Feature Articles on Artists: How To Get Your Art Featured

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Artist Marketing Resources announced the launch of the new ArtWorld Community magazine last week, with Marie Kazalia and Keith McFarlane as co-editors. The first week, both Keith and I have received requests from several artists wishing to be featured in articles.

With all the interest, I’ve begun looking at articles I’ve written on artists and published 3 and 4 years ago–many published in the Yahoo! contributor network, by Technorati News, and on the VASA New York blog, as well as this blog.  One of these early articles I wrote on  R. WEIS – titled Compositions of Manipulated Sound ( read it here) with the artist sending me his sound art CDs so that I could listen to his work. I don’t recall which came first, but I wrote a second article on a Cleveland based Artist Who Uses Sound Chris Kulcar here, with lots of videos of this young artist’s performances included in the article.

My article on painter Chris Osborne’s  Stars and Cars series, including Jimi Hendrix with His Corvette Stingray, Paul Newman with His Racing Datsun, Steve McQueen and the Bullit Mustang here, brought interest due to the subject matter of vintage cars and celebrities depicted in the paintings.

I also wrote a timely article on the efforts of the Artist Power Bank in Tokyo along with American artist Alicia Bay Laurel’s Fund-Raising for Japan’s earthquake disaster relief here. Alicia Bay Laurel’s success goes back to the 1960’s with the publication of her artist book still in print and available today and popular in Japan.

When I wrote my article on Canadian Artist in Scotland – Trevor Jones here, I learned about his research into color and sound theory and his use of music in his art. (Trevor also sent me two of his drawings as gifts!).

I wrote and published the first article on photographic artist Ventiko (here) who has since been feature in print in Interview Magazine!  Ventiko is an extraordinary photographic artist who creates images that look like Renaissance oil paintings.

These are just a select few early articles on artists featured on Artist Marketing Resources. At least one of these artists recently contacted me requesting that I write a new article on his latest work for the ArtWorld Community magazine.

As editor, I am seeking complete articles with images, ready to publish. As feature writer, I offer options to artists here.

More recently, Artist Marketing Resources has featured articles on a wide variety of painters, from Paul Rooms in New York, to Texas cowboy artist J.R. Smith, as well as Jay Burton’s sensual photographic art (here)– just to name a few.

 

 

Jay Burton’s Photographic Art: The Sensual Flowering of an Unclothed Woman

Elusive

Elusive, Jay Burton

Flower photography has been a long-time interest of photographic artist Jay Burton, who says that his fascination with flowers lies in “the intricacy and sensuality of floral structure” and in “the challenge of producing a unique, striking flower image.” Jay Burton is a nationally exhibited, award-winning photographer who began making photographic images at the early age of eight. Jay holds a Ph.D. in theatre, and teaches drama in community colleges, where he also directed and designed sets and  theatrical lighting. He believes that his work in theatre compliments his work in photography and vice versa. Both arts are, in his opinion “about meaningful moments, ideas, feelings, and pictures.”

A few years ago, Jay became interested in the possibilities of abstract photography.  While exploring those two interests–flowers and abstraction–, he began work with what he has come to call “middle ground macros.” Jay explains that middle ground macros “fall somewhere between a typical macro, such as an insect’s eyeball, and an extreme close-up, like a whole flower.”

Summer Morning, Jay Burton

Summer Morning, Jay Burton

In his choice of lens-to-subject distance and shallow depth of field, Jay generates a level of abstraction that retains intricacy and sensuality in his image subjects.

“In editing and cropping these images, I realized that they could be organized by juxtaposition, which created new and different relationships between the parts and formed a completely unique larger image. I chose the grid as a convenient framework for this juxtaposition.” Jay says that “both the single images and the images that make up the grids are of different parts of the subject and are often shot at different times and on different days.”

Insidious, Jay Burton

Insidious, Jay Burton

“After shooting, there are fifteen steps in creating a final printed grid. Creative decisions and discovery occur at every step in the process. By far, the most complicated step is the creation of a working grid; this requires finding new ways of arranging individual shots to create connections and thus an entirely new, cohesive image.”

Once he’d  produced a number of flower grids, Jay applied the same concept and process to the female form, or, more accurately portions of the female form. The results were very different, but no less satisfying for the photographer. “Shortly after that, I recognized that foods could also provide very sensual subject matter. At present I am exploring other subject matter, but I have not abandoned any of the earlier series.”

Spanish Guitar

Spanish Guitar, Jay Burton

Jay completes all the work manipulating his camera shots on his computer, but the end products, which are limited edition prints, are created by a genuine photographic process on light-sensitive paper.

The guiding considerations for Jay Burton’s current work are “suggestion and sensuality.”  Jay Burton sees more subtle sensuality in a flower image than in a boudoir photograph. For Jay, a grid composed of parts of the female form “can be far more suggestive than a photograph of an unclothed woman.”

Helix, Jay Burton

Helix, Jay Burton

View larger versions of Jay Burton’s sensual images on his website http://jayburtonphotography.com   and on his blog Unnatural light http://unnaturallight.com