Making a Living with Your Arts & Crafts

What are your processes when choosing a new sculpture?

This is a question that came up in an email exchange.

Took me a couple of days to go back in memory and asked myself this question.

I'm thinking that there are four ways that I come up with a new idea.

1) I'm working on a specific piece of sculpture and an idea will just hit me, "I wonder if I'd do this, what would that look like".  "THIS" being an idea. 

Alone in my shop working away it seems the ideas just come to me.  I might see a piece of metal on the floor and think, "I could make this into something, whatever something is".

A video I'm currently working had it's beginning one day when I was in a farm store and saw a part for a piece of machinery and I thought "this is something I can work with".

Every idea doesn't work out, but usually the idea that didn't work out will lead me into a slight different direction.

2) Nature pieces such as leaf sprays, butterflies, dragonflies and small table plants:

Here Mother Nature has done most of the creative work for us.  If I'm hiking in the woods or out in my kayak I'm particularly observant of plants and trees. 

In a Dogwood video I just finished I cut off a dogwood branch and brought into the shop. 

Whenever you're stuck for ideas you might just dig up some kind of plant or even a weed and begin duplicating it metal.  I remember doing this with a Trillium plant.  Turned out to be a beautiful piece of sculpture and all I did was duplicate Mother Nature.

Wildflowers are very popular, especially here in Southern Indiana.  I have given some thought to coming up with a Wildflower series in copper.  Here again nature has done all the design work, I just have to put it together.

3) Realistic pieces such as Americana, bicycles and golf:  Back in the 70's and 80's I was doing a lot of rural or Americana sculptures.  As I drove down the road I was very aware of barns that looked a bit different, a rural mailbox, a windmill, or an old machinery shed.

Last week I was visiting a friend who has some of my work.  She was showing me one her most favorite pieces - it was hay rake.  I'd forgotten that I had ever made that piece, then I remembered that at one time I had done a number of table top farm implements. 

I also remember that at about that same time someone had given me a Sears and Roebucks  reproduction 1907 catalog.  This added to my ideas for farm implements and also for other Americana pieces.

(Keep in mind here that I live and have sold sculpture in an area that is steeped in nostalgia.  These pieces wouldn't sell as well in a more urban environment.)

4) Customer requests:  I've mentioned elsewhere that I don't like commission work although over the years I have done many commissioned works.  These have often led me into areas that I would not otherwise have gone.  Meaning that I developed new skills which then led into different types of sculpture.

Bicycles:  When I started doing bicycles I had one bike, the American Racer.  Then someone wanted a larger bicycle which became the Road Bike.

A customer looking at the American Racer asked if I could make a smaller bike.  That became the Small Table Top Bike.

I don't remember how I came up with the Day in the Country and the Ride in the Park.  I do remember someone asking if I had a smaller version of the Ride in the Park which became the Sit & Sip.  Later someone asked if I could do a larger version of the Ride in the Park which became the City Park.

But back to the question: What are your processes when choosing a new sculpture?

I don't think I have any kind of system for choosing new products.  The first bicycle came from picking up a round piece of steel in a junk yard.  I got the idea that I could drill a hole and wrap a rod around it to make a circle.  Once I found that I could make circles then ideas came to me in how I could use the circles.

From there it was just a matter of using the bicycles as a theme and doing variations on that theme.  The same applies to butterflies, dragonflies, maple leaves etc.

I'll try a new idea out and see if it sells, if not then I just scrap the idea.  If it does sell then I'll make more and that may be the beginning of a series.

Cattails are a good example.  I made my first cattail table sculpture which sold so I made another and when it sold I made five.  When those sold I made ten.  I also made a smaller cattail table sculpture.  I could see that cattails were popular so I did cattail wall sculptures.  I did these small at first and gradually started making them larger and larger. 

Back to commissions for a moment.  One customer saw the wall cattails and wanted a entire wall done in cattails for their lake side home.  For this I included some birds flying across the cattails.  The customer was pleased with the results.

From this commission I began displaying some copper birds in flight above the cattails. 

I remember a table cattail that I did that was a bit different.  The first one sold so I made two.  Those two never sold so I gave them to a local charity for their art auction.

Some products I've just lucked into, but this also means that I am willing to try out different ideas without thinking about whether they will sell or not.

The two tractors that I show in the gallery on my other site:  I've never made any money from tractors.  There is just too much time involved meaning that they are just priced out of the market.

If I really wanted to make and sell tractors then I would figure out a way to make them quicker and develop a market.  Here I have to be honest with myself and admit that I just never wanted to spend the time and effort to make it work.

Conclusion:  taking some time to look back I can see that my product lines just grew.  If a particular item was successful I asked myself, "what can I do to expand this into similar pieces".

A specific example is the small table top bicycle:  Added the bicycle rack, then added a girls bike, then added a small mountain bike, then the small tandem..  A request from a customer for a wedding cake topper led to a girl's and boy's bike in a rack with the heart on top.  This all started out with a single small bike.

The same can be said of butterflies, maple leaf sprays, leaf sprays in general, cattails, Americana pieces and on and on.

I also paid attention to price points meaning did I have something for everyone's budget?

Also attention to clientele:  Pieces that are priced for gift items.  Men's gifts such as golf pieces, the Fisherman's Wharf and to some extent bicycles.  I never developed the men's gift line as much, but it is a viable market.

Grand parents are another good market.  This is why I came up with the small Magic Wands.  I had several sets of grand parents asking if I made smaller wands.  They wanted smaller wands for their grandchildren.

There are many ideas that have come directly from customers. 

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