On Saturday, (yes I’ve been so busy since that I couldn’t post before now) Phoenix attended the event of the year: Tyson Crosbie’s (that’s me) book signing for his new book “Phoenix 20″.
I just want to thank everyone that attended. Phoenix continues to surprise me, in a good way. We had 25-30 people show up and watch me talk about my work and my connection to this city. I had good conversations with nearly everyone that was there and it is my hope that some new relationships were formed between the guests. It isn’t just a marketing phrase or gimmick for me, I really think the events main focus was about community. If I get to sell some books and prints along the way that is just a bonus. It just happens that I sold out of all available books and left some people wanting one. Which is a testiment to the kind of community that exists here already.
Erica Lucci and Chris Altman purchased their first art piece together as a married couple, and were gracious enough to let me unveil it at the event and show off a little bit.
This was the draft for my speech:
I started working abstractly in college in the beginning it was just about learning compositional rules and practicing observing the world around me. About the time I traveled to Mexico, about a year later, the work had begun to evolve into something a lot closer to abstract expressionism, in that I wasn’t able to disconnect the experiences I was having personally from the work that I was producing. I continued practicing and developing the work over the next several years. I never really gave too much credit to the work and still considered it just an exercise even though the images were becoming increasingly complex, and I was starting to get noticed at shows, I still didn’t feel like it was completely ready. When I moved to Phoenix in July I didn’t want to be here and went into a quite severe depression as I looked for work and essentially felt trapped in my house during the summer months. The few times I went out to photograph I couldn’t find the same complexity and depth that I had been previously working on in Austin. It was like hell for a color abstractionist with all the stucco and sandstone bricks. I almost gave up on it completely, and started looking for a temporary job.
It eventually cooled off and I started to attend first fridays I was absolutely blown away by the event. Here was an entire emerging art culture right on my front step, all I had to do was get to work. I started to go out photographing again and it took a long time to find what I was looking for in the sea of brown. But there it was a little spot of color and then another and another. One of the major hurdles I had to get used to was driving a lot further and taking little field trips into the city that may or may not result in usable material.
It was a strange coincidence that as I started photographing the streets of Phoenix and the work became more accessible I started to connect with the community of people in the city as well. I started my own business and decided the work was ready to be something. That thing was a series of 20 images that related as much to my experiences moving here as it was a reflection of what Phoenix is as a city. I worked toward publishing this book and it took a couple months but here it is and I am so happy that you all are here to share it with me.
This is a question for anyone who attended: What was the signing like for you?
Three and a half months ago when I started my business in Phoenix, Arizona I think I was the only person in the world that believed how far I could spread my brand and my business as a photographer in such a short time. Of course I started by attending the Chamber meetings and in turn was invited to visit many other traditional networking meetings, which resulted in several coffee meeting pitches being directed my way. Luckily I ignored the sales pitches that would have me paying to get a higher google rank and stealthily avoided paying up to $3000/ year to network with exclusive groups and learn secret business advice. The Chamber has good intentions but I felt like the community aspect was missing most of the time. It was an old boys club mentality, and a heavy push marketing environment.
I intentionally focused locally because it was never my intent to build an empire. I knew from looking at the market in Phoenix I could easily compete at the highest level of photography. So I started to build my bridges not at all by traditional means. First thing I did was start this blog, then began building my network through linkedin and extensively using twitter and facebook to build bridges into the community. I started following the daily rants and raves of the Phoenix twitter community and attending events that were more social in nature and less network business card race inspired.
This is what I was looking for and how the Chamber had failed me, this was a group of people that understood the benefit in having a long conversation even if that person never bought or sold you anything. It became a requirement for me when meeting someone new to converse with them and not just hand them my card and grab theirs. I’d like to continue to differentiate between networking and bridge building because at some point the work I did became a process of resource sharing instead of resource guarding. Networking in most instances becomes an unmanageable list of resources that may buy or sell to you. A bridge for me refers to something local, immediatley useful and built to facilitate two way communication.
PodCampAZ is one of the first great sucesses for my business. I found out about PodCampAZ on twitter and became involved with the planning process by just showing up and offering my services where ever I could as a volunteer. At PodCampAZ I continue to work with some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met and after a couple weeks found them starting to use me and share me as a resource within their communities. In social media it seems that when you give a little you really do get a lot back.
Results: And I’ve just begun.
- My self published book “Phoenix 20″ is going to be in the hands of the Mayor after my book signing.
- I have a partnership with Mighty Imaging to sell prints from their art store.
- I have about 100 local contacts that follow me on twitter and most of those I would consider friends and some of them are even clients now.
- Almost any event I attend lately someone knows my name before they meet me. (and they’ve already heard good things about my photography)
- I have a community of people who comment and learn about my business by following my recent work on flickr.
- I will have a billboard of my fine arts work on display on the 202 in Chandler in partnership with oibillboards.com by the end of this week.
Social media pays. Even my wife is starting to believe.
Do you have any similar experiences or did you find social media to be a waste of time? Feel free to share with my community in the comments below.
There is a difficulty in being both an artist and business person, beyond the generalizations. It is most often understood that an artist will be temperamental, brooding, starving, never do well and lazy. You know, so they can have the energy to create beautiful things which is the pay off. The biggest difficulty is admitting to myself that I am capable of both and do it in the face of societies expectations. As a part of this effort I want to challenge some of these generalizations and create a bridge between art and business.
The age old business system for art is grant based, creating an unhealthy system of elitism, politics and homogenization. Which is the normal outcome when a few make decisions for many. However it is too early in the morning for me to take on that dinosaur. I’ll just say to all involved: Stop it. It doesn’t help art, the public or the artist.
How am I going to change things? By working hard, by working locally and not trying to change the whole world, just mine. I’ve been getting some excellent feedback on my efforts. Check out these articles about Tyson Crosbie Photography:
Tyson Crosbie - Photographer at Large
Art Review: Phoenix 20
I’d love to hear your thoughts: How am I doing? Where can I improve?
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