Maggie Ayres Online Exhibition...
While staged narrative photography has kind of become my speciality, sometimes my skills with the camera are needed to make something look just like it is – no story, just representation.
The past couple of weeks have been taken up with creating a catalogue for my wife's online exhibition.
https://issuu.com/maggieo/docs/maggie-ayres-brochure-2019/
Photos have been needed to as accurately as possible portray her abstract, mixed media art - although there has to be an understanding colours and tones can vary a bit depending on the screen that's showing them (which can be a frustration for any artist).
However, in addition to the paintings, and closer up details, a little bit of narrative has crept in to the process.
It's all very well saying this piece is 40x40cm, or 50x20cm, but it's not always that easy to visualise what that means on your wall. So we set up a scene with a chair, and a small table with a cafetière, a coffee cup, a sketch book and a pen, swapping the painting on the wall each time, to give a reasonable sense of scale
Everything has moved up a level this year.
2 years ago Maggie took her first tentative steps into the world of online exhibitions. For 2 weeks she put up a small painting a day – she was so convinced it would never work, she didn't want to put up any larger pieces.
To her great surprise (of course it was no surprise to anyone else), people bought her work.
One of the things that came out of the experience, however, were that quite a few people wanted to see all the pieces available before making a choice, and weren't so keen on the “daily reveal”.
So last year she did it again, only this time included some larger pieces, and put up a single shot at the beginning of all the paintings grouped together.
Around the same time, I was doing some photography for Doug & Hannah Fitch who have an annual online exhibition each autumn (see my post Fitch and McAndrew - Slipware Potters), but they do it on a big scale – it's become a major part of their sales process.
One of the things they do is create an online catalogue using issuu.com, which has a magazine-like interaction, but is viewed on your device.
So this year we thought we'd steal that part of the idea and create our own online brochure for Maggie.
I spent the best part of a week constructing it. If I'd had a decent publishing programme I could use it would have been easier.
If I'd had a decent template I could have just dragged and dropped images and text into then it would have been easy-peasy.
However, I couldn't find what I needed, so ended up building each page in Photoshop. This allowed me to lay out each page exactly as I wanted it, but it meant that if I decided to, say, swap the order of anything, I had to change all the page numbers manually, which would take forever.
Still, I do have to say I'm quite pleased with the final result. The online brochure really does give a good sense of Maggie's work, both in content and scale.
If you have a moment, do go and take a look – I promise you won't be disappointed.
https://issuu.com/maggieo/docs/maggie-ayres-brochure-2019/
And if you have any enquiries or would like to buy, then you will find Maggie's contact details on the bottom of most pages.
Below are a selection to whet your appetite
The past couple of weeks have been taken up with creating a catalogue for my wife's online exhibition.
https://issuu.com/maggieo/docs/maggie-ayres-brochure-2019/
Photos have been needed to as accurately as possible portray her abstract, mixed media art - although there has to be an understanding colours and tones can vary a bit depending on the screen that's showing them (which can be a frustration for any artist).
However, in addition to the paintings, and closer up details, a little bit of narrative has crept in to the process.
It's all very well saying this piece is 40x40cm, or 50x20cm, but it's not always that easy to visualise what that means on your wall. So we set up a scene with a chair, and a small table with a cafetière, a coffee cup, a sketch book and a pen, swapping the painting on the wall each time, to give a reasonable sense of scale
Everything has moved up a level this year.
2 years ago Maggie took her first tentative steps into the world of online exhibitions. For 2 weeks she put up a small painting a day – she was so convinced it would never work, she didn't want to put up any larger pieces.
To her great surprise (of course it was no surprise to anyone else), people bought her work.
One of the things that came out of the experience, however, were that quite a few people wanted to see all the pieces available before making a choice, and weren't so keen on the “daily reveal”.
So last year she did it again, only this time included some larger pieces, and put up a single shot at the beginning of all the paintings grouped together.
Around the same time, I was doing some photography for Doug & Hannah Fitch who have an annual online exhibition each autumn (see my post Fitch and McAndrew - Slipware Potters), but they do it on a big scale – it's become a major part of their sales process.
One of the things they do is create an online catalogue using issuu.com, which has a magazine-like interaction, but is viewed on your device.
So this year we thought we'd steal that part of the idea and create our own online brochure for Maggie.
I spent the best part of a week constructing it. If I'd had a decent publishing programme I could use it would have been easier.
If I'd had a decent template I could have just dragged and dropped images and text into then it would have been easy-peasy.
However, I couldn't find what I needed, so ended up building each page in Photoshop. This allowed me to lay out each page exactly as I wanted it, but it meant that if I decided to, say, swap the order of anything, I had to change all the page numbers manually, which would take forever.
Still, I do have to say I'm quite pleased with the final result. The online brochure really does give a good sense of Maggie's work, both in content and scale.
If you have a moment, do go and take a look – I promise you won't be disappointed.
https://issuu.com/maggieo/docs/maggie-ayres-brochure-2019/
And if you have any enquiries or would like to buy, then you will find Maggie's contact details on the bottom of most pages.
Below are a selection to whet your appetite
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