Art/Tech School

Oh, the Joys of Creating Art! (Oh, the Headache of Tracking It!)

by Laura Pollak, PSA, PSWC, PSNC, PPS, SPS, IAPS MC

Anyone who has ever been in retail knows the tedium of taking inventory. Even running a household requires keeping track of what you have and where it is. I cannot tell you how many times I had to run out and purchase something because I could not find what I already had!

Whether you are an art hobbyist or a professional, full time artist, it’s important to keep track of your creations. When you want to pull out a painting as a gift or submit to a gallery or ship to a patron, you need to know where your artwork is. I don’t know about you, but I go into a panic if I can’t find a piece, especially if it just sold!

There are several ways to keep track of your creations and only you can decide which one works with your lifestyle. Today, we are going to review a few of the basic inventory methods, and I hope you will share your favorites with me as well.

Inventory System Needed

I began painting full time in 2009, after my leaving advertising career. So, over the years, I have created and accumulated about 500 works of art. Thank goodness many have sold and some I’ve given away as gifts. But every time a patron requests a painting, either by seeing it on my website, in a gallery or on Facebook, I need to know its location.

To make matters more complicated, we have become ‘Snowbirds’ in the last few years, wintering in Naples, Florida and heading back to Greensboro, North Carolina in the spring and summer. With two studios, keeping track of the location of each painting has becomes critically important. We are lucky, for sure, but trying to remember what is where, from six months ago is no easy feat! That said, my inventory system has evolved over the years. In the beginning, I had no system! I didn’t think much about keeping track. I was not producing all that much, and I certainly didn’t feel like a professional. Over the years, my pace of creativity has quickened, and I can easily paint 250 pieces per year!

So, how to keep track?

Let’s begin with the simple solutions. Many artists abhor computers and stay in the realm of pen and paper. They love the simplicity of a spiral notebook. This is how it all began for me as well. I would record a painting’s title, medium, size and a bit about the piece. But I couldn’t place a photo of the painting in the notebook. Let’s face it, we are all visual people, and a picture would have been great.

I am one of those that loves the ease of computers (when they actually work), so I tried my hand at an Excel spreadsheet. That worked better. I could search a name or field; however, I had trouble seeing everything in those tiny little columns. And expanding them would scoot rows or columns off the page. Also, importing photos of the artwork was cumbersome. (I do know many wonderful artists who still happily use this method successfully.)

Since I’m a die-hard Mac person, I went to a seminar at my local Apple Store and saw a demo of a Relational Database. The native Apple software is called FileMaker Pro by Claris. Years ago, I had a version of it, but I never took the time to really learn how to use it. This time, I decided to invest my brain power and learn how to make this database work for me.

You could see steam coming out of my ears and chronology of the ownership, custody, or location) of an of a painting became more critical!

True story: A well-known artist entered a regional show with a lovely painting. And of course, the painting was accepted. Unfortunately, the artist forgot to pull the painting from the gallery and the piece sold. “YAY,” for the artist, right? Not so good for the show! Now the painting could not be shipped to the show. The show was short a painting (which meant another artist could have been accepted) and the guidelines for the show state that this artist is precluded from entering this show for the next three years! Not a good thing! My Dad used to say: “Smart people learn from others’ mistakes.”

It took three weeks to set up the perfect format. Now, I can set up a new database in minutes! It was elegant and perfect for what I needed. The only problem − it was only licensed for one computer, so if I was away from my computer I could not access it.

The more I painted, the more information I felt I needed to record. Going beyond just title, size, and medium, I felt it was now important to track a painting’s location. Studio or gallery? North Carolina or Florida? Sold or on hold?

And as I began to enter shows, the provenance (the

FileMaker Pro Database Page

That said, I immediately added a field in my database − not only which shows the painting was entered in to, but also if it was accepted, and if it won an award. “Why,” you ask? Because if the painting isn’t accepted, it can go to another show. If it was accepted, I don’t want to inadvertently enter it into another concurrent show, or the same show next year! If the painting actually won an award, I have to be careful about entering it into a show that doesn’t allow an award-winning piece to be entered. (YIKES! Now that I’m trying to step up my game, the rules get a whole lot more complicated!)

I now also include for my own information the following fields:

• Date of creation

• Unframed size

• Framed size [some shows have size restrictions]

• Substrate of the painting (i.e. archival foam board with Uart Paper, or Gator Board)

• Price

More recently, I’ve started including a serial number This keeps me apprised of my total number of paintings. You can create codes that make sense for that information. For instance, Jeanne Rosier Smith creates a number that includes the year, month and the number of paintings in that month. Brilliant!

For example:

P-319-4-2020

P = pastel painting

319 = inventory number

4 = month

2020 = year created

As my paintings began to sell, I then realized that keeping track of my patrons would be smart as well. So, as part of my categories, I added:

• Name of the patron

• Patron info - mailing address, email, phone number

• Painting(s) purchased

That way, I could contact them again if a painting in the same genre became available.

From my marketing and advertising days, I learned that mailing lists are critical, so knowing who you have sold to, is very important. Next, I realized that if I have a painting placed with a gallery, I need to put that in the provenance as well.

True Story: Many years ago, early in my painting career, I had three paintings at a gallery in Virginia. It was out of the way for us to visit, so I didn’t keep in touch (BIG MISTAKE). I contacted them when we were going to go up to the region for a visit. They didn’t have any idea which pieces of mine they had! They were new owners and had trouble locating them in their inventory. UGGGG! Again, through my own mistakes, I’ve learned to keep track of where paintings are placed! (They did find them, but I won’t make those mistakes again.)

When adding new fields, I realized that a description would be helpful. Everyone loves the story behind a piece of art. And often these descriptors can sell a painting. So, I have added that field as well. What I could not do, (though I tried many times), was to use the ‘relational’ part of the FileMaker Pro database. What I was trying for, was to create a mathematical formula that said: This is how much I’ve earned this year by selling this painting. In other words, a running total income. I am quite sure that many of you reading this could have easily figured it out, but my brain is totally math challenged, not to mention programming challenged. So that never happened.

A New Player- Artwork Archive

A few months ago, I saw a presentation by Jeanne Rosier Smith regarding the software that she uses for archiving her works. Jeanne is represented by eight galleries, and she is the consummate professional. For her to keep track of her multitudes of paintings, she stated plainly that she couldn’t do what she does without the Artwork Archive service.

I’m known as a very stubborn person (Taurus that I am), and here I am watching Jeanne’s presentation and thinking to myself, “My FileMaker Pro can do all that, and I won’t have to pay a yearly subscription.” (I paid for it once, and then one upgrade and I’m good to go for a few years.) However, the further Jeanne got into the specifics of the App, I found myself getting pulled in. When she demonstrated the platform and what is possible, my little brain started pondering if it might do more of what I needed.

Artwork Archive has a trial period which is free because they want you to be absolutely certain of the service. I really didn’t like the concept of paying yearly, but when I looked at how much I’ve paid to FileMaker Pro over the years, I realized it almost equaled out. (BTW, I’m not a spokesperson for them and not getting paid. I’m just sharing my journey on how to keep track of my art business.)

Artwork Archive has three levels of membership depending on how many paintings you need archived: 100 pieces, 500 pieces or Unlimited. You can choose what you need and always upgrade, if necessary. I decided to try them when I saw a 30% off yearly fee. Because of my volume, I went for the highest level. I didn’t even take the trial period. If I take the time to migrate all my data over to them, then I’m already committed. It did, however, take a few months before I made the transition from FileMaker Pro to Artwork Archive.

Migrating to Artwork Archive

Migrating from FileMaker Pro was impossible, and it really wasn’t much easier migrating from FASO (Fine Art Studio Online, the website host that I, along with many other artists, use).

I was ready to call them up and ask for my money back when I finally got up the nerve to ask Artwork Archive to help me with the data merge between FASO and their site. They will do a one-time conversion of data for free; however, it just wasn’t working. Finally, I got on a conference call with the owner of Artwork Archive and the owner of FASO! That was quite entertaining. I was a fly on the wall, listening to all the tech stuff (totally over my head), and they were collaborating to make it work for me. I also think that they are now moving forward to work together in the future since these two apps are symbiotic and work well together!

Since then, I’ve tweaked the platform with some of my own input and added a few works that didn’t make the transition. Other than that, it’s working beautifully.

One of the things that Jeanne showed in her presentation was something that no other platform that I know of can do, PRIVATE VIEWING ROOMS! This is the coolest concept! This last week, a patron contacted me and asked about several paintings. I put together a private, curated collection of paintings I thought she would like based on her past purchases. I included important information along with pricing and framing information, etc.

She LOVED it! It looked professional and made selling easy.

This can also be used to present a collection to a prospective or current gallery. You can easily drag and drop paintings from your inventory into a custom named collection, and then create a web link for the collection to click and see artwork you selected exclusively for them! It’s clean and beautiful!

There are many features I’m only just discovering. There are tax features that will summarize your income. You can create reports- one is an inventory report of what is dropped off at a gallery. These are PDF reports that you can share with the gallery. If you choose to make your entire inventory public, then Artwork Archive could act as your website (though it is not designed to do that and doesn’t have much design flexibility).

A while back, I felt that QR codes looked cheap, but now I’m seeing them everywhere, even in upscale venues like Art Basel (I went last November to this amazing show). The galleries exhibiting there were using the codes throughout the exhibition. Artwork

Archive can produce a QR code for each piece. You simply take a picture of it with your smart phone and boom! You have all the info you need on a painting! Settings may be made public or privatefor instance, if you do not wish to show the pricing, you have the option to uncheck that box and then it will not show up.

My latest goal is to research new galleries and create a database of who I might approach. The platform allows for new contacts to be entered and subdivided into groups. When you make contact or send out information, you have a place to:

• Make notes of when and what you sent

• Schedule a follow up reminder that will pop up on your computer

• Annotate conversations

If all this sounds too complicated, don’t panic! They have a Learning Center where you can watch videos on how to perform a certain task.

One of my favorite aspects of this platform is that it is cloud-based which means that if I’m on my computer, my iPad, or my phone I can access information no matter where I am. And if I decide to hire an assistant, that person could also access the files! That would be a huge advantage to me! On FileMaker, I had access at the computer where my database resides.

As cranky as I was about the concept of changing my inventory system, I’m really glad I did. The depth of the Artwork Archive software is amazing, and I’m discovering something new that can help me with my art business every day. We all love being at the easel, but that is only one part of the job! You must keep track of inventory. It’s like a GPS for your paintings. Yes, there is some data entry, but once done, you will have the necessary information immediately at hand, no matter where you are or which device you use.

Here is a sample of a Private Room I created just for you to view. You can see how a Private Collection might look when you share the link (just copy and paste into Google): https://artworkarchive.com/rooms/laura-pollak/bda698 www.laurapollak.com • laurapollak.artist@gmail.com

Let me know what you like to use. Let’s share info!

Laura Pollak, PSWC, PSA, PSNC, SPS is a contributing writer for the Pastel Society of the West Coast publication. She is the past President of the Pastel Society of North Carolina, and the founder of Pastel Artists Teaching Internationally Online. She is exhibiting and showing galleries and museums across the country and has received many international awards. Her works have been featured in Strokes of Genius, The Pastel Journal, Pratique de Artes and PSWC Magazine. Laura teaches classes and workshops in her Studio in North Carolina and online via Zoom. She has achieved signature status in Pastel Society of America, Pastel Society of the West Coast, Pastel Society of North Carolina, Southeastern Pastel Society and Master Circle in the International Association of Pastel Societies.