The Value of Values

 

Value

The relative worth, merit or importance…

Value comes into an artist’s life in so many ways most simple believe they understand it and go on with their busy lives. After all it doesn’t ay the rent, put food on the table of switch the channels on the TV. (Given the number of channels we have to choose between these days having something to set a value on them or just change them without being told or bullied or having to be hunted for would be a gift beyond measure.)

Value, the worth, merit or importance of your own work is a huge bugaboo for most artists. They like doing the work, they like getting awards, they like seeing their work on the walls of a museum or bank or gas station, but when it comes to setting the value of that work they throw their hands into the air, run around in little circles and scream, “The sky is falling!”

In cash the value can only be determined when the piece sells and that will depend on someone’s opinion not the artist. See when work doesn’t sell there can be any number of factors working against proper cash flow. Was the piece overpriced? Was the piece shown in a high traffic area where buyers would be likely to see it? Was the artist really willing to sell it?

Was the piece overpriced? Reluctantly the Great Recession has affected all of us. Art which would have brought in hundreds of dollars just a few years ago is now likely to bring in a few pennies, if they sell at all. How does an artist price their work so that it moves and doesn’t sit? That’s the BIG Question.

You must cover the cost of making the art or make sure that it produces in advertising, publicity, and prestige what it took out of your budget. Otherwise you are working for free. Now volunteering can be very fulfilling and there is much to be said for the rewards of having a consuming hobby, but unless you are close personal friends with Warren Buffett and get stocks tips from Mr. Buffett you’d better be able to pay your way.

Did the piece get shown where it could be seen by enough people to find a buyer? I hope so and this too is a double-edged sword, most of the places where the right crowd collects don’t let you sell and even if they do they rotate the work through in a blinding hurry. What if the right buyer comes along two weeks after the show ends? Can they find your work?

Keeping your work out where it can be seen and bought is hard work. It means having many different venues where it can be shown. It means finding connections which would not have been made by the average person. It means looking all of the time for new and different places where art might get a showing.

Do you have your work out in the great big wide world? Is it still lingering in that closet? Have much traffic in that closet do you?

Here he goes again, comparing us to the few who sell all of their stuff. You bet your bippy! They are the folks who take the job of art seriously. They get their work out all of the time, they show, they find events, venues, street fairs where they can get folks walking by and they sell.

It is no real surprise that Dutch, Kim, Kelle, S.L, Michael, Susan and Pat sell. They keep their art out there working. What show are you in this month? Have you entered any shows? Have you talked to merchants, professionals or commercial developers? They all have a need for art. If you haven’t that just might be why you aren’t selling as much as you’d like.

Did the artist really want to sell the piece? Okay, take a long, hard look at your work. Do you really want to let that piece which you have six months of your life invested in go to some stranger?

Yes, you do have to answer the question. If you don’t, it’s okay but you have to know. The easy way to hang on to your work is to put it out there with a price tag so high that a Van Gogh at auction would blush. You have to select a price which an untutored buyer will think is worth, (Valued) the cost.

If you have never sold and never placed a piece in the top three places at a juried show then to ask five hundred dollars an inch is likely to keep that piece on your wall. If you paint torn nets you may find a market here on the coast but will the potential buyers have the cash if you price it like a Warhol? (No I’m not all that wild about Andy, but in Manhattan he sells.)

There is one more factor hiding in this grand equation; do you value your own work?

The easiest thing in the world for an artist to do is to develop an ego problem. You do what ninety percent of the world cannot. You make something from nothing and when you are through there is that spark of magic which makes the folks looking at it go, “Oh Yeah!” It is so easy to read your own press clippings and let the notion that you are the absolute center of the world.

But that’s ego. Do you, in your heart of hearts believe that? Most, not all, most believe they are lucky to get chosen for a show. They are lucky to get selected for an award and they are really lucky if they get prize money. The very opposite is true, it isn’t luck, its talent and if you have it, you first have to believe in it.

Years ago, back when fire was new and people still wore animals skins not as a fashion statement, but because it was cold and the animals didn’t need them once they went into the cooking pot, I was asked to try my hand at writing a murder mystery. No, not the Agatha Christie kind, although I do have a coupla in a drawer and if you know an agent or a publisher who’d like to see them I’d be happy to run you off a copy, the dinner theater type. That’s where you come to eat and see the show and later in the evening we kill someone off for your dining pleasure. Yeah that kind.

The guys, who were asked, yes there was more than one silly, were certainly more experienced than I was. One was a literature professor at an Ivy-covered college, not ivy league and the other was a well-known local actor. We met and heard the plans and went off to write. You may have noticed I write. I did, the other guys did not. I made the sale and for the next twelve years I produced, wrote, acted, managed a troupe of actors doing, murder mysteries. How did that happen? I wrote the play.

No it wasn’t. Particularly good, is what it wasn’t, but it was finished and the guy buying it had a place rented and a caterer waiting and actors hired and he needed that script so he bought mine.

I never wasted a second worrying about how bad it was, or how silly the guys was to buy it or how lucky I was to have been asked. I wrote the play and sold it and spent the next long decade doing what I could, writing murder mystery plays.

I got my work out there. I still do it that way, with writing and art. I am pretty sure there are better artists living right here in Coos County. But they don’t come out to play and that means some silly guy might just buy my work, cause it’s out there!