Refer to grades 9-12, that means clean up your act. No one goes out on a date without a shower, shave and clean clothes and a minty fresh smile. Get comfortable with what you want to say, practice in the mirror before you get there ; no date ever goes well if you aren't confident. Don't show up at a gallery (that you have a scheduled appointment with) looking like a beat up starving artist, who wants to date that? Not a gallery.

3. Dating = rejection

Galleries reject artists, it happens to everyone. You will blow it and you will pick yourself up and dust yourself off and try again with another art gallery and you are supposed to, it's part of that life thing. Refer to step 2.

4. Learn to communicate

You're the one asking that gallery or agency out on a date, so you are responsible for any and all communication. If you are considering working with a gallery that works on consignment ask for their consignment form in advance and read it. If they don't have one really question why you are working with them or produce your own consignment form and get thier signature. Ask for referrals and follow up on them.

5. The prenup

Date a while before you sign a contract. Agents or galleries that want to represent you will put everything in writing. Read through it all, this is your pre-nuptial agreement. What are your expectations? What is your investment? How many peices do they want? What is your profit? What is your exit clause and what is the gallery's? Again, the communication is all up to you. You can be eccentric AFTER you sign the contract and fufill your obligations.

6. Cheating

Again, communication is so important. If you are going to work with a gallery or agent, work with them, it's a team effort. If you want to work with a gallery, you agree to send your prospective buyer to them, even though you might not make as much money,this is price of dating. A cheating artist is one who screws over the gallery by selling their work outside the gallery, after all, art is a business, and it's all about the money. As in life cheat once or twice on your partner and get away with it, but cheating in the art world gets you dumped much faster. Galleries hate this about artists.

Can you sell yourself? Not likely, but you can sell your self short. The sales person at your gallery can probably sell AC in the arctic, but for some crazy reason they sell art instead. They sing your praises, again and again through out their day, and for what? Not much unless they are selling Robert Bateman. Included in the sale price of your work through a gallery is insurance, rent, electricity, TAXES, technology, printing, marketing, advertising, gas, AC/Heat, cleaning, and the list goes on. Appreciate them and the job that they do for you and then follow up and communicate with them. Just because they can sell doesn't mean they can communicate beyond that sale. If a gallery cheats on you, which happens, learn from the experience and pick yourself up and dust yourself off and keep creating.

When I got involved with digital photography & ink jet reproduction, I struggled as an artist to find a balance between technology and my traditional artistic views. I found what I was looking for in my kitchen; the microwave and the stove...they both cook, but with different results. Consider a still camera and a digital camera in the same light.

Both cameras produce an image, but these images are produced by two very different technologies. A still camera is a piece of equipment that captures light on celluloid film. A digital camera is a computer with a lens that captures an image on a sensor.

Digital is not film. A silver halide print, an ink jet print, a Iris gicleé, a serigraph, and a lithograph are all entirely different printing processes and the results are too. In my opinion, the differences are a matter of personal preference.

Similarly, when the microwave made it to the kitchen, it took awhile for us to figure out it's place among the other appliances.

As a point of reference, Alfred Stieglitz (circa 1920) approached photography with two terms straight photography and pictorial photography. His definitions were straight photography, an untouched image. Pictorial images allow for the manipulation of the image pre and/or post exposure.

No matter how the image is captured and reproduced they are still photographs.

Of course there is a rumor that Da Vinci sketched out a camera obscura, but it's easier to skip ahead 300 years.

1814- The first photographic image is recorded with a camera obscura in France.

1826- The first permanent photograph is made using a sliding wooden box camera.

1837- The daguerreotype; the first image that was fixed and did not fade. The image was captured in an emulsion on copper.

1841- The Calotype process makes multiple prints on paper possible.

1843- The first advertisement with a photograph appears in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, the albumen print was created with a solution of egg whites, table salt and silver nitrate. The carte-de-visite enjoys popularity.

1860- The US Civil war gets documented in photography. Death and destruction are recorded and sensationalized upclose and personal in detail in black, white and sepia.

1871- The Gelatin-Silver process is introduced, and it is still the photographic process used with black-and-white films and printing papers today.

1874- The Impressionist Art movement rocks the art world. (This is included as a reference point in the art world).

1884-1900- Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film, followed by roll film and then celluloid film. Large Format SLR cameras come on the scene, as well as the Kodak Brownie box camera.

1913-1914- The 35mm still camera makes its debut, just in time to record another another war. Cameras, lens', film and printing merge
as an art form in the US for Steiglitz, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston, to mention a few.

1927- GE develops the modern flashbulb. Sound gets added to movies.

1935- Kodak color film emerges. (Must be time for another war, is there a pattern developing here?)

1948- The Polaroid camera makes its debut.

1950’s- The TV, couch potato and acrylic paints are born.

1963- Polaroid introduces instant color film .

1968- The first photograph of the Earth from the moon is sent back to Earth (for those of you who believe we landed on the moon).

1970’s- The SLR camera dominates the market.

1985- The launch of digital cameras rocks the photography & art world. Personal Computers launch about the same time (yes, yes, that is Apple and IBM to those of you appreciate details) and it still rocks.

For those of you whose birth date falls after 1985, it's ancient history, we know, be in awe anyway.

by appointment only