Keeping Records

Awhile ago I talked about how I keep records for my art (you can read that post here) but this past year my binders have been falling apart.  The original binder I used for my portfolio, press and gallery information was one that I received second hand so I had painted the cover and it worked for years.  A number of years ago I received a couple of other binders which came at a great time as my original one was bursting at the seams.  And now, all three were bursting and falling apart - so much so that the duct tape holding them together wasn't doing its job any longer.

So, over this holiday I finally chose to invest in three larger binders.  I decided on clear covered binders that I could slide a photo into instead of painting on them again and for the spines thought it might be nice to use one of my paintings and separate it into three labels.  I am really pleased how it looks.  Now my next big project is to go through each binder and update EVERYTHING.  I hate to admit that I've just been throwing articles into plastic sleeves without paying attention to its placement (ie. library events, articles I write, articles about my work) and haven't printed images for my portfolio in quite some time.  At least my 'Galleries' binder tends to remain in order of its own accord.

I'm at the point where I'd like a better organization system for my portfolio, to include the list of works created and sold annually along with making the paperwork portion of this creative life look more attractive than an MS Excel spreadsheet.  And maybe to add highlights and positive memories for each year, kind of like the interesting newer creative planner/journals on the market.  Well I guess I'll see how that goes.