To Sell or Not to Sell?

"Sea Glass" and "Across the Species" (see blog sidebar) were accepted into a small juried show. The question put before me was, did I want to sell my work? Well, yeah... don't we all need to generate revenue?

The next question then is, how much do you sell your work for? How do you price YOUR work? Do you consider the amount of time spent on a piece? Do you factor in materials and framing? What about perceived aesthetic value or the socio-economic ability of those who attend the show? Oh, man this is a big can of worms!

I have to come up with a dollar amount before I drop off the work. I'm curious how other artists deal with this. What's fair, what works?

Trip to NYC

One of the hottest, muggiest days in August, and I was standing in the bowels of the Manhattan subway, waiting. My throat burned from the acidic air and sweat and anxiety dripped from me, as waves of people went about their business. Hordes of people, but I felt alone. Ok, ok... suffice to say, NYC for me is nothing like Sarah Jessica Parker's; if this is city living, I'm a country gal.

I met fellow graduate student John Chang and Ebenezer Singh at the MoMA. It was great to finally connect with familiar faces. John introduced me to Gaetano La Roche an artist friend of John's who also met us at the museum. John was tired after a very long flight from LA but in great spirits and Ebenezer was dancing with excitement, too.

The MoMA was cool, spacious and completely packed as any Saturday afternoon at a major NY museum would be in a heat wave. Gaetano was having an exhibition at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin on 145 West 46th Street on Sunday and Nancy McTague Stock, another fellow grad student and I were invited to attend. More about MoMA and the Richard Serra exhibit in a future post.

Why go to all this trouble? It was an energetic shot in the arm I needed after two months away from residency and a trying summer.

We left the MoMA in a taxi with artist Long Bin Chen and headed for his studio in Tribeca. Nancy McTague Stock met us there with her lovely daughter and we all headed to Chinatown for dinner. It was fun to eat, drink and talk about art. It is energizing to be with artists serious about their work and made me miss all you AIB'er even more.

I stayed at the Integral Yoga Institute which is downtown and a quiet oasis in a noisy city. On Sunday I headed to Time Square to meet John and go to Gaetano's exhibit.

Next post, I'll talk more about the work I saw. Cheers all!

Andrei Codrescu interview 7/11/07

Eva Lake of Voice America- The Art World, interviewed poet, writer and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu on being an artist. He is fascinating to listen to and spoke about artists being public expressers, betraying the mysteries and achieving a balance between silence and expression.

He also talked about artists creating value in their art with integrity. He had some interesting things to say about art being about fashion, style and what is in vogue, particularly the art biennales that encourages successful artists to create shocking and original works.

He mentioned the idea of turning corporate values against the corporations by using the same tactics the corporations use to push their agengas. A radical idea... design anyone?

Next Paper

Here are some questions and comments kicking around in my head from reading Suzi Gablik's The Reenchantment of Art. I'm wrestling with these ideas and some of them are winning. What's your view?

What is a truly conscious postmodern (art) practice?

What is the forward movement of art?

An individual (artist) is also an organ of the collective (society).

The truth is only we have the power to transform our situation; There is no one else. That's the good news and the bad.

The artist as an arbiter of social change. Is this true?

The source of creativity in society is the person. Yep.