Social media for people who hope to market their art online is going through a “thing” right now. Instagram used to be a wonderful place for visual artists to showcase their art for potential buyers and other artists looking for inspiration. Then arrived TikTok, and the business heads at Instagram decided that they, too, wanted to cater to the teenaged audience, and changed their algorithm to favor reels. Because artists don’t have a lot of time to learn the new skill of creating video, and because our art does not need motion to make it beautiful, many of us are frustrated about this new development. Some artists, of course, have taken to it; but many of us are busy enough trying to make art.
While The Colormobile does have an Instagram account, all that is in it right now are various pictures I took eight or so years ago when I was doing craft shows, making clothing and jewelry, doing chakra readings, and of course, pictures of my cat Cupcake. I was preparing to re-up my account now that I have created this new site for my art. But, the more I contend with that, the less I want to do it.
First of all, it is apparently very hard to compete with all of the “motion” on Instagram right now, and nobody knows if it will ever go back to it’s original (static) charm. Secondly, if one is going to do Instagram right, one must have a beautiful feed where everything matches and is of the same color tone, etc. so that people can view it quickly to see what your aesthetic is all about.
Knowing this, I toyed with the idea of hiding all of my previous posts and starting anew just featuring my paintings. There were a number of problems with this approach. Firstly, perhaps it wasn’t fair to my current followers (though they may not notice since I haven’t posted anything in several years). Secondly, it would look as if I had almost nothing on my wall and was beginning anew. Thirdly, since I know that The Colormobile will likely morph and change greatly over time, perhaps adding many different types of products, and feature more than just my own art, and also likely include sections on Illustration, Licensing, etc., my Instagram wall would begin to resemble a Layer Cake (simply because I cannot apply myself to all of these projects at the same time and filter them into a nice cohesive whole on Instagram). Fourthly, the sheer amount of work it would take to produce a consistent slew of images to feed the Instagram beast is daunting, especially since I am hard about creating new work these days and really don’t have time for this second-job type of activity.
It is for these reasons that I have decided not to focus on Instagram or even Facebook. I am even considering taking off the social links on this site because they give readers absolutely nothing in addition to what they will find here.
For background, I had a website about about 12-15 years ago, which was entitled chinacarnella.com, and my blog was called My Journey to Surtex. I am not even sure Instaram was around back then, but I know that I certainly did not post on it. I relied upon my blog to draw traffic to my site; and it worked for the most part. I blogged about, well, almost anything…how it felt like going through the birth canal after painting my hallway pink, odd dreams of hitting someone over the head with my purse, debates over the allure of dark sparkle, etc. I cringe now thinking about it because, though it showed my personality, it wasn’t always about art and was more of a personal journal. I have hesitated to start another blog because I do not want to be in the situation of sharing TMI, mainly because it is not particularly relevant to art.
So here I am, blogging again. My hope is that I can still share some of my life and personality with you, but keep my posts art-centered for the most part.
I frankly miss those days when I was blogging, and many artists were just blogging away. I loved reading their posts, seeing their work, and learning more about them as people. Do you miss the days of artists and craftspeople rabidly blogging, with all of their beautiful imagery? Leave a comment and let me know how you feel about this subject. My hope is that we can all somehow get back to just viewing artists’ websites and blogs again and not have to rely on an algorithm that no longer serves us, and is always on to the next best thing.