A little longer than 140 characters....

Today I am a trifle sick. Started yesterday...scratchy throat, general tiredness... I need it to go away because I am at the end of getting together my paintings for my solo show in Garden City, Kansas at the Mercer Gallery on the Garden City Community College campus. I am excited to be having a show. Who wouldn't be? Recently I have "discovered" Twitter. I'll admit I stayed away from it for a long time because well, let's see, originally my husband used to do it. Waaaay back about three or four years ago. I have to wonder if it was back when it was invented or something. I gave him a lot of trouble for it. I mean the name "twitter" and the whole "tweets" think seemed silly to me at the time. It was him and a bunch of librarians, so I wasn't really opening my eyes to the potential. And then as time went on I realized that there were just tons of people on Etsy and the like who were always raving about it too. However, this still didn't stir my interest. It just seemed like one more self promotion type thing...or the opposite like Etsy is, where for some reason you're supposed to "self promote" by doing no such thing and rather bending over backwards to promote other sellers. Perhaps this is an unpopular thing to say, but this is sometimes how I feel. (Either way, I find that self promotion when you are trying to sell something gets old. I worry that I am bothering people too much, at the same time that it is an evil necessity because if I don't do it, people will never buy anything. But, believe it or not, the whole reason I ever joined Etsy in the first place was to share my paintings more than to sell them. Don't get me wrong though...I can always use the extra money. I guess the sharing thing is exactly why I don't get into the whole "relisting" aspect of Etsy. I think it's a waste of time and energy.)
Anyway, back to Twitter...I finally succumbed. It came at a time when I was trying to promote (there's that word again) the fact that I finally started offering prints of art in my two shops. (see sidebar) However, along the way, I discovered something much different and quite pleasing. I can't quite remember where it started exactly, but I started to realize that there were all these artists on twitter that were just artists, sharing their work. Yeah, some of them sell through sites like me, and some just sell through their blogs, and some don't sell at all...at least not via anything on the internet that I can see. Some are just there sharing. Sharing ideas, and quotes, and work, and thoughts, and support about art. I love it. It's like the thing I was hoping to find on the internet about art, I finally found. If that makes any sense. I suppose I could have found it if I'd just tried a little harder... but it gave me that quick passport to it. I kind of wish I'd joined sooner.
Another thing I've discovered via twitter is this "other" place to blog. Needed that like a hole in the head. I like the way it's set up though, and I've been posting the paintings that I'm going to have in my show there. It's not quite complete as I still have some more photo's to take...but have a look if you would like a look.

http://miriamgraceclimenhaga.posterous.com/

http://twitter.com/climenhaga