The New Job...

My how time flies! I just realized it’s been a month here at the 119 Gallery. I’ve spent it settling in and getting to know a whole new community. While it’s safe to say I miss my island home, it’s nice to be on a bigger piece of land. Lowell is a great town. There are a ton of artists here, a ton of non- profits, and a ton of interesting people.

Last Thursday a feature writer from Artscope Magazine came to interview Mary Ann about the ‘Mask’ show happening in the first part of September (you can check it out at http://119gallery.org/news/mask_nr.pdf). We’re all pretty excited about it because Artscope is one of the top two art mags in the area so it will be great exposure. We realized that if we can get into Artscope, we should be setting our sights higher. I’ve started scouting around for bigger regional and national art press contacts, so if any of you out there in cyberlandia have any suggestions, send ‘em! I’d be totally stoked!

On Friday my boss Mary Ann and I ventured into Cambridge to check out the Papercut Zine Library. The gallery is hosting a zine exhibition in October (I'm attaching the press release) and we’re looking for more local artists to bring on board. It was pretty impressive to see how many quality, unique zines are produced right here in New England. I browsed publications on subjects ranging from The Worst Poetry In The World (that was the actual title) to transgender comics to anarchist manifestos. We left feeling elated at all the possibilities for the show.

I have been working with a great marketing consultant named Deby Baker from Jericho on the marketing plan for the last three weeks and she’s been a huge help. We decided it's time to give the member database a huge overhaul (it’s largely unfiltered and needs to be organized into member interests and demographics so that we can reach our constituents in a more targeted fashion) so I’ve been playing around with Salesforce in preparation of migrating our info over by the end of the month.

Before we move all of our info, Deby and I are working on putting a survey monkey together to get a better grasp on our contacts’ interests so that we can make sure to minimize superfluous emails. We plan to ask people about their preferred form of contact (email, text, facebook etc. etc.) and interests. This is because we are way more than an art gallery in terms of events and we want to make sure the right people know about the right events. In any given month we have everything from dance performances, art receptions, heavy metal bands, experimental noise or sushi battles.

I’m pretty stoked on the new job.

Comment from Jules Goins on August 26, 2008 - 4:59pm

The 'zine thing sounds nice. My buddies from college had their own 'zines...I think my roomie even made one issue in our dorm room. That sounds like a great exhibit and I plan on trying to make it.

Also, good work with the marketing consultant. At this rate you will be leading the marketing discussion for the online trainings.