Art marketing 101

Suzie Harrison

Yesterday marked the official summer opening of Gallery 821.

The gallery is an off-campus exhibition center for the Laguna College

of Art & Design, exhibiting paintings, sculptures, drawings and animation

cells created by the students.

“It is a juried process by the faculty of the students’ submissions to

ensure quality and consistency of work,” said the school’s President Alan

Barkley.

Faculty advisors Michael Jacques and Betty Shelton said that the goal

was to give students a real-world learning tool.

Teaching students to move more in the direction of real life, the

artist’s can gain experience on selling their work and the emotional part

of letting it go.

“It’s always a dilemma. They’ve learned plenty about creating but the

hard part is for them to learn to let go, see themselves as sellers and

patrons as clients,” said Jacques.

Most of the students aren’t taught how to sell their own work and are

used to gaining praise and good grades as opposed to money.

“Price determination is part of the learning process, encouraging

students to add how much they have put into framing, materials, time,”

said Shelton.

The students come in with a lot of talent and grow through their

education, while being immersed with different gifted students.

Sophomore student Geanna Anstey is helping with the exhibition through

administration, designing and printing information postcards about the

gallery and contacting students to bring in their work.

“It’s been a very good experience because I have a background in

business and tend to be very organized,” Anstey said. “Now I get to apply

real world functions combining my business world with my newfound art

world.”

The students do rotations for eight weeks of the summer and as the

pieces are sold new art is added. Barkley believes that the students will

be pretty busy during the summer replacing pieces of already sold work.

“It gives them the confidence to sell their work, if they are good

they realize their work will sell,” Barkley said.

“The collectors really make a difference in the artist’s life. They’re

the audience and without the audience they have nothing,” said Jacques.

FYI

Gallery 821 WHERE: 891 Laguna Canyon Road in Festival Center, between the Sawdust

Festival and Art-a-Fair.

PHONE: 376-1714.