Tomorrow is the second seminar in Tony Rockliff’s series on internet marketing and SEO. The last one on search engine optimization was fantastic and I’m really looking forward to this next one. Next week on July 7 is the last seminar, “Successful Internet Marketing for Artists,” a topic I’m never interested in! The seminars are hosted in my art gallery at 1750 N. Hercules Ave in Clearwater, FL. You can prepay and register online here:
Category: Artist’s Thoughts
I’m proud to announce that my friend Tony Rockliff is giving a series of SEO and social media marketing seminars throughout June and July and I’m hosting them at my art studio in Clearwater, FL. Click here to learn more about the seminar on June 23rd about search engine optimization and targeting the right keywords.
Tony’s runs the blog Indietrak with SEO and marketing tips for musicians trying to make it on their own. He has decades of experience as a record producer and marketer and he has been serious about utilizing the internet since 1995 when he created the online community Cybertown that grew to over 1 million members.
He’ll be doing three seminars covering all aspects of SEO and social media marketing. The next two are “Secrets of Making Great Money with Niche Affiliate Marketing” and “Social Media for Artists.”
Call me at 727-726-7411 and I’ll get you signed up! You can prepay through Paypal too.
The Menaul Art Youtube Channel has been updated with a two-part video.
Menaul Art Printing in Clearwater, FL is an art gallery that offers a variety of services from custom abstract artwork to art/photo reproduction for other artists and photo retouching and restoration.
High dynamic range imaging (HDR for short) is a photographic technique that has become all the rage lately. The f8 Consortium, a group of local Tampa and Clearwater photographers (including myself) is opening an exhibit this Saturday, April 24, called “New Visions” (more details). Here is one of the pieces I will be showing, “Wholesale Sponges,” taken at the nearby Tarpon Springs sponge docks:
View high resolution on HDRCreme.com
The “New Visions” exhibit features amazing shots and everyone should check it out!
I saw something cool and wanted to share. Media Decor makes a creative solution for hiding TVs when the screen is off. A custom-built devise can automatically raise and lower art that covers the TV. Their Youtube page just put up a video of them testing a model with my art on it (the piece is a non-triptych version of “Triptych in Brown“.)
How cool is that!
Here is the piece Cyndi Edwards of Daytime did. I put the video on Youtube so it would be easier to watch:
Here’s the segment “Daytime” did on me and my art!
Scott Menaul on “Daytime” with Cyndi Edwards
The TV show Daytime is running a piece on me and my artwork that’s airing this Thursday. Host Cyndi Edwards came by my studio about a week ago and we shot an interview and I showed her around my gallery. Daytime airs nationwide on the Retro Television Network, NBC, ABC and CBS. You can check your local listing to see when it’s on.
Here are photos of Cyndi Edwards and I during the filming of the show:
I often run into the problem of interior designers and home owners thinking that abstract art can’t work anywhere except a space age “stainless-steel-and-glass” condo. This is frustrating because I know from experience that traditional and classical decors can be the most stunning settings for abstract art. It is simply a matter of pairing the two properly.
Modern abstract art has a reputation for being off-putting and visually “harsh”—jagged shapes, hard lines, violent colors—and it’s not difficult to see why people would have trouble putting it on the wall in their cozy den. It is simpler to grab a safe (but dull) painting of a lighthouse or a flower or a snowy cottage. Sure, they’re a dime a dozen, but they’re not some piece of abstract artwork that leaves you going “I don’t get it…”
If you are able to forget preconceptions about what abstract art is “supposed” to be, you will see that there are artists like myself who have a unique style that can be softer and more natural that suits traditional settings. If the issue is simply that you don’t think bright colors work next to wooden furniture and a softer color palette, then you need to see pieces with natural, warm color palettes like Triptych in Brown or Autumn Musings. These pieces look beautiful in traditional homes, and in fact that is what they were created for (learn how I create custom abstract art.)
That isn’t to say you can’t do something exciting with abstract art in a traditional setting. I challenge you to get rid of your fixed ideas about what art can work in a space, and I have a story that might help. The Designer Showhouse of Sarasota is an annual event held to benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs where interior designers from the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) are given rooms in a large home to design and decorate. Several designers working on the 2009 showhouse collaborated with me to created art for their rooms.
What surprised (and impressed) me most was the plan an ASID designer came up with for using my art in a way I’d never thought of. They were charged with decorating the fireplace and their idea was to take one of my pieces and turn it into the “fire.” This involved drastically resizing “Four Tori” down to 8″ by 48″ and altering the color then printing it on archival paper and mounting it on a piece of plywood. Then this was inlaid into the wooden mantle place.
I have to admit that at first even I was skeptical but as I worked on it with the interior designer and finally saw it in the finished room I knew it was a perfect match. The life and energy in the artwork creates a focal point and helps bring the room together. Take a look:
Custom artwork in the mantle place (click to expand)
For more examples of abstract art being used to create “transitional” decors (transitioning between classic and contemporary) check out what I wrote up on Menaul News.
Call me at 727-726-7411 if you have any custom art ideas of your own. You can also become a fan on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.
When I tell people I make “custom art,” it isn’t always clear to them what that means. I have been doing it for so long that I forget that it is an unusual concept to a lot of people. So how can art be customized?
It helps to understand my creative process. My abstract art is created using digital 3D rendering techniques that let me sculpt “glass” and control their lighting and composition. Then I produce the art on canvas (or paper or almost any material I want) using the giclee process. I run my own giclee printer and handle all of the prints myself so I can make the piece at nearly any size—from a small 8″ by 10″ to large 40″ by 60″ (and even bigger if we start using special printing methods.) Most of my work is gallery wrapped, which means that I stretch the canvas around wooden stretcher bars instead of framing it. The stretcher bars (what the canvas is mounted on) are handmade by a local craftsman that can make custom sizes. I stretch the canvas on to the frame by hand and even go as far as to constructing my own shipping boxes if needed.
Here is a breakdown of how I can customize my art:
Custom Sizes — Since I control the creative, printing and framing processes, my art can be produced at almost any size. This doesn’t just mean I can make it bigger or smaller; I can also make the art taller or wider or even expand it across multiple canvases. For example, you might like one of my pieces but it wouldn’t work above the wide couch where you want to put it. I can turn it into a horizontal piece or triptych that fills the space. Read The Evolution of Atlantis to see how custom sizes worked for clients with different demands on their space.
Custom Colors — The properties of the glass and lighting in my art determines the colors in the piece. By changing these I can drastically transform the artwork to suit different decors and environments. The original art may be cool blue tones but if you have a rustic country house you need warmer colors, and I can do that. For the clearest illustration of this, look at original Musings and its variations Autumn Musings, Musings Natural, and Romance. Each was created as clients came to me and said “I like this piece but my place is these colors…”
Custom Composition — My artwork often contains geometric elements such as rings, spheres, cubes and pyramids. A client saw Aqua Rings and asked us to add spheres inside of the glass rings (as well as change the colors), and so I made Glass Rings and Spheres.
Custom Materials — Most of my art is on fine art canvas but I can also produce it on paper and watercolor paper or even unusual materials like vinyl, aluminum, ceramics, semi-transparent film that goes over windows, and more. This opens up creative possibilities such as mounting the art on wood, wrapping the piece around a column or cutting it to custom sizes and shapes and mounting in clear plastic objects (we’ve done all of that and more!)
Totally New Artwork — You can always come to me with an idea even if you don’t see anything in my art galleries that matches what you’re looking for. When I created art for the high rise condo Signature Place in St. Petersburg, FL, the interior designer asked for original artwork for the main lobby (in addition to the 60+ custom pieces that went in all 30 elevator lobbies). Knowing their size requirements and color palette, I created Dancer in the Breeze and Daisy.
That should give you a good idea of what it means to make custom art. Let me know if you have any questions or ideas. I love hear them! You can call me at 727-726-7411 or leave a comment below.