Lori Howell, the HTA book keeper, gave us another wonderful presentation on understanding our bookkeeping and tax issues.  Her topic this year was defining the difference between a bookkeeper and a Tax Preparer.  Lori said most people don't know there really is a difference but she helped us understand that tax preparers are big picture people and don't worry about the details.  Bookkeepers do your daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tax work.  Both are very necessary whether you do it yourself or hire people to do it for you.  Many people, Lori said, expect if they have a tax preparer that is all they need but if you do not file your employment statements and quarterly taxes you could be paying your tax preparer a lot of extra fees and late fines to help you sort out the issues if you are not a diligent bookkeeper.  She recommended if you are starting to grow a bookkeeper can save you lots of time and allow you to focus on making your work instead of the paperwork.  She gave us a few examples of fines that can be incurred if businesses are not transparent and organized.  One way to help you get or keep organized if you don't feel you can pay for a bookkeeper currently is to get an accounting program like Quick Books, Peachtree programs. 
Lori encouraged people to shop around and interview for your tax and bookkeeper needs and make sure you can understand them.  If you are planning on growing this is a necessary step and trying to hide from it because you do not understand or don't want to think about it will not be in your best interest.  Contact Lori at ABC Accounting and see if she can be of assistance to you.  763-227-4341

Roger said he went through each artist in the directory to highlight the individualism of each artist.  He said the group was very interested in the artist mark on the tiles and were wondering why some did not have them and other did.  As collectors they value pottery and tile based on the makers mark, year it was made, rarity, and the condition it is in.  The collectors tended to like marks on the front of tiles so they could identify a tile in an installation without having to take it out of the installation.
Roger seemed to gather from the collectors that just signing the piece was not enough to add real value to a work since it could be plagiarized and it was an after effect not a purposeful design element.  It is still important to do so if you have no other way to identify the work but it was the least liked option. 
The effect of Rogers presentation had an immediate effect for Nancy Froseth the artist making the 2008 Commemorative tile.  Nancy said she will make her mark on the tile.  This topic was very interesting to the group and was a way to understand collectors and their priorities.
As a fun project please bring a tile with your mark to the next meeting and discuss your design and rational for making your mark.

Other info that might be useful: check out American Art Tile by Norman Karlson Click the book to get more details on how to purchase and check out this link to Michael Padwee research with marks http://www.tileheritage.org/TileBack-Sept-05.html

The 2008 MN Tile Festival registration forms are now available both on line and by visiting Clay Squared to Infinity.  All artist members and those who did the show last year will receive a registration form in the mail. 

The outside booths always go first  and we only have 14 outdoor spaces so if it is important to you to have an outdoor space do not procrastinate.  Click here to download a registration form.

  

New this year: we will put your company or artist name and a free link to your website on the MN Tile Festival page after you register.  The HTA gets a lot of people scoping out the tile festival all year so get some free advertising by registering early. 

Next HTA Meeting Tuesday April 15th

The Next HTA meeting will be Tuesday April 15th at FK Art Glass.   

FK Art Glass was selected to be on this year's home tour and will be showing off their finished glass studio to the HTA.  They will do a demo from 6 to 6:45 with the meeting to follow the demo


Agenda
Show us your mark.  Bring in a sample tile that has a mark on it to see what we each do.  Discuss how to better serve collectors and bring that crowd to the tile festival.

As a fun project please bring a tile with your mark to the next meeting and discuss your design and rational for making your mark.
Register for the Tile Festival
Review tag line entries
10th year planning talk
other

 

Kathleen H Curley
Speaker Lori Howell

Attendance
Nancy Froseth
Christopher Kelly
Tina Schowalter
Leann E Johnson
Stephanie Kaczrowski
Marcia Glancy
Roger Mayland
Josh Blanc

Felice Amato

Over the past 4 years of HTA commissioning artists to make the commemorative tile.  We have made the decision that lining up artist a year in advance and having a design completed ready to be printed in the following year's directory is the best way to presell the tile and get publicity for the artist.  This year we are offering artists and patrons to reserve the tiles so we make sure they are all sold.  So far it is working.  We have 4 people already reserving the tiles. 

We are looking for the 2009 artist and beyond to design and create the commem- orative tile so if you are interested please contact the HTA and get the scoop on what it pays and the perks you get from it.  josh@handmadetileassociation.org
612-781-6409
To reserve your 2008 commemorative tile click the tile above and it will take you to reservations.

Sabra Waldfogel our Tile Festival PR coordinator has been busy putting together a killer press release for the tile festival event.  Click here to read it.
Sabra is also refining and updating  our media list she is looking for artists to tell her about your local newspapers so she can make sure they receive info on the tile festival.  Her goal is to get stories about the artists and the HTA in general.  Please send the HTA images or new projects, awards, inventions and other news that could be helpful in our quest to tile and mosaics publicity.  sawaldfogel@comcast.net