Inventory. Boy, that sounds exciting, huh? Yeah, baby, there's nothing like curling up with a good spreadsheet or database and checking things off to really make your day exciting!
So, yeah, I've been doing an inventory of what's in my studio. I'm not really sure how or why it got started, but the next thing I knew, I had the inventory on my computer and was trying to match entries to the artworks stacked around the room. And it wasn't going all that well. Here's a painting on the list, but where is it? And there's a painting against the wall, but is it even on the inventory? Sheesh.
I've been keeping an inventory using a spreadsheet (Apple's Numbers, if you want to be precise) for years. I add new works to it, or update entries, whenever it occurs to me. But I haven't really gone through and matched entries to artworks in, well, forever. Not a good thing to do if you're in business. So I got serious and spent quite a bit of time over the past four or five days trying to get everything as accurate as possible. That included making labels for all the artworks and getting them stuck on all the right works. I'm reasonably sure that everything in my studio is now labeled correctly and that the list of artworks on the computer is pretty accurate. But not 100% positive.
So what did I learn? Well, I've felt confident enough to sign my name to about 400 artworks and consider them "keepers", either by me or someone else. The earliest is from 1973 and the most recent was signed yesterday. Of these, I've actually sold 49, or 12%. I've destroyed or painted over 62 (15%) of them, so for whatever reason, I decided that they really weren't keepers. Note that more of my paintings have died than have been sold. And about 23 more have been given away or donated. So I still have about 250 on the shelves and racks in the studio.
Oh, and that's only the paintings and charcoal/pastel works. It doesn't include the etchings and photographs. I've got a lot of those, too.
My spreadsheet has a lot of information, including the artwork's title, inventory number, medium, size, pricing information, status (in the studio, destroyed, etc), exhibitions (if any), and notes. A gallery owner told me that I should have everything in a special database program for artists, rather than a spreadsheet. The program allows images to be attached to each record, which makes it a helluva lot easier to match artwork with data. I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. A Google search for artist inventory software shows that there are some at the freebie level, some that want $10-$80 a month, all the way up to a one-time fee of nearly $2,000 for a permanent license. I can tell you, most of those are definitely out. I'm a dedicated cheapskate. I may just build my own database in Microsoft Access.
If I ever get around to it, that is.
So, yeah, I've been doing an inventory of what's in my studio. I'm not really sure how or why it got started, but the next thing I knew, I had the inventory on my computer and was trying to match entries to the artworks stacked around the room. And it wasn't going all that well. Here's a painting on the list, but where is it? And there's a painting against the wall, but is it even on the inventory? Sheesh.
I've been keeping an inventory using a spreadsheet (Apple's Numbers, if you want to be precise) for years. I add new works to it, or update entries, whenever it occurs to me. But I haven't really gone through and matched entries to artworks in, well, forever. Not a good thing to do if you're in business. So I got serious and spent quite a bit of time over the past four or five days trying to get everything as accurate as possible. That included making labels for all the artworks and getting them stuck on all the right works. I'm reasonably sure that everything in my studio is now labeled correctly and that the list of artworks on the computer is pretty accurate. But not 100% positive.
So what did I learn? Well, I've felt confident enough to sign my name to about 400 artworks and consider them "keepers", either by me or someone else. The earliest is from 1973 and the most recent was signed yesterday. Of these, I've actually sold 49, or 12%. I've destroyed or painted over 62 (15%) of them, so for whatever reason, I decided that they really weren't keepers. Note that more of my paintings have died than have been sold. And about 23 more have been given away or donated. So I still have about 250 on the shelves and racks in the studio.
Oh, and that's only the paintings and charcoal/pastel works. It doesn't include the etchings and photographs. I've got a lot of those, too.
My spreadsheet has a lot of information, including the artwork's title, inventory number, medium, size, pricing information, status (in the studio, destroyed, etc), exhibitions (if any), and notes. A gallery owner told me that I should have everything in a special database program for artists, rather than a spreadsheet. The program allows images to be attached to each record, which makes it a helluva lot easier to match artwork with data. I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. A Google search for artist inventory software shows that there are some at the freebie level, some that want $10-$80 a month, all the way up to a one-time fee of nearly $2,000 for a permanent license. I can tell you, most of those are definitely out. I'm a dedicated cheapskate. I may just build my own database in Microsoft Access.
If I ever get around to it, that is.
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