Art & Connections

I am a connector. I've known this about myself for a while now. Each time someone is telling me about their interests, I'm thinking of organizations and people that they should know about. "Oh, have you met so and so? You should talk with her about x, she's starting a project about that and maybe you could get involved." A big piece of my job at the Museum is being a resource for the AmeriCorps team. They've nicknamed me Carole Answer - they'll come to me with any question and I'll either know the answer or connect them to whomever they need to talk to in order to find it. "Oh, you know Carly is working on a program related to that...I know she'd know the answer, and it might be a good opportunity for you to learn more about it."

My brother is in the finance field and he's constantly reading books about networking and business strategies. He shared with me one of the pieces of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell: there are three types of people in this world - salesmen (great at persuasion), mavens (information gatherers), and connectors. This was part of why I chose Connect the Dots as our company name. I'm really interested in making connections and building community, finding resources and being one myself. Kind of a dialectic of art, inspiration and ideas.

Last weekend, Adj and I had one of our "business" crafternoons - our task was to get the Etsy shop up and running (finally). For some reason, I threw a bit of a tantrum about it. Something inside me was uncomfortable with the whole thing and I couldn't understand why. We talked a bit over lunch, and one thing that came out was the issue of connectedness: selling art on the internet to people I don't know seems so disconnected. I feel connected to each piece of art that I make, and the people that they end up with. I love to give my creations to friends as gifts, to custom make items for people, and even to sell things in person when I can see people handling my work, asking questions about it, getting excited about it. I know that Etsy is an important venue for artists to sell their work. And yes, they can make connections online - through comments and forums. I can virtually interact with people whose blogs I read, and hopefully those that read mine. It just feels so different than person to person contact. Does anyone have thoughts on this? Creating community online?

Just some things I'm thinking about...

Carole Ann