Shannon Garson Porcelain- new website

"Bloodwood" in progress from Swamp Cartography collaboration with Rebecca Ward

Steve from Helped By Design has been re-designing my website. Having a good website has been of enormous value to my practice over the last 10 years. I get many enquiries and comments through my website. As my friend Florence once said to me you have to envision the internet as a web, the more connections you make to and from your website the more fully you are participating.
Porcelain and silver brooch from Swamp Cartography collaboration with Rebecca Ward.

Having a website sitting lonely, unvisited in cyberspace is a very poor use of money and the enormous free potential of the internet. I link the website to this blog, and through Strange Fragments it has been linked to many other blogs. Besides the internet I support my website by using the web address. This is something that many artists neglect.
Print cards with your web address, if you have any articles or photos of your work published in newspapers and magazines include your web address in the captions.
A website is only of value if potential customers can find it........
.........And don't forget to update your photos and information!

Craft Guerillas and the World Wide Web

My friend Renee Blackwell has just started blogging and has thought of a brilliant idea to harvest the power of the blogs......
"I'm having a great give away. No strings attached, whatsoever! You are welcome to pass this blog offer along to friends, co-workers and family. Here's the deal...Go to my website: reneeblackwelldesign.com Go to the "stackable ring" page- Pick one stackable ring you would love to wear, (stones only), choose your size and e-mail me these details along with where it should be sent. Anywhere in the world! (You don't need to go thru' the ordering process...just an e-mail with mailing address...)

These will be sent from Australia on Fridays.... This offer is good until August 12th."

This is a real offer, Renee thought of it as a way of connecting with people who might like her jewelery throughout the world. What I really like about this is that it subverts the gallery/commercial system that all artists are supposed to be desperate to be part of. The Internet has broken open this system and put the economic power back into the hands of artists.

Taking your work around to galleries and shops used to be an expensive and humiliating exercise. Ten years ago when I first set up my studio I would travel long distances and set up meetings with "retail outlets" and when I got there they would have the meeting outside on a bench, or not be there and tell me to come back tomorrow or any number of other depressing scenarios. I once went to a lot of trouble to set up a meeting in Byron Bay (400 kilometres from where I live) and the shop owner suggested I meet her at the side of the road at a place bizarrely named Billienudgel (!) and show her my pots from the boot of the car.
"....oh you'd like to show me your art and talk about me stocking it....Why don't we meet here....in the MIDDLE OF THE SAHARA DESERT?"
I didn't do it but the fact that someone would think it is Ok to treat professional artists this way is outrageous.

Selling direct subverts all this. The only trouble with selling direct is that it is hard to get an audience. That is where the Internet comes into it's full power. I call those who practice these subversive activities "craft guerrillas"

Craft Guerillas Unite! Dependence on the system or voluntary poverty is not our fate!