How to create an artist contact in WrkLst: a normal contact with the artist role, which is what works, inventories, biographies and price factors attach to. This article describes WrkLst 10.
Why artists are created differently
An artist contact is the record that works are attached to, so it usually needs to exist before you can catalogue anything. If you are adding your first work, start here — see Creating New Artwork.
Creating the artist
- Open Contacts, choose Add contact and fill in the name and contact details as for any contact — see Create a New Contact.
- Expand the Inventory artist section and choose Mark as inventory artist.
- Set the Status — Working with or Represented — and the Artist shortcode for inventory numbers, the prefix WrkLst uses when it builds inventory numbers for this artist's works. The Caption name is how the artist is named in captions when it differs from the contact's name.
- Save. The section then tells you which inventories the artist is part of; Manage inventories takes you to Settings → Inventories to add one — see Inventories.
If you are already in the work form, Create new artist adds the artist there and then.
Once an artist has works, the role cannot be removed; the artist stays an artist as long as works are attached. The role is marked with an icon in the contact list, and the Filter finds all of them under Who → Artists.
What hangs off an artist record
Beyond ordinary contact details, an artist record is the anchor for their works, and it is where the Biography belongs: the short bio and the structured CV are maintained in Biographies and can be exported as documents or synchronised with your website, so a CV is updated once and is correct everywhere it appears — see Biographies.
Price factors
If your prices follow a formula per artist — a factor applied to a work's measurements — the option Show price factor options for measurements / auto-generate factor-based prices under Settings → General Account switches it on. The factors themselves are kept under Settings → Toolbox → Artist price factors: Edit factor changes one, and Re-apply factor recomputes the factor-based prices of all that artist's works in one click, which is handy after you add new works.
Artists on your phone
If you sync your WrkLst contacts to your phone or computer, artists arrive as a group of their own, alongside collectors and photographers — see Sync your WrkLst contacts to your phone and computer.
Still using WrkLst Classic? This topic in the Classic documentation: Create a New Artist Contact