Dilemma

Thursday, Jun. 19, 2003
8:35 AM

What a week.

Actually, it's really only been one day this week that was notably bad, but it cast a pall over the succeeding day and my state of mind hasn't improved that much so far today either. But, it's only 8:30 so hopefully things will look up a little later. If the sun ever comes out.

Why am I so bummed, you ask? (Or maybe you don't, but humor me.) Let me back up and fill in. Monday I called the folks at the store in Fells Point where Liz sells her jewelry. (Mad props to her for hooking me up with the number!) I am generally terrified to call strange people out of the blue - I have to really psyche myself up before I can manage it. I don't know why, it's just the way I am. But I did it; I talked to the store owner and she seemed very excited about seeing my work. So we made an appointment for Tuesday around noon and I hung up feeling a little shaky but very proud of myself.

The good news about Tuesday is that the shop owner loved my work and is definitely going to sell it.

That's about all the good news from Tuesday.

Other than that, it was a rotten day. I was scrambling around in the morning looking for a couple of pieces that had been "tidied" up and put somewhere else. Finally got everything together and out the door. Drove about five miles down the road and realized I'd forgotten to put the second box in the car. Turned around and got the second box, left again.

I had left myself enough time so that as long as I didn't dawdle, I'd be on time. I got to Fells Point right at noon, then drove around for twenty minutes looking for somewhere to park. The parking situation was unbelievably bad there - narrow streets (cobblestones, how quaint), double parked trucks, lunchtime traffic, etc. I finally found a garage that fortunately was open to the public. It was about a block away from the store. I grabbed one box and got going. On the way there, the box handles broke and the box hit the sidewalk. One piece was slightly damaged (three tiles came off but I can glue them back on and regrout) and one was broken outright. It was my fire vase - the vase itself broke and I don't know if I can fix it at all. I haven't had the heart to look at it again.

I think I handled the damage situation pretty well - didn't freak out or anything while in the shop. The owner didn't seem too upset either and she did like the piece that I can fix a lot. I cried a lot when I got home, but at least it wasn't in front of her.

As I said, she did like my work and has nothing like it already in the store. She thought my prices were too high though. So I have to rework my wholesale prices so that the retail price will be reasonable, ie, only as much as the market will bear. That was really the worst part of the day - not having the experience or social comfort to negotiate right there and not feeling comfortable saying, sure, let's lower my prices so that I'm making way less than minimum wage. I know this is something that a lot of artists go through, but it's never easy to deal with - selling your work without selling your soul and making enough money to actually live on.

This is the part that is causing me the most angst. I feel like if I lower my prices, I am devaluing my work - and essentially saying that my skill and time aren't worth holding out for better prices. But, if I don't lower them, then my work sits in my house, doesn't sell and therefore isn't worth anything to me, monetarily speaking. And I do have bills to pay. I didn't feel like the owner was all that helpful in trying to come up with a mutually satisfactory solution, but she was kind of busy - the store was open so there were customers, they were having phone problems so there was a Verizon guy there, etc. It was a very frustrating situation.

Does anybody out there want to be my business manager, so I don't have to worry about this stuff and I can just make things?

Just checking.

The owner has a business consultant who was also there on Tuesday - she apparently has "worked with glass" before. What that means, I don't know. But she thought I had some sharp edges on my pieces, even though I have already taken the dremel to most of them (one of the newer pieces I had actually forgotten to do that, so for that one it's a legitimate point). Did I mention I didn't much care for the consultant? It's not just because she thought I had sharp spots on my work; she seemed very unfriendly to me, very brusque and not smiling very much. Maybe she was having a bad day too. So anyway, the upshot is that I brought all of my stuff back home to work over with the dremel again and rework my prices.

Oh, and I got blisters on my feet from all the walking back and forth to the garage.

So I am trying to put that behind me and just move forward. I am hoping to put together a couple of pieces for next year's SAMA conference gallery show. The deadline is October 1, so I have some time to come up with some stuff. The theme is Opus Veritas: Fragments of Truth. It's a play on a quote from Anais Nin. Anyway, Kevin and I have been brainstorming ideas, which has been fun and challenging. We have a bunch of good ideas, but I'm curious as to what other people would come up with. So, with that in mind, how would you visualize truth? What does it make you think of and how would you represent that?

OK, well, I gotta get to work. Have a ton of stuff to do...

Ciao!