endorsement of SIR Management

The nursing home where I live has put in free WiFi. Therefore I am issuing an endorsement of the nursing home, Bryn Mawr Care.

Free WiFi here is consistent with other frequent improvements instituted by the nursing home, but because it more significantly impacts my chances of becoming financially independent (through my business of English Transformation Art conducted online) and leaving Bryn Mawr Care to live on my own, I feel confident that an endorsement is an accurate statement about my relationship with this facility.

English Transformation Art group, a new Google group

I have now created a Google group for anyone to join and discuss English Transformation Art. Its name is English Transformation Art group, not to be confused with English Transformation Art purchasers' group. To visit this group, click here.

This group will be for anyone to join and post their questions about the art, whether before or after purchasing, and have them answered by anyone in the group. This way it will serve as a resource for anyone with questions that others have had and had discussed and hopefully answered already. It will be of great help to the artist, James Batek, by enabling questions to be answered by others in addition to himself, and thus a better overall service to the potential buyer of the art.

New specials on English Transformation Art

I have now added specials for English Transformation Art, one of "GLENBARD WEST" and one of "YALE", at $40 for a 18"x24" unsigned print instead of $60, and proportional savings for larger sizes and signing. So now you Yalies have an alternative to the blue and white Yale Banner. You can have it in ten different color schemes, and it will be art, not letters.

Go HIlltoppers! (Glenbard West)

Go Bulldogs! (Yale)

Go English Transformation Art! (by James Batek)

The transformation of English transformation art into a solely manufactured product without a signature

The creation of a work of English transformation art, once the color schemes have been determined, is a matter of careful computer work. It is all work that follows a formula and therefore can be completely automated. Today there is general acceptance of the idea of digital art--work generated completely by a computer--and English transformation art is a cousin to that. This is the basis on which I, the artist, justify placing my signature on the work and selling it as art rather than an object solely of manufacture.

However, while the signature adds a certain value to the art it does not affect the aesthetic qualities of the art itself. Why not then operate as a manufacturer by omitting the signature and placing an imprint of a trademark on the work instead? Production of a work would in that case not require the imposition, at a key place in the manufacturing process, of the natural hand of the artist, making of the whole a manufacturing business rather than a craft business, and establishing the artist as the owner of that business with full power to hire a staff which would design systems of manufacture according to engineering standards based on the general aesthetic principle of English transformation art. The price a work produced in this manner could command would be less than the price a signed work could expect, but the labor required to produce the work, and thus its cost of production, would be less also. Profit margin would be roughly preserved and the owner of the business would be faced with business challenges rather than craft challenges.

As for the sense one would get from a manufactured item, the machine-like nature of this art is not the sort of thing that makes one look for the hand of a human author. It is the thinking up of the idea for the art, and the sharp simplicity of its expression, that impresses the viewer, not some consideration of craft, whether strongly to the technical side or strongly to the manual side. A signature speaks to craft among the general body of craftsmen while a trademark speaks to thought among the general body of thinkers. Certainly good aesthetic judgment plays a part in the formation of the business and would never be relegated to a minor role. But like other items that have been transformed by modern industrial capabilities into mass markets, to the benefit of the whole population, so would cheap English transformation art make a novel and attractive form of self-expression available to the masses at an affordable cost. Design savvy is as much a part of the industrial revolution as is engineering.

Price would depend on volume so it would be strictly conjectural what the price of manufactured English transformation art would be. Going to manufacture would only be possible if first the work proves to have a market as signed art. The first milestone was sale of one item and that has been passed. It is a new, and in a sense risky, art investment, a hurdle which every new artist faces, but made especially tricky by the somewhat intelligence-driven effectiveness of the product to make an impression on both the owner, who chooses the text and more than anyone else feels its impact, and others, who presumably have little or no investment in the text and react to the work as is in purely abstract terms. Jumping past this hurdle, especially the one of the owner, is the biggest challenge the business faces at this stage of its development.

These are the considerations that will guide the development of the business from top to bottom. Only sales and profit will prove them to have value, for the artist, for the client, and for the public at large.

The buyer of my art chooses the text that becomes the art.

The buyer chooses the text that becomes the art. That is the central message I wish to convey. You can see clearly what kind of image you can expect by looking at my gallery. There is a certain look about them that is immediately recognizable. Yet each one is unique as the word or words it represents.

Everyone has a different feeling about individual words. My art gives you the chance to immortalize the word or words that mean the most to you. Perhaps that is your spouse's or child's name, a favorite person or social group, a cause you believe in, a motto, a geographical location. There is no limit to the ideas that people might want to give a special place to as an artwork hanging in their home or office. And you have ten very different color schemes for the piece, each one of them showing off the theme in a special way.

starting out on an art marketing site

I have been moving on setting up a presence on a site that markets artwork.

I plan to upload images of my code art, as I have been calling it. I am changing my name for it to "english transformation art, an art/product of inventor james batek".

I will be able to conduct business on the site, explaining the idea, arranging deals, collecting payment, etc.