re-vamping

Worked on re-arranging the SK art site tonight. I'm trying to make it easier for people to find what they want as it's gotten kind of unwieldy lately. It's set up on one of those big sites where everyone has their own site (and most have their own domain name) on a nice but basic template. It has worked well, but all the pieces on the site -- there are currently 106 -- are all in one big pool. There are only six images per page, but there are 17 pages and that can get tiring to wade through.

Fairly recently the main site upgraded the templates to allow us to break down that big pool into several separate "galleries" of work. I think that's great and that's what I've been working on tonight. But I'm having trouble deciding what to put where. Right now I have the work divided into six sections:

1) Original paintings -- the originals are still for sale. Some also have prints and cards.
2) Self portraits -- Prints and cards. Steve does a lot of self portraits so I thought this would be a good division. Some of these originals are still for sale (and are also listed in the originals for sale section), some are sold, but all of these have prints and cards available.
3) CD & Booklet art -- Prints & cards. Pieces used by The Church or one of Steve's other musical (and in one case poetry) projects. All but one of these originals has sold (it's also listed in the originals for sale section), but people can still buy prints or cards (we don't offer cards on a few, and neither prints nor cards are currently offered on a couple, but most likely will be soon).
4) Other Prints and Cards. Not self portraits or cd & booklet art. Some of these originals are still for sale (and are listed in the originals for sale section), and all have prints and cards available (or soon to be available) to purchase.
5) Gods & Devils -- Prints & Cards. Various religious and mythical figures. All but one original is sold (and that one is also listed in the originals for sale section also), and there are prints and cards available for each piece.
6) Archive -- These are small originals (8x10 to 9x12)which are sold but we offer no prints or cards to buy. They are basically just for people to look at.

Currently there is no real order of paintings within each division, but I just wanted to get them separated so I could get a feel for if each new section is managable. What I'm trying to do is make each gallery a somewhat logical division of Steve's work so people will have an easier time looking through everything and finding what they want. For instance, if someone comes to the site and wants to buy an original painting all they have to look through is the originals section. All the original pieces currently for sale will be there, and they won't have to wade through 106 pieces to find the 20 or so that aren't sold. If someone wants to buy a print of a self portrait of Steve, they can just look at that section.

It's late now -- damned near 4 am -- and I'm not sure any of this makes sense, so I'm going to go to bed and look at it again later today. With any luck it will at least kinda make sense then.

Holy Shit!

A woman bought a painting during the SK Birthday sale, which of course was on September 13. She planned to get it framed and give it to her boyfriend for Christmas. I mailed the painting out to her in California (from Ohio) on September 20 Priority Mail Insured via the USPS. It should have arrived in two to three days.

In early December she emails me wondering where the package is as it hasn't arrived yet. Oh crap. By then it had been six weeks and I had the sinking feeling the package had been lost in the USPS black hole. But I went to the post office to enquire because I just couldn't imagine even they could lose a box that size. It wasn't huge, but it wasn't something which was going to be easily misplaced either. The post office couldn't even pull up a record that it had ever entered their system, let alone tell me anything about where it was. The guy at the counter did tell me to have the recipient check at her post office too, just to make sure. She did, but no luck there either. :-(

The painting was insured so I could file a claim for the cost of the item, but that still didn't do much for the poor woman whose great Christmas gift for her boyfriend was nowhere to be found. So I emailed Steve, told him the painting had been lost in transit, and asked if he would be willing to do another painting of the same subject (Zeus). I knew it wouldn't be able to be finished by Christmas, but I wanted to be able to offer the customer something other than a refund. He agreed to do that if she wanted it, so that was good, but by then Christmas had arrived. The customer told her boyfriend the whole sorry saga and they looked over the rest of the paintings on the art site to see if there were any which caught their eye (as getting another from the site was another option I gave them). They didn't find anything they loved there, but asked about the possibility of having a commission done which was also doable. Still the loss of a painting they wanted was discouraging.

Anyway, over the weekend I started gathering the documentation required to file an insurance claim with the post office for the loss of the package. Tuesday night I emailed the customer and asked her to send me some of the documentation I needed and she emailed right back saying she would. I had planned to start filling out the paperwork yesterday, but other things came up so I never got around to it.

So late last night I get another email from the customer and guess what? The painting was delivered yesterday!!! 15 weeks to go from Ohio to California. Priority Mail no less. Christ I wonder how long it would have taken if I sent it parcel post?

I am thrilled and relieved. I just wonder where the damned thing was all this time.