Friday, February 03, 2012

Brand Shiny New

I'm overjoyed to announce the launch of my new 'gallery' website at www.meliors.net.  It's been years in the dreaming, months in the planning and weeks in the making. The intention with my new site is to provide a reference point for collectors, curators and others to easily view  the best of my recent work, find biographical information and links to interviews and so on.

I find creating digital work very stressful compared to the slow sensual pleasures of hand crafting physical objects; so I can't praise too highly my website developer Conrad Johnston at Darnoc. Conrad's calm and competent approach helped me to overcome my angst and develop my own web skills as well as a new website.  He was particularly patient with my fussy intolerance of anything that didn't match my vision- even when my vision didn't match my (tiny) budget.

Bibliophilia will carry on being my blog right here on Blogger. The gallery website is a complement, not a replacement. However, the URL link, meliors.net that I've been using for this blog for several years, now will point visitors straight to the gallery website requiring another click through to the blog. If you are a frequent visitor, you might want to save meliors.blogspot.com to bring you directly to Bibliophilia for new content most weeks.  But  please do go have a look around at www.meliors.net first.

One of the joys of being an artist is getting to know the people who love my work enough to buy it, so I thought long and hard about how to enable people to buy my art via the website.  Rather than clicking through to a shopping cart, anyone interested in buying a piece just needs to send me a message. (More information is available on the website.)  That way you and I, both know we are dealing with a real human being.  It might not be quite as instant as shopping on Etsy or Amazon, but since whatever you are buying from me took weeks, if not months to make, an exchange of messages over a few minutes or hours seems an appropriate way to transfer its ownership.

Please share my new website with anyone you think would be interested in an overview of my recent work, and this blog with anyone interested in the unfolding process of its creation.

3 comments:

Bronwyn Lloyd said...

Your website looks fantastic Meliors - slick and easy to navigate. I also really like your personalised approach to sales. My only constructive feedback, as a person who likes to drop by gallery stockrooms online, is that I like to see a price listed for the available works, so that I know I can afford to buy a piece before I approach the dealer / artist. I find this saves embarrassment for both parties.
That said, your archive of work looks beautiful and hats off to your designer!

Meliors Simms said...

Prices for all the work available for sale are listed on the 'Purchase' page http://www.meliors.co.nz/purchase/
Hope that helps, Bronwyn!

Carol said...

Fabulous, Meliors. I'll pass on the link when I do my next post.