Jamie Chalmers Lecture, 19/03/14

Jamie Chalmers started cross stitching to pass the time on a plane journey and because he thought it would look rather humorous, a tall, bald, tattooed man enjoying a spot of cross stitching. However, he became hooked.

       What I really enjoyed about the lecture was that it wasn't so much as a way of him promoting his work but rather showing us really helpful ways to get our own work seen by people through the use of social media sites.
        He showed us the possibilities of cross stitching, which were incredibly vast it has to be said, through the work of the following artists (many of which also use social networking sites as a platform to get their work seen): Davey Gravy, Lord Libidan, Theo Humphries, Alex Walters, Cakester, Pete Fowler, Alicia Ross, Ana Teresa Barbosa, Frederique Morrel, Stephanie Clark, Mana Morimoto, Harriet Hammel, Holly Levell, Jose Romussi, Bella Leonard, Severija, Sophie Strong, Moosh, Barbara Randall, Lou Trigg, Erin Riley, Ellen Schinderman, Erika Hagberg, Pierre Fouche, Joetta Maue, Meagan Ileana, Matthew Cox, Benjamin Shine, Cayce Zavaglia, Jimmy Mcbride.

Work I particularly liked:

Ana Teresa Barbosa: Combines stitch with drawing

Jose Romussi:


Matthew Cox:


Interweb Mastery
The best place to begin using social networking as a platform for your work is through blogging. Eventually, it will be best to purchase your own domain name - it's important that a little bit of the internet is yours. It usually costs around £20 and is worth doing because until then, you don't have true ownership of anything you post onto any website. It's important to note that no matter what your first 10 posts are, they will be awful. He advised to get these out of the way pretty quickly. Write about anything and find your voice, write for writings sake. It is also important that once you set up a blog and begin adding to it to find your pace: you need to manage your audience's expectation in the amount you post, when you post and how often. This can only be once a fortnight if the quality of the writing and content is good quality. The most important thing, however, is finding a pace that suits you and that you can stick to because it makes your blog easier for people to follow.
        The message of the blog, it's content, your work etc, is what will dictate which social media site you will branch out into:

• Facebook - if you are starting a business or raising your profile as an artist, Facebook possibly isn't the best place to start but is good for using it as a secondary way of getting the information of your blog and about your work or product out there. Most importantly, when using Facebook it's extremely important to make a distinction between you as a brand and you as a person.
• Twitter - great for first-hand information but it's difficult to filter through all the traffic on Twitter, and thus, it will be more tricky to get your twitter posts seen. The Tweet Deck, however, is a useful tool.
• Pinterest - this is a great inspiration station. The boards allow you to display your interests and inspirations as well as your work while making a distinction between the two. This is the newest of the social networking sites and is greatly ambitious - its aim is to be the next Google in terms of the most used search engine. However, it is important when using this site to remember that producing is of the most importance to you, not consuming.
• Flickr: this site is heavily base on photography and has a very strong community. It's a good tool to find other artists who have something in common with you, no matter its obscurity. It's a useful tool to reference the images of your work from. If they're all in one place, they're easier to reference back to and dip into if you want to put them on other sites via html link etc.
• Tumblr - the introduction of micro blogging. It is the easiest blogging site to use but is very much orientated around the re-posting of imagery. The source of the material you upload to tumblr is also very easy to change, and so it's advisable that if you do use tumblr, add a small watermark of your main website in the corner of the image so that it's possible to link it back to you.
• Instagram - a great example of visual storytelling and is user friendly. It is owned by Facebook which is positive in many ways, financially especially so. You can really make Instagram work for you if you find your voice and when it works, it works.
• LinkedIn -this is more of a site for professional development but is an extremely useful tool and it's greatly advised that we use it at some point. The look of the site is very formal and can be tedious at times but the benefits make it worth it.
• Google+ -a dark horse of the world of social networking, Google+ has many wider benefits if you can establish yourself quickly and strongly. Once again, it's all about finding your voice and getting it out there (mostly before anyone else does).