It’s strange to think about, but art can be like food. You’ve got to be in the mood for it, or you won’t really connect with it or be interested in it.
I’m sure you’ve experienced a powerful piece of artwork at some point in your life (I hope many). Something that really blew you away. If you think about it, it was probably because something in your life at the time was relevant to the art. Possibly something you had been considering or something you recently learned about. Maybe the art awakened something in you that you didn’t know was there (the best experience in my opinion). In other words, we connect with different types or styles of work and their content at different times in our lives. Your work may appeal to people in a different time or place. We don’t know who will like it or respond to it on a deeper level than simply viewing it.
I think our culture is too invested in the social media game. I know everyone has a social media account or several, but I’m not convinced it’s the best way to show your work or allow people access to your work. In a lot of ways, it feels cheap, fast, and superficial (like social media itself). How many followers and how many likes seem to be the gauge we use to assign value to what we do or who we are. The audience seems to have the attention span of a gnat. And most people won’t read anything longer than a headline. You’re competing with too much on those platforms for anyone to really pay attention to what you’re doing. It seems it’s the antithesis of what your work should deserve in order to be understood.
If you are on social media, I think you can take advantage of it and direct people to your site, or in my case, this blog. Give them a chance to slow down and read something (if they will) about what you’re doing and why. I believe it's a better strategy than posting everything on social media.
“Sticks In A Bag” - Whole Plate Toned Cyanotype from a wet collodion negative, from my project. “In the Shadow of Sun Mountain”.
It's important to understand that not everyone will be interested in the topic you may be interested in making work about. Some work may be too involved, too sophisticated, or conceptual for a lot of people to understand or get interested in. That’s the complaint often heard about graduate art students—too far into their own heads and making work that no one understands but them (and sometimes they don’t even understand it). It can get a bit “out there,” no doubt. You should look for a happy medium. Work that is interesting and involved enough to hold a viewer’s attention but accessible to anyone that’s willing to invest a little time.
Keep in mind that the people interested in your work will have a reason to be. As I said in the beginning, they will be connected to it in some special or personal way. They’ll have knowledge or interest in the topic or content, or they’ll have a personal or intellectual connection to it. Everyone else will pass it by and never give it a second thought.
Can you make people interested in your work? Absolutely not. No more than giving them a plate of something they don’t want to eat, like Escargot de Bourgogne, for example. Or trying to make them read a book they have no interest in; for example, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma.” You can’t do it. And don’t even try; it’s a waste of time. Let your viewers find you. They will. And if you do enough interesting work, they’ll keep tabs on you and be interested in what you’ll do next.
The takeaway here is that only a small percentage of the people that see your work will be interested in it. And that’s fine; you’re not trying to sell anything or impress anyone. You’re trying to tell an important story that you’re preoccupied with. A story that will make the world a better, more interesting place in some small way. That’s what’s important!
“South Stacked Stones”-Whole Plate Palladiotype from a Calotype (paper negative), from my project. “In the Shadow of Sun Mountain”.