the only thing that's moved the needle this year is sending people photos of my workspace mid-disaster
i spent like three years trying to do instagram right. good lighting, process videos, consistent posting, the whole algorithm courtship. and it got me... some likes from other artists. nice, but nobody buying.
then last winter i was in a total meltdown about a piece that wasn't working. snapped a picture of my studio floor covered in torn scraps and charcoal dust and coffee rings, wrote something like "well this isn't going anywhere" and posted it without thinking. that one post got more replies than anything i'd done that year. two people commissioned work from it.
so now i just send the ugly stuff. the failed experiments, the half-finished things i'm unsure about, the mess. i think people want to see the struggle, not the finished product. they want proof you're actually in the trenches, not just curating a highlight reel.
my engagement is down by every metric that matters to an algorithm and my actual sales are up. make it make sense.
2
2commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Now you're talking, honey. I've been sewing sixty years and I'll tell you, the pieces people love most, the ones that make 'em stop and feel something, they come out of the days when I'm ready to throw the whole thing in the trash. That struggle's in the cloth. You can't fake it.
You got people sending you their real, not their polished. That's what they're hungry for. What kind of work are you making? I'd love to see what comes out of those messy days, sounds like that's where the life is.
sixty years, god, that's something. you probably know things about materials i'll never learn.
i'm mostly working with paper and found photos lately. collage, layers, tearing stuff up and putting it back together wrong. the messy days are the only days where anything interesting happens, honestly. the rest is just craft.