Sidetracked Charley

Return of the Yei   For an all too brief summer we had hope. We dared to plan arts events. And as we put in place the preparation for another Angel Fire Studio Tour we became aware it had been two years since we had done any of this. But we soldiered on with hope.  We dared to buy supplies and work on inventory to sell, dusted off the display cabinets and laid in supplies of N95 masks so we could keep ourselves and our customers safe incase the Delta Variant could not be contained within the boundaries of neighboring states. But since residents of those states escape the heat to come to the mountains so could the dreaded Darwin Covid. As it came time to pay the big bucks for brochures and advertising we caved. We could see the handwriting on the wall of the Governor's office. She might be playing nice because she was running for re-election but she considers art and art business non-essential. We cancelled the studio tour but not the studios. We opted to go underground as it w...

My Cat Thicke Because I am an artist, and a blogger, and on several social media sites I Google well. But Thicke leads me in likes. Paws down. And my photographs of Thicke do very well on several photographic pages I participate in. He certainly has fan appeal. Wondering if he should be my logo. Should I take advantage of him being my unofficial studio cat and make it formal. Yesterday I attended a workshop on how to put my business on the map. Yes, I Google well, even Google image well, but Google maps has trouble locating me. Evidently it also has a great deal of trouble locating a lot of others in my neck of the woods. Literally. But would they zero in on my location if I listed it as the home of Thicke? Tag words or labels help your posts, be they photos or blogs, score high in Google ratings. I use New Mexico a lot. But I am wondering as I am trying to put Binford-Bell Studio on Google and the map should I be using Thicke as a tag word? You got my spots right? In t...

Clouds in My Coffee by J. Binford-Bell Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything which no longer  serves you, grows you or makes you happy. A year ago this month I made some tsunami like changes in my life. After more than 17 years deeply involved in art organizations in my valley I quit. Never one to do things half way I decided to no longer do art fairs (decision based on sound financial analysis), and to leave a gallery I had been involved in for nine years (decision based on independent market research - I talked to my customers). And I decided to take a break from painting to devote my energies to photography for a while. We all need a vacation. After winning several prizes for my photography and selling quite a few I am diving back into the shallow end of painting. By that I mean I have given up the "production" painting that doing fairs demands and working on  pieces that mean something to me. Some are from photographs that as always were a spri...