Over the last month I have been working intensely on how I should present my work to people online. At the moment my main contact with an audience is through email and social media so it’s pretty important that I get this right. I thought I would write about my thinking process in this edition of The Glimmerists.
I am a member of the artists marketing group We ArtStep – maybe it’s a mentoring or mutual support group too. It provides invaluable feedback and is a great sounding board for new projects particularly around marketing – as you would expect. The current subject is ‘Hooks’; short statements for use in Social Media profiles that explain and summarise what your artwork is and what it’s about. There is a real art to crafting one of these brief encounters so that they actually increase the number of people who stay to look at your posts and follow you. I think it’s not unlike the kind of effort and skill that goes into creating a good logo or brand.
A good hook
There are structures to help you build a hook that contains all the ingredients you need to make one that works. Here’s one of the ways of thinking about it (courtesy of John Allsopp, SellYourArt.blog )
A strong hook should:
- Be under ~25 words (Instagram attention span )
- Contain at least one concrete noun
- Contain at least one active verb
- Avoid generic art language (“unique”, “journey”, “inspired by life”
- Be understandable by a non-artist
- Sound like the artist could actually say it
Here’s an example of one of my early Hooks:
#1 Twitter
From my Twitter stream Oct 2016 (now extinct)
I make oblique, figurative, associative, ceramic sculpture. Digital media user.
In profile
I think I have actually been thinking about this ever since I cottoned on to Social Media in about 2012. I even had the presence of mind to keep a record of how my profile text has evolved over time. The oldest one I kept is from 2016 and it’s fairly direct and simple although there are already some very considered words like ‘oblique’ and ‘associative’ that were doing a lot of work in terms of specifying the intentions in my work.
#2 Instagram Hook
From my Artworks Instagram stream May 2021
I make ceramic sculptures that can only be used for what they mean – which is open to interpretation
In example #2, five years later I made more of a sentence or statement rather than a string of words. So this is a bit more of an attempt to go further towards the potential audience.
Hook example #3
From my Artworks Instagram stream Feb 2025
Ceramic Sculpture
resonant / oblique / reflective
Engaging and obscure notions mined from the layers of my mind and the cultural collective
Looking at these now makes me think you can only really hint at the richness and complexity of visual and sculptural artwork using words. As words are the primary medium of all our communication and culture (and of the internet) it’s important to try and work with them which is one of the reasons this newsletter exists. I don’t know how anyone else sees this but I think it’s much better to say too little than to bend over backwards to include everything you can think of – in our increasingly abbreviated world it’s much better to say less.
New vocabulary
These days nothing is quite complete until you have run it through AI:
#4 Artificial Intelligence
From a session with an AI Sept 2025
Trusting the wisdom that emerges when mind and body work together, where years of tactile skill allow something larger to flow through the work, creating objects that slow people down and invite personal discovery in an age of instant digital everything.
I found it helpful to let an AI have a go at re-phrasing the description of my work and my intentions in making it. It has a different vocabulary and phrasing that I don’t think I would ever get to on my own. My latest artists statement on my website was also written with an AI assistant. It seems important to try these new technologies to be informed about their potential so you can make informed choices about when and whether to use them.
A word sculpture
When I was thinking about how to proceed with writing this hook I realised I wanted to approach it like I approach my artworks. I wanted it to be more like my own work. It occurred to that I could have something beautiful or poetic like a Haiku except I am not really a wordsmith. I started thinking that the formula of what a Hook should contain might not be right for me, that I wanted something more like a word sculpture.
#5 Breakfast
April 2026
Don’t have art for breakfast
It will not last
Devour it in the spaces between these words
I also allowed myself to ignore almost all the rules of Haiku construction as I decided it would get bogged down in technicalities if I attempted to master that form before I produced anything. When I wrote this I thought it was quite exciting and that I had found a new approach to the subject. They both start with a strident bold statement, then there is a response (call and response) then there is longer instruction to finish. I feel like I got some of the quality I was seeking, they do the task in a very oblique way which is how I like to approach things in my work.
When I posted the last version into Instagram I was not sure it was my own voice. On reflection I realised I was adopting a declamatory manifesto style, as if I was acting. It’s a written style and perhaps it lacks my every day voice. So I still hadn’t finished and I was beginning to think I never would.
A serious voice
The following three draft hooks are an attempt to find my own serious voice although this might be confusing because my work often contains humour and playfulness. At heart though I am a serious person and find contemporary politics deeply disturbing so these are trying to express that side of my thinking.
#6 World view
May 2026
The world I see through screens is misted by lies.
I focus on making sculpture and drawing because that’s what I need to do. How else could I possibly process the absurdity?
I think this catches some of the dilemma of making art now. But I also realise that I generally don’t deal with current affairs directly at all. I am very aware of what’s in the news and like to stay abreast of news and events but I process it subliminally rather than try to react to it, illustrate it or run commentary on it directly in my work. I do often respond on social media though but my art making cycle is too long for such reactions to be timely.
#7 Shiphook
May 2026
The shipload of trouble that transits the horizon each day has to find its reflection in my ceramic sculpture however absurd it may seem to respond in clay.
In these Hooks I have tried to include my perspective on the times we are living through:
#8 Historical perspective
May 2026
Dada occurred in response to the obscenity of the Great War. Now we grieve the passing of truth what more surreal way to respond than in clay?
#9 Latest attempt
May 2026
Clay made to misbehave?
Look, a pint sized ceramic sculpture
– Take what you need and leave the other meanings behind
I think this is beginning to work for me. It has the economy of a Haiku if not the actual structure. I don’t think it’s what I was expecting to create but I do like the elliptical approach and that it’s telling you a lot without obviously ticking boxes. It’s clearly about clay and ceramic sculpture and it lets you know how important and multi-layered the meanings in my work are. Let’s test it though:
Is it:
- Under ~25 words (Instagram attention span ) -YES
- Contain at least one concrete noun -YES
- Contain at least one active verb -YES
- Avoid generic art language (“unique”, “journey”, “inspired by life” – YES
- Be understandable by a non-artist – POSSIBLY NOT – but it might intrigue people (?)
- Sound like the artist could actually say it – NOT REALLY – it’s still like a manifesto
So that’s 4 out of 6 or 66% which is not too bad.
Towards perfection?
My thinking about this is that it is a rolling process and this makes sense in the context of Social Media because you can edit and re-publish at any time. So the idea of refining something until it’s perfect enough (to be sent to the printers) no longer applies. It seems to be a case of Work in Progress. As yet I don’t think I have found a text that will stand the test of time but I have defined more clearly what I do and don’t want – so I will just have to keep working on it in the hope of making it better and better. I think what I am really trying to get at is a counterbalance to all the cynicism that surrounds us. The ideas that say the only way to be successful is to be ruthless and selfish. I think we all have our own obsessions and agendas but we also need to bear in mind the needs of our collective humanity and think about how we can advance that at the same time as fulfilling our personal dreams.
Note about the images
The images are photos taken from the screensaver on my computer. The screensaver app collages favourited photos from my library. I like the random way it has assembled them and juxtaposed them, it reminds me of the way I assemble ideas in my work and the way words portray images.