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I have another art show coming up, and while I am showing a lot of the same stuff that I showed at my last exhibit, I am also showing some new stuff, which means buying more frames, mat board, and plexiglass. Again, I am doing all of this by hand to save money, but I just found a great way to save some time also. Cutting plexiglass according to most directions is HARD and TIME CONSUMING. You have to score it with a special cutting tool (read: dull butter knife) 7 to 231 times, place the plexi on a table with the score on the edge of the table, and pressing firmly, snap the plexi (not at the score line that you just spent 20 minutes making). It took me (actually Jake) forever to cut the plexiglass this way. Eventually, we took a bandsaw to it, which worked wonderfully. Unfortunately, with me out of school, I no longer have access to a band saw. Fortunately, Lowe’s cuts plexiglass. Free.
Being an artist is expensive. It doesn’t really matter what you do, whether it is painting, photography, drawing, printmaking, etc. I, myself, am a college student, art major, photographer. Last night was the opening reception for my first art exhibit, and I had almost 30 pieces of work on display. Since all of my artwork was either photographs or prints, I had to frame everything. To have somebody else frame everything for me probably would have cost close to $2,000. I say that because I did everything myself, and the biggest expense I had was the frames, and I got those half off. My total cost was a little over $600. So you can see that having someone else do all of this for you would be well over twice that. So, how did I do it?
First, I bought sectional frames, which means that I had to put the frames together myself, but I had more flexibility with the sizes. These I bought at Hobby Lobby half off. Their frames are not always half off, but about every other week, or every three weeks, you can score pretty big on framing. Prices on the frames varied depending on how big the frames were. The 12 inch sectional pieces were a lot cheeper than the 40 inch pieces (yes, I had a couple of images that, when matted, were 40 inches long, 5 pieces were 32 inches long). Of course, if all your pieces are a lot smaller, then you will not spend as much on frames as I did. My total cost for frames was ~$380.
Second, plexiglass. I cut all of my own plexiglass, and when I say “I,” I mean “my boyfriend.” I did save quite a bit of money here, but I am not sure that it was worth it, because it is really hard to cut plexiglass. I ruined one whole sheet (30×36 inches) trying to cut it myself. I bought the plexiglass from Home Depot, and I got a 10% discount. Note: if you need to buy a lot of stuff, and you are buying locally, always ask for a discount. You may not get it, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. I told the guy at Home Depot that I was a college student, and I needed to buy quite a bit of plexiglass, and he gave me the discount. Now, after all is said and done, I think it might have been worth it to spend a little bit more to have somebody else cut it, and save myself a lot of trouble. But this is totally up to you. My total cost for the plexiglass was ~$150.
The rest of my cost came from matt board, which I also got at Hobby Lobby half off, hanging wire, and two plexiglass scorers (the one from Home Depot was crap, so I got another one from Lowe’s). My professor had a matt board cutter, which I used to cut the matt board down to size and to cut out the window. I also used a thinner, cheaper matt board for the backing. If you don’t have access to a matt board cutter, and you want nice bevelled windows, you might have to pay somebody to do this. I know that Hobby Lobby does this, but I am not sure how much they charge.
So, that is how I saved a bunch of money by switching to…I mean, how I managed to save quite a bit of money by being smart, asking for discounts, and doing stuff myself.
A new restaurant in Orlando has put up a painting of a nude woman. A lot of people have been offended by it, and have reported it. But, “[c]ity code enforcers came out Wednesday morning to look at the painting. They said, since it is a famous piece of artwork by a famous painter, they’re allowing it to stay where it is.” The painting is “La Maja” by Francisco Goya. Read the article and see the painting here.
Not that I find the image offensive at all, but it infuriates me, as an artist, that if a not-so-famous painter had painted a similar image, it would have been taken down.
Lackcolor is a website that posts black and white photographs for people to view. They do not credit any artists, and it seems that they make up titles for the images. Besides the title, there is no information about any of the images. They do not provide any way to look up any kind of additional information about the images. Is this abuse? To post photographs without crediting the artist? I had seen the website before, but no red flags were raised until I saw this image. This is a photograph by Jerry Uelsmann. You can view it on his website. On Lackcolor’s website, you can contact them about photo abuse at photo-abuse@lackcolor.com. However, when I have tried contacting them, twice, I keep getting a failed delivery notification. I have now used their normal contact email at contact@lackcolor.com. If you see something wrong with what they are doing, also, please contact them. Here is the email I have (tried) to send three times:
Hi, I happened upon your website and saw this image:
http://lackcolor.com/pic-158-Holding-your-dreams
I believe that this is an image by Jerry Uelsmann (you can see it on his website), but I did not see him credited. Actually, I was wondering about your policy of posting images, because none of the images have the artist’s name who took the photo, and you do not have any information about that on your website. How do you get your images? Do you have permissions to just post up random images without giving credit to the artist? As a black and white photographer myself, should I be worried about my images just being posted up there without my permission, and without
credit being given to me? Please respond.Sarah B. Kittinger
As of today, still no response, but no failed to deliver message either. Any light shed on this subject would be helpful.
My mom doesn’t see the artistic quality of my photographs. In the fall, in order to graduate, I have to give an “Exit” Show. My mom was asking which drawings I was going to be putting in my show, and I told her that I hadn’t done many drawings here in college, that my show was going to consist mostly of photographs and my lithographs. My mom was very taken aback by this, saying that people only wanted to see and buy my drawings. That my photographs weren’t “me.” I just “took” the photographs, I didn’t really “do” them, like I “do” my drawings. I didn’t even bother to try to explain to her about my photography. Oh well. I don’t think that she will, or ever really can, understand. Such is life.
Do you ever notice how 90% of artists works are untitled. It is not even that the work doesn't have a title, they actually title their piece "Untitled." Some will even put a number on it: "Untitled #3," "#40," "#4,979,173." To me that says "hey, look at how many pieces I was too lazy to come up with a title for." Coming up with a title is hard, I know. Especially if you create a whole lot of work, that is a lot of titles you have to come up with. But come on, you just spent all that time actually creating the piece, you can at least spend a little bit more time giving it a title. If nothing else, make something up. It will make people think more. "Now, why did this artist title this painting of a monkey Waterloo? It must have some really deep meaning. This artist is amazing!" Seriously, people will think this. So next time you create a beautiful Brittish landscape, don't just name it "Untitled #104." Tltle it something like 3-Ring Binder or Fido.
