ArTips©-The newsletter dedicated to the business of art.

Sometimes practical, sometimes techy, always helpful.

You all have slides, it's just another part of being an artist. Here's a few tips courtesy of visual artist Susan Swinand.

Do you take your own slides, or do you have someone do them professionally? Susan takes her own slides, but this tip will also help if you have someone take them for you. Instead of taking one slide and having it copied, it's more cost effective to have several originals taken instead. Depending on the particular piece, she may have anywhere between 6 and 10 originals slides produced.

Once you have your slides, what do you do with them? Susan has purchased plastic boxes with dividers, similar to a plastic tackle box. She keeps all the slides for a piece in their own section. On the top of the box she uses tape (masking tape will do) to indicate which slides are in that particular box, so she doesn't even have to root through the boxes to find the slides she wants. She's found this organization helps when submitting to a gallery or show.

Thanks, Susan, for sharing these and many other tips with me.

If you're in the Philadelphia area, look for my ARTBiz column each month in Art Matters.