Why is visual art so expensive?

During a conversation with my mom, she expressed surprise to learn that I have to pay a fee nearly every time I submit art to a jury.  I thought of how often my prices are questioned, and how people make comments to suggest that the price should be based on the amount of time it took to create each individual piece.

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This mosaic, for instance, took about 3 weeks to complete, though it took many weeks of sketching, and much longer to gather and prepare materials.  I manage to salvage most of my materials (a typical mosaic artist probably spends about $100 per square foot just on tesserae), but I collect them when and where I can, spending time finding and sorting them.  My bases (in this case, an old window frame) are from salvage yards, the side of the road, contractors, or people who seek me out when they want to clear out some junk.  I spend as much time cleaning, sanding, priming, re-glazing and painting my bases as I do making art.  Other mosaic artists prefer to purchase manufactured bases, ready to use, and that gets expensive.

Tools and materials are only a small part of a professional artist's expenses.  Once I have hand-cut my odd-shaped glass shards, taking time to file the corners of each piece, carefully adhering them into a design, and the work is finished, I then have to sell it.  Much of my work is commissioned, in which case I already have a deposit, and final payment is owed on delivery.  But my commissions seem to come in spurts, and I can go 6 months with no projects.  During this time, I make individual mosaic panels to sell at art shows and galleries.  I meet with potential clients, many of whom decide to put their project on the back burner, saying they will get back to me (sometimes they do.)  I sketch and research and experiment.

There are a few organizations that post Calls to Artists, so I am constantly perusing these, submitting to the ones that apply to me.  Most public art submissions are free, but most juried exhibits and festivals require a fee.  Exhibits increase an artist's exposure and contribute to the perceived value of the art, and festivals are a good way to sell a lot of art directly to customers in a short time, but those jury fees sure add up.  For the exhibit I was discussing with my mom, it costs $25 per image, I have no idea whether the juror will find my work at all appealing, and the work won't be for sale when the show takes place.  In addition, once I have submitted a piece, I cannot sell it or submit it to another jury until I am rejected, which can take many months.  If I'm rejected, I still lose my jury fee.

In the meantime, I may take some work to one of the galleries that represents me.  Some galleries take 40%, but most take 50%.  It can be very bittersweet to get a $30 check for something that took 3 full days to make.

As local people have become more familiar with me and my work, I am constantly asked for donations.  I think I get at least 20 donation requests per year, and I donate to about half of them.  It is very difficult to say no, especially in a small community, and when so many of my friends are involved in various kinds of fundraising, all for good causes.  But the value of my donations adds up to about 50% of my gross income, which is kind of crazy.  My artist and musician friends have all felt this same pressure to give away their work, and some are becoming increasingly frustrated.  How many other professionals are asked to give so much?

It speaks to an overall perception that working as an artist is not really work; that it is done out of pure love and inspiration without real effort or sacrifice.  Although I spent my childhood and youth planning to become an "Artist", I now find myself telling strangers that I do custom mosaic tile installations.  According to the general population, "Artist" is not a respectable occupation. 

Well, that covers some of the overhead for an artist, but each of us has different markets and specific expenses.  A friend who wholesales her work has many flights to buyers' markets, huge booth fees, staff, and the cost of printing her art onto a variety of products.  Another must rent large warehouses, import wool, ship large work to museums, and pay engineers to install amazing felt draperies that suspend from vaulted ceilings. Some have to pay to use specialized studios and equipment to make their glass or clay work.  There is the annual Society of American Mosaic Artists conference that costs thousands to get to, and workshops to learn new techniques and skills.

To someone uninterested in art, it may all seem superfluous, but I'll bet they don't question the huge salaries of actors, pop musicians, or even professional athletes.  Visual artists may provide a quieter sort of entertainment, but we provoke and delight, and civilization would be very dull without us.  So there.

Community-based mosaic murals

Tomorrow, I am flying to Oakland, CA to attend a workshop on Facilitating Community Mosaic Projects with Josef Norris.  This is something I've been interested in for some time, following the work of Josef Norris's group Kid Serve as they work in schools to create amazing mosaic murals with the students, and also following Laurel True's work in Ghana and Haiti.  Community-based mosaic is a fun way to bring groups of people together for healing, empowerment, and beautification of otherwise plain concrete walls.

This one was made by pre-schoolers, their parents, and adult volunteers.

Through the magic of facebook, I've been offered lodging on a houseboat near the Institute of Mosaic Art, and I am so very excited to go away for the weekend on my own.  I hope to come back and begin covering the sides of buildings with fun mosaic murals, along with members of community groups and schools.

Winter squash risotto

Just a quick follow-up to my squash recipe quandry: I looked up a standard recipe for winter squash risotto online that used ingredients I happened to have on hand.  Feeling lazy, I put all of the ingredients into my rice-cooker and pushed the "cook" button.  I opened it quickly after it had been cooking for a bit and stirred it all up, then closed it and let it finish.

It was yummy!  It worked!  So, if you are like me, and just not into real cooking, try putting a fancy rice recipe into the rice cooker and let it do the work for you.  My husband even liked it. 

In need of winter squash inspiration.

I have avoided writing about life on the farm for a few months, in part because I worry that the "I grew some vegetables" and the "yet another animal died" stories get redundant and dull.  We suffered a particularly difficult loss of our beloved 7-year-old cat in early November and, as a result, we rehomed our youngest, most problematic, dog.  It was all horrible and traumatic, but we have moved on.  We now have two very well-behaved dogs, a lovely 8-month-old cat, and two adorable, rescued kittens.  Life seems to be back in balance.

Our five chickens have been molting since October, so no eggs.  Hopefully, they will begin again in January.

But, tonight, I'm thinking about winter squash.  Since I've known Mike, he has had a passion for pumpkins.  We rented a house from friends when we were first married, and he pushed hard to develop a pumpkin patch on the lot.  When we moved out to our property, he made sure to allot a section of the garden to pumpkins.  Over the years, we have become more interested in preserving heirloom varieties, so we now grow all sorts of unusual vegetables, including winter squash.

I can never remember the names of them all, but we grow Marina DiChioggia and Hubbard and Red Bumpy Things.  We harvest and store these, and they comprise a large portion of our winter food supply.

However, I'm just not great at cooking these things and, furthermore, Mike doesn't even really care for the flavor of squash!  I've done pumpkin soup, pumpkin risotto, pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin cookies and breads, but I usually just puree it up with butter and maple syrup.  Anouk refuses to eat any of it, as the texture makes her gag.  I was just online yet again, searching for good, easy pumpkin recipes, to no avail.  I'm not interested in super-complicated gourmet recipes, or those involving bacon or sausage.  I'd like to be able to concoct something with what I have on hand and create some simple dishes, but with different spices or ingredients.  If there's a simple, savory squash recipe, I have yet to find it.

A friend recently served a veggie lasagne with winter squash as one ingredient, and it was delicious, so I would like to try that myself.  If anyone out there has good ideas for new ways to spice up squash, or even hide it in other dishes, please send them to me.  I'll give them a whirl and post the results.

In the meantime, Happy Solstice to All, and to All a Good Night!

Honing

My newest Elaine Goodman book arrived last week, The Human Form in Mosaic.  I have not read the book carefully yet, but I've been noting different techniques she demonstrates for depicting figures and portraits, while scanning the text.  Between the recent trip to Turkey and this book, I was inspired to take a break from the Rapunzel series to just practice.  I used some small scraps of wedi given to me by my tile-setter friend, Frank Lynam.

For the first, I found a photo in a 1970 National Geographic I happen to have of a Tibetan refugee.  I did a very simplified sketch of her face and proceeded to fill in the spaces with my stained glass scraps.  This is a very different style than my usual faces, less stylized, more emotional.  I usually create faces that express a certain contentment, peace, and joy.  This face expresses pain and loss.  My goal was to do my first portrait based on a photograph, and to see if I could create contours without andamento.  I'm pretty happy with it as a first attempt, but disappointed in myself for the inadvertent extended groutlines, particularly the one slashing her left cheek like a giant wound. 

Next, I designed a face from imagination, more true to my usual style.  Again, there is one particularly offensive groutline that seemed like a good idea at the time; that curved shape that runs from under her eye to the hairline.  I don't know what I was thinking, but sometimes these mistakes become glaringly clear once the piece is grouted.  Also, I wanted to add detail in the iris by cutting tiny little pieces of glass as rays from the pupil.  It makes her look like a zombie instead.  It might have worked in an ungrouted mosaic, but not here.  I am tempted to paint the groutlines there to solidify the iris.


I am finding Elaine Goodman's book very helpful, but I feel that a hands-on workshop is really necessary.  I hope to invest in one sometime this year.  In the meantime, I'll actually read this book and keep practicing.  I'm registered for a mural workshop with Josef Norris at IMA in February and I plan to begin facilitating community mosaic this Spring. 

Rapunzel, Rapunzel

Here is a terrible photo of my first Rapunzel mosaic.  While designing a concrete sculpture back in September, I had an image of an exhibit featuring multiples of this image, done in different materials, colors and styles.  I decided this would be a fun way to practice various techniques while drawing on one character from fairy tale lore.

I've always been captivated by fairy tales.  I had a very thick collection of Grimms Fairy Tales as a child that I read over and over, and I now read them to my daughter.  I think I re-read Rapunzel so many times because I found it so frustrating that Rapunzel wouldn't just cut off her long hair and use it as a rope to climb out of the tower.  Or that the prince wouldn't simply bring a ladder or rope right away.  What was the point of dragging out the process?  Meanwhile, I wasn't allowed to cut my hair as a girl, so it grew down to my butt, always full of nasty tangles.  My mom was known for her long, blonde hair, and she still refuses to cut it to a more manageable length.

I used this Rapunzel as an experiment with using small square tesserae to create facial contours.  This piece is quite small for me (I prefer wall-sized projects), and it was a challenge for me to cut each  little salvaged stained glass scrap into squares.  I quickly began to feel impatient with it, but it was a good exercise for me.  I think it is important, at this point, to go back and learn the foundations of mosaic technique, in depth.  While I worked on this piece, I waited for the arrival of my newest mosaic book, The Human Form in Mosaic by Elaine M. Goodwin.  I'm looking forward to practicing with some new methods, nicely outlined in the book.  Hopefully, within 6 months to a year, I'll find a gallery space and have a real art show with Rapunzel as the central theme.

By the way, my choice of themes is in no way related to the Disney movie that must have just been released.  Pure coincidence.

Mosaic artist returns from Turkey with tail between legs.

We returned from Turkey one week ago, and I still feel disoriented.  The jet-lag was made more difficult by my 7-year-old who spent the first several days home on opposite-time, so the transition back to our regular schedule has been very hard.  It has been a struggle for me to get back to work in the studio after an entire month off, and while I expected to come home full of ideas and creative energy, instead I feel completely stumped.

I am a self-taught mosaic artist, having taken only one workshop, though I've read a lot of mosaic books and I spent the past 10 years working hard to learn the technical aspects of the medium.  One area I have not really covered, mainly for lack of interest, is classical mosaic.  When I planned the Turkey trip, I felt it would be a good opportunity to force myself to learn about the history of my craft, and to appreciate those early styles.

During a tour in Cappadocia, we had a very knowledgeable Turkish guide who led us through a Hittite-era underground city, a Byzantine Cathedral carved in rock, and a beautiful canyon lined with signs of early civilization.  He was able to talk about geological, cultural and religious history in detail, without notes.  Though from a Muslim background, he explained more about the Bible and Christianity than most American Christians have learned in a lifetime, with respect and fairness.  When he learned that I am a mosaic artist, he asked, "So, which do you prefer; Greek or Byzantine mosaic style?"  Feeling supremely ignorant, I just said that my style is contemporary, and I was there to learn more about the classic styles.  Honestly, I didn't know the difference.  Did I mention that I've been a professional mosaic artist for 10 years?  He quickly lost interest in me at that point.

Throughout the second week of the trip, we visited many more sites featuring examples of Byzantine mosaic, and I was utterly impressed.  The level of skill was amazing, and nothing compares to seeing it in person.  Mosaic artists know this: you see a mosaic in print, but when you see the real thing, it is a different experience, often unexpected.  I started out cutting my tesserae into little squares and placing them in rows to fill spaces, but later began to abandon that method, preferring a more free-flow approach that makes better use of my salvaged materials.  But the work I saw in the Sultanahmet Mosaic Museum and Kariye Church was so stunning and made such a strong impression on me, I feel compelled to learn to use my andamento more effectively.

There's a bit of a struggle in my brain right now between the part of me that wants to stick with the style I know and enjoy, and the part that wants to challenge myself to learn another way, and to become more versatile.  I have a project on the table now, the first in a series of Rapunzel mosaics, that is an attempt to bring some of that classic style into my contemporary work.  It is more time consuming, and I hate working with such tiny pieces, but I think it is good practice. We'll see where it takes me.