R.I.P. Robert Rauschenberg

Today, I came across a headline that caught my eye. "Titan of American Art, is Dead at 82". Although I'm young, I have a pretty good encyclopedia of famous people in my head. However, I was unfamiliar with the name, Robert Rauschenberg. After reading this NY Times Story by Michael Kimmelman, I'm sure I would have liked to have learned about him before he passed.

Kimmelman describes him as follows, "A brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner, he had a charm and peculiar Delphic felicity with language that nevertheless masked a complex personality and an equally multilayered emotional approach to art, which evolved as his stature did."

If you've got the time and inclination, read over that story and take a moment to consider your own journey through life's always uneven paths.

Boundless is Rockin & Rollin

Early this morning I suddenly woke up to a what I thought was a little tremor in my arm. It took a few seconds for me to realize I hadn't slept on my arm wrong or got it caught up in the sheets, but in fact, my whole apartment was shaking thanks to an early morning earthquake.

It wasn't dramatic or anything, I had completely forgotten about it by the time I woke back up and made my way to the office. The first thing our Support Director, Nolan, asked this morning was if I had felt it. Seems it was strong enough to wake us, and as I later found out, everyone else who works at Boundless. Then to top it off we had a very noticeable aftershock around 10 local time. Here's one of the many stories from the local papers, the Southern Illinoisan.

Guess it shows those West Coast internet start-ups that they haven't cornered the market on earthquakes. Just another interesting little chapter in the Boundless story...

A Daily Dose of Inspiration

As I've shown here before, I'm a big fan of great quotes. It seems I'm not alone... Big thanks go out to Hengameh Kaghazchi for starting a great group within the Boundless Social Network.


Share Your Favorite Quotes has become a must check group for me, whenever I see new posts there. Here's a recent one;

____"An Optimist is the Human Personification of Spring"
____Unknown Chinese Philosopher

Consider me Spring, because I'm very optimistic about the future of Boundless and our great artists!

More Whirlwind Weeks @ Boundless

Perspective can be really funny sometimes. It seems like each week we get caught up with something, and there is a constant pressure that can make it seem like you are falling behind or at least should be doing more. But, then comes a moment where you step back and see the big picture, and realize that while each detail is important and takes time to do right, ultimately the little projects get accomplished and on the whole you are making tremendous progress.

Within a couple weeks we've unified most of our navigation, redesigned the entire site, added a 'Family Filter' to safeguard the new 'discover an artist' section in our homepage tabs, which are also new; along with creating some cool features for artists like, the new 'My Links' page which allows our artists to create and update 2 custom URL's in order to make it even easier for them to market their work all across the Internet.

So, I guess my point or advice would be, if a little portion of a painting is bugging you, or if a current project at the office seems to be monopolizing all your time, take a step back and give yourself some credit before jumping back into the fray. If you love what you do, the rewards will come.

The Amazing Influence of Insecurities & Songs about Time

Working for an art gallery you run into all kinds of personality types and get to ‘meet’ all kinds of great & talented people. With each passing month you start to see cycles; a new artist catches your eye, another artist figures out ways to keep making sales every week, or an old familiar name pops up and you wonder what they’ve been up to.

What often amazes me most, are the emails I receive from potential or new artists members on Boundless.

“Do you think my work is good enough?"
"Any suggestions for pricing my work, I don’t think anyone will want to buy my stuff, but…”

It almost makes me sad sometimes; how can someone so talented not see it? These men and women write in, shy and guarded, so fragile about what is obviously their life’s destiny. I (usually) feel pretty great about my job, but what these artists are capable of… it is something I could only dream of. I'm completely jealous of these people and they don't even know how lucky they are!

Time & time again they write-in unsure of themselves. What really saddens me is that for every 1 that writes, there are probably 10 more who don’t even find the courage to ask.

I’m still very young, but I know life is short and you can’t get far wasting time. So, please as a favor to me, whether you're an artist or an accountant, if there is something that you should be doing that might make your life even a little better; go do it now! If you have to ask for help or encouragement; do it now!

The only thing to really regret is not trying.

As always please feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

BoundlessGallery is cooler than cool...

We've been ice cold for the last few days as a terrible winter storm hit our whole area pretty hard. According to the local paper,
(From The Southern Illinoisan)

over 17,000 people lost electricity because of the storm. I can tell from first-hand experience, it is not pleasant to be without heat in the middle of an ice storm.

It took a couple of hours and a hammer to free more poor car from its icy coffin. But, that beautiful '93 grand am (Betsy) still fired right up, although it took another day, and some help from everyone's favorite support director, Nolan, to actually get her out of the parking lot.

BETSY (editor's note; the real Betsy is far less attractive and there are no beautiful mountains on the horizon in Carbondale)

Once free, Nolan and I a made trip to Lowes. Then with new gloves, new shovels, and a robust amount of general manliness we made our way to the office. As is always the case when it snows, our lovely city snow plows had piled huge drifts in front of our parking lot's entrance. Undaunted, we began to attack the frozen enemy.

(From ViewImages.com)

Never before had I stood on a foot of snow and not sunk even a centimeter into it. It was more about cracking ice than shoveling snow. An hour and a very sore back later we had managed to get about a 6'x6' square all the way down to the pavement, just enough to get Betsy in.

So, we may be a little behind for the next day or two, but the moral of this story is that it is good to have good friends like
NOLAN
and that if you're feeling down today, just remember, it could be worse. And, if you can see the Sun today, be thankful for that.

FREE RETURNS!

What? You thought 1 industry revolutionizing program was enough for this week? Not at BoundlessGallery. In addition to Framing(see previous post), we've just added Free Returns!

Now, the best place to buy art online is even better. Customers can shop worry-free as our already outstanding returns policy just got a major improvement. Should anything be less than perfect with your order, Boundless will cover the shipping costs, BOTH ways!

We hope that this added security will help convince more people to make the final step and purchase a great piece of art from one of our great artists.

Just look for the logo;

- Program Details-
-All US to US orders placed from now until February 29th, will automatically qualify for a ‘Free Return’.
*If all goes as expected, we’ll continue the program beyond this deadline.

-On orders that qualify, when returned; Boundless will provide the customer with a prepaid return shipping label from FedEx, and Boundless will reimburse artists original shipping expenses.

-This will only apply on returned orders. The current system of provider listed shipping will not be affected on normal sales.

BoundlessGallery.com, we just don't know how to slow down :)