March 19, 2010

Port Townsend, WA - Internet helps Mangutz put the puzzle pieces together

by Kathy Meyer of the Leader

Never underestimate the power of a website when it comes to selling art.

While primitive folk art painter Cindy Mangutz was busy working on a cob structure for her and her husband Steve’s 10-acre piece of property at Four Corners, someone in the ethernet noticed her at cindymangutz.com. Hers is not a fancy website, but then neither is her home. Both are pure and simple – just the way genuine folk art and the people who make it are imagined to be.

To be honest, Mangutz doesn’t know a lot about using computers, but in 2003 she decided to start out with a basic website. A friend put up images of her paintings in alphabetical order, and that was about it. A few years later, she paid a professional website designer to put in a shopping cart using PayPal so customers could more easily buy prints of her work. It was effective, but she wasn’t getting rich.

Then, three months ago, Mangutz got an email from Jim Meserve of Next Day Art in Portland, Maine, telling her that his art-licensing agency was interested in selling her work to national companies.

“He says that folk art is hotter than ever,” Mangutz said.

Art licensing is a way for artists to sell the same work over and over rather than selling one original painting at a time to one individual buyer. Most artists sell archival prints of their work, as Mangutz has through her website as well as at farmers markets and craft fairs. Although not all art is appropriate for licensing, companies will pay artists for the right to use their creations on products such as puzzles, greeting cards, mugs, wall coverings, sheets and towels and a host of other possibilities. Think of all of the Mary Engelbreit merchandise out there, and you get the idea.

Meserve is a licensing agent for artists and has been in the business for 15 years. Next Day Art is a 4-year-old company that represents about 80 artists, he said.

“I think [Cindy] has a great grasp of Americana and folk art that’s very well executed with great storytelling. She throws in a bit of whimsy every now and again; it makes it fun,” he said.

Meserve also said he’ll be exhibiting her work at the SURTEX show in New York City in May. SURTEX is a major show where surface and textile designers go to find art for various products. It runs concurrently with the national stationery show.

Mangutz responded positively, and she almost immediately signed a contract with Next Day for nine puzzles with a puzzle manufacturer. Eight of the nine images selected are from Washington state, including two from Port Townsend: “Clambake on the Beach” and “Haunted Halloween Mansion.” The others are titled “Antiques and Apple Blossoms,” “Best of the Northwest,” “Homefire’s Lure,” “Christmas Village,” “Days of Autumn” and two other scenes from the well-known pumpkin patch in Snohomish called Craven Farm.

The puzzles are expected to be released this summer and will be sold on her website and distributed in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Mangutz, a self-taught artist, said that as an admirer of naturalist artist Robert Bateman, she used to paint realistically – “ducks and that sort of thing.” Then one day, Steve encouraged her to change her style and see what would happen.

The change felt good.

“I imagine myself in a hot air balloon looking down at the scene. It sort of spreads everything out, and you can forget about perspective and the vanishing point,” said Mangutz.

Right away, she was accepted into the William Dodge Gallery in Carmel, Calif., and sold three originals in the first week.

Modestly, she said, “We all excel at detail in different ways.”

Another of her successes includes a brief stint on the QVC channel in the early ’90s. At an audition for sellers held in Lacey, Mangutz was surprised to find her piece “Four Seasons of Washington” accepted. With an order of 350 framed prints, she and Steve got busy getting it all together – an operation that also demanded a UPS “drop test package.” It cost them between $3,000 and $4,000 for materials, and they had no idea how television viewers would react.

Part of the QVC marketing strategy is to feature the artists on air while the art is offered.

“I was very nervous, but I tried not to act like I was,” Mangutz said.

She needn’t have been. In a quick six minutes, all 350 prints sold out. When the emcee asked Steve how he felt about the response, all he could manage was to look at the floor and say, “Cool.”

The couple’s friends teased him for a long time after that, Mangutz said. “Whenever they’d see him, they’d just say, ‘cool,’” she smiled.

Actually it was better than cool. It was enough profit for the two of them to buy their 10 acres, which they now own free and clear.

But it hasn’t always been this easy. Mangutz and Steve, also a craftsman who makes bent cedar chairs, paid a lot of dues traveling the fair circuit during their 31-year marriage. She tried gift shows, too, but they just weren’t her thing.

This new venture comes at a time when this unassuming hippie couple has gotten older and aren’t as thrilled about taking road trips as they once were. Now, she said, they like to stick close to home, and the two sell only at the Port Townsend Farmers Market, the Sequim Lavender Festival and at Anacortes and Edmonds fairs. Besides, she said, the shows just aren’t what they once were.

“A lot of people went out of business after 9/11. When the shows start going to imports, it’s bad news for us.”

But for Mangutz, the good news just keeps on coming. Again, her new agent has called to tell her that another well-known puzzle manufacturer wants to do 12 more, and her St. Nicholas image will be made into a Christmas card.

“I mean, I’m blown away,” she said. “At this point, I’m just saying ‘yes, yes, yes’ to everything.”

article courtesy of the PT Leader