Artists

I don’t want to clutter up theferrett‘s comments, so I’ll comment here on his post about artists.

I come from a long line of artisans, and married into a similar type of family, and that skill comes out in my descendents as well.

My ex is a blacksmith. A talented blacksmith. If you can sketch out what you want enough to give a rough idea, he can interpret it in metal. He makes knives (mostly of historical or original patterns, in damascene or plain), candle holders, fireplace tools, toasting forks, wall sconces, box hinges and clasps, penannular brooches, eating utensils, and more. He can sculpt the metal to look like dragon heads, ram’s heads, roses, cat heads, and more. Like I said – talented. And yet, when he sets up a booth to display and demonstrate the making of his wares, people are outraged that he charges what he does for his knives when they can get one “just like it” at the imported goods booth for $5.00.

His work is grueling and dangerous – the metal gets heated to insanely hot temperatures. It’s a good thing I’m a skilled herbalist because some of his burns could have cost him the permanent use of his hands (I’m thinking in particular about one burn where he snatched a glowingly white hot blade form up off the anvil barehanded when a small child who was supposed to be restrained nad held back behind the barrier reached for it – the metal was so hot that it seared through his glove and to the bone in the few seconds he held it before tossing it into the quenching bucket. It was a bad third degree burn, but once the doctors had given him good pain killers and told him the burn was so bad he’d never use his hand again and sent him hone, I applied my infamous burn ointments to it. Today, he has full use of the hand, although it is scarred from the burn). It also requires an incredibly precise eye – he can hammer out and shape a blade that is perfectly straight – and I can’t even draw a straight line with the help of a ruler. And they want to pay $5.00 for a knive that took him 2-3 days to make from raw metal, and another 2-3 days to shape the perfect guard and hilt for it, and another day to shape a fitted sheath for it.

But he gets customers who understand the skill and artistry and sheer hard work behind what he does and they’ll pay his price without a blink – because he vastly undercharges. And some of them, the really knowing ones, leave him big tips to make up the difference between what he undercharges and what they are truly worth.

But those people are rare.

My daughter is a gifted knitter. She can knit gauzey lace shawls so fine you’d swear a spider helped her. Yet, because most knitted wear is machine made, she can’t get a fair price for her work. She mostly makes her knitwear as gifts. She’s also a gifted chef.

I know many of you will think cooking isn’t a skill and it’s not artistic. But you haven’t seen her breads, pies, cakes, and other edible creations. Cooking is not just a day-to-day chore, for some, it’s an artistic expression, and worthy of support.

My son also works in metals – designing engines, wings, airfoils, gears, and anything else to do with machines. He built his first working hydroplane when he was 6 years old, and his first passenger airplane that flew when he was 14 (out of lawnmower and bicycle parts with balsa wood and tissue paper – it came apart in the next storm, but it flew 800 feet up and over 6 miles – and carried 2 insane boys who flew it back home again). He also made what I believe is the world’s smallest folded paper crane out of ordinary school paper – three of them fit on top of a dime. And he folded them blind – the paper and his hands were tucked inside a desk where he couldn’t watch himself fold the cranes.

My other children, my adopted ones, also have their special skills. K is an illustrator. Ro writes extremely elegant computer programs, B is a musician and writer, J has no artistic skill but makes up for it with his hard-core academia and sales techniques, L crafts beautiful jewelry and objects out of natural materials, and Re makes the most enchanting baby toys.

My father-in-law is a woodworker. There is practically nothing he can’t make from wood. He makes wooden puzzles, tables, special baking devices, toys, games, and sculptures from his woods. Gorgeous, beautiful things. But, because machines make much of what he does – mass produced and veneered – he can’t sell them for what they are worth.

Me, I design dolls and that skill extends to embroidery and designing costumes. I also design herbal medications and crafts. My herbal jewelry isn’t near as beautiful as L’s, but then, she can’t custom design a fragrance or weave herbs into longlasting ornaments.

Modern production has done a number on various things – what people perceive as a fair price for custom designed one-of-a-kind art (remember those Cabbage Patch Dolls – each one “unique”, even though they were mass produced?) deviates very far from what it actually takes to produce that art. I brought up the Cabbage Patch Doll because I design dolls. Each one is unique. Before the Cabbage Patch Dolls, this was important to people. Now, they assume the difference is a minor thing – like the number of brush strokes in the eye color, or the pattern of streaking in the hair, or the number of freckles painted on the face.

It’s not just strangers who don’t consider the effort that goes into handcraftimg something or the creativity that allows an artist or craftsman to design something completely personal. A lot of time acquaintances do this. They think, because we’re friends, that they can demand we provide them with our creations. Some graciously offer to reimburse us for the cost of the materials involved.

I can be terribly rude when someone goes too far. One young man (adult – as in over 21) desperately wanted a knife made by my ex. He kept arguing and explaining that my ex’s prices were too high for what he offered, it was just a hobby and he should be happy to be compensated for the cost of the materials. I finally got fed up with him and his cheapskate ways, and picked up the materials he’d need to make the knife – a length of 01 tool steel, a few pieces of wood, some brass, and a bit of leather and sinew and plopped them down in front of him. “Tell you what, I’ll give you the raw materials and you can make your own knife,” I told him. He stared at the scraps – and that is what the raw materials looked like – and stammered that he he didn’t know how. I told him that he was paying the smith not just for the finished product, but for the years of study, practice, injuries, and skill that allowed him to make the knife as well as the creative inspiration that shaped the knife into a thing of beauty as well as a functional object. I told him he could keep the raw materials, leave them, or ask the smith to show him how to turn that stuff into a knife.

He thought he was being clever when he said he’d have the smith show him how to make the knife and then he’d get one free.

Poor kid. Three burns, several stitches, a smashed finger, a smashed toe, and utter exhaustion a week later, he had a knife. It wasn’t gorgeous, but it was functional and it met my ex’s exacting standards as to what constitutes a knife. The young man didn’t intend to ever make another knife because he said it was too hard, but he said he hadn’t known just what was involved in knife-making. He said he’d treasure the knife he made, not just because he made it himself (my ex made him do all the work on it) but because the effort and pain that went into making it made it priceless to him. And the following year, he paid full price for a knife made by my ex. I’ve since seen him wandering craft fairs and when he buys something handmade, he never quibbles about the price.

But you can’t teach everyone that way. You can’t show them all that the materials are the least of the work. And you can’t convince them that the price you’re charging, composed of your time and your talent, is worth anything at all. All they see is that yarn is cheap (comparatively – I’m not talking about specialty yarns spun from buffalo or wolverine hair), the knitting needles are reuseable, and they dismiss the skill, the practice, the artistic talent, as being nothing much.

All artists face this. some overcome it and convince many people that their talent and practice are worth the price they placed on it. But even the famous artists no doubt face the friend who is convinced that they deserve a special discount, or to get whatever they want for a token fee. It is a perennial problem, handling those friends.

I handle it by not letting people know what I can do, then doing it as a gift for them. If they then ask if I’ll repeat it for them to give to such-and-so, I usually tell them I can’t do it again, theirs was a one-time thing. It’s true, too, because I don’t like making the same things over and over again. I have to be Very Well Paid to make something I’ve made before (except food – I will make the same recipes over and over). This is a personal quirk, not to be confused with how other artisans operate. Most of them charge for their talent, I charge based on how much doing it annoys me.

I’m making an exception to my “I won’t repeat it” rule with the Flying Spaghetti Monsters I’m making as birthday gifts for some friends, but once I stop making Flying Spaghetti Monsters, I will (hopefully) never again make them. At that, I’m only making 6. I will post pictures when I’m done, because I figured a way to make the spaghetti sauce look good in soft scuplture and I’m kind of proud of that.