I had a great time working on a new photography website for Pilar Belmonte, Asheville-based photographer, whose work is featured in the March 2012 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. She was chosen by Sylvia Plachy as one of The New Stars of Photography.

_What's in your email signature? [that's the part at the end of your email that often lists your phone, email, websites.] Many artists also include a picture, logo, quotes and more. My advice? Like almost everything I talk about: Keep It Simple.

If you give me too many options, I will probably do none of them. If you want me to pay attention to your email signature, try making your signature shorter and include just one thing, one action: maybe a link to a special page on your site where you put your latest art.

Bison Short Ribs, Seeing Red, and what it takes to get 14 photographers in one room...

__Lori Theriault: Homemade Tastes Better on Handmade. Lori also writes about food and shares recipes on the Sexy Food Blog

Barbara Fisher: Paintings and Silk Scarves, Studio open Fridays in Asheville's River Arts District

Laurie McCarriar: Photographic Art and Artist Geek! The CLICK! Photo Project through May 22

_How do you name your photo files? Emailing images to curators, galleries, contests, and the media is something we do all the time.

If your image file name does not include your own name, it may get lost in the shuffle.

Artist Geek mini-workshop coming soon—best practices for file-naming, and ways to re-name files all at once instead of one-by-one.

Every Thursday, ArtDates subscribers get a chance to speak up. Share a photo, toot their own horn, show something that inspires them! I love my subscribers!

Joyce Thornburg works in Asheville's River Arts District at the Wedge Studios.
Mark Holland, Asheville NC
Barbara Elliott, Art Cloth Wearables, Burnsville NC. “Let the beauty we love be what we do” —Rumi
Laurie McCarriar, Photographic Art and Artist Geek! The CLICK! Photo Project opens Feb 14

_Is your email inbox filled with emails that you need to take action on, but not until 2 weeks from now? And don't those emails always seem to get lost in the shuffle way too easily? Wouldn't it be great if you never lost an email again?
I use a free online service called FollowUpThen.
Here's how it works:

_1. Take the email you need in 2 weeks (or 1 day, or 6 months - any time period)
2. Forward it to: 2weeks@followupthen.com (or 1day, or whatever)
3. throw out the email.
4. in 2 weeks Followupthen will send it right back to the top of your inbox, ready to work on.

If this looks interesting, but still seems a little too techie, suggest it over on the Classes page and I'll add it to the Artist Geek Workshop schedule.

_Sunday Spotlight:
Barbara Fisher paints oil paintings on canvas, and then turns them into beautiful silk scarves for her textile design company: Fishcake Design.

Barbara's scarf designs are named after women in her family.
"I have some fascinating ancestors who had some good names— names such as Avanel, Sydney, Karne, Ida, and my great grandmother Helvina Lofte."

You can find the full line of Barbara Fisher's scarves online at www.fishcakedesign.net, or in her studio at 170 Lyman Street in Asheville's River Arts District.

_Can you really manage time? I think all we can do is manage how we interact with it.  Have you ever decided to sit down to answer an email, and then all of a sudden, you're reading a friend's Facebook update, which leads you to a recent post on Facebook which leads you to a YouTube video which leads you to...I don't even know where the whole morning went.

You need... a Timer! I don't mind if you use this online kind, or this low-tech kind or even this rather elegant kind... when you sit down to answer emails, set it for 15 or 30 minutes and when it goes off, get up and get back to your studio!

_Last summer, I designed and printed a catalog book for Barbara Fisher's line of scarves available through Fishcake Design. We included the history and pictures of her relatives—it was fun and interesting to combine the paintings, the patterned textiles and the family photographs into a catalog.

Barbara uses this book to sell to interested customers, as a marketing tool and also as a gift to good clients. Click any image below to enlarge.