists and designers stage our creations for a local audience and customers. The Co-Op itself is also a business, I guess, but I didn't really think of it that way. Black Friday and Small Business Saturday is on this week. The Co-Op is having a store-wide sales for these 2 days. Gaetano, baby Kharin and I will be at the Co-Op bright and early with steaming pot full of spiced apple cider. I am thankful for the opportunity to be in this position, learning and making things up as I tumble along the path.
Janet Morgan and Gregory Frux joined the Co-Op with their cards featuring their paintings this week. They are Encouragement Cards, Belly Dance Art Cards, and Death Valley Cards.
Kazuki, great thoughts.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I'm looking forward to as part of our co-op is exploring ways to "stage" (to use your word) my work in as theatrical and creative ways as I can. Art need not stay fixed within its primary medium as a physical object of beauty; it can become an event, a commentary or criticism of the art around it, or a plaything.
Cross-merchandising between artists can also be fun, like displaying jewelry and boxes together. And I just discovered some decorative paper from Italy depicting 50s fashion illustrations, inspiring me to create a collection of my work which comments on the fashion themes in our little collective.
And collaborating is another way artists can actually comment on each other's work. A jeweler and a jewelry box maker can design their work to coordinate. I also have two artist friends outside the co-op who I have plans to collaborate with.
One of them, my abstract painter friend Alice Lipping, would like to hand paint paper and let me cut it up and fold it into origami boxes. (Her work can currently be seen at Basta Pasta in Manhattan.)
And most astonishing, a photographer friend and I plan to design -- of all things -- an origami camera.
David Howe and I stumbled on this idea when he told me (in reference to my boxes), "You know, even the most sophisticated electronic camera is essentially nothing but a box with a hole in it."
When making that comment, he did not realize that because the lids of my boxes are multiple squares of folded paper connected in a certain way, each box actually has a pinhole in the center of the lid. This pinhole can be used as the lens of what I hope one day will be our functional origami camera.
Who knows -- we may pull it off, and introduce not only the camera itself into our boutique, but the photographs it captures.
What shall we photograph? The work of our other member artists, of course. Art which not only creates art, but comments on it.