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- Why This Season’s “Dancing With The Stars” Made Me Want To Shoot My TV Set Too!
- A New Business Model For Selling Art
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- JB Berkow’s Sculpture Chosen For New Women In Leadership Award
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Part of what I have tried to do for the last 15 years is to help my fellow artists become more business savvy. Even artists that seem to have their acts together astonish me in their lack of understanding of how the art business works. One of these artists that I rep recently got involved in having a few giclee prints produced. I just got one of them in for my gallery and had not yet had a chance to inventory it when a client came in and showed interest in buying it. I quickly called the artist to get a price and she came back with a sum that I thought was not very saleable. I explained that for its size of 18×24 inches I thought that $750 was way too high. I said that I’d try $650 but was not too hopeful.
It didn’t sell so I took the time to send her an email in which I asked if she could come down with that price. She answered my email by sending me a full break-down of all the costs involved in getting the print produced. Besides the printing and stretching costs, she also included the setup charges such as the initial scanning, color-corrections, and a fee for developing the museum-wrap, border design. Thus, it became clear to me why her pricing was too high. She had taken all her costs including all one-time setup fees and doubled them to come up with her wholesale price. Setup charges should never be considered when calculating a saleable price for your prints.
There are two ways of looking at these setup fees. One is to determine how many prints are to be in its edition and then divide the costs by that amount. The second way, and one that I find to much easier, is to think of these one-time fees as the cost of doing business. However, since you can never be sure how many prints you will actually sell in any given edition it is always better to base your pricing on your printing costs alone.
The following is a reasonable example. If an 18×24 inch print costs $110 the suggested retail price should be 4x that amount, which would equal $440 or slightly more depending on your shipping costs. Thus, your commission on a gallery sale should be approximately $220 to $230. Two sales should allow you to recoup all of your setup costs. After that you will be making a net profit of $110 on every future sale of that particular print. Further, if it’s a saleable image and you manage to sell a dozen of them, then you will have earned $1,000 for simply ordering a print!
When I related this story to my son, who used to run my fine art giclee printing company, he was kind of taken aback by this kind of thinking. He came up with a great analogy, one that really helps to bring this argument home. He said, “Well if you follow that line of reasoning then I would hate to think what the first hamburger served by a newly opened restaurant would cost?!?”
Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper that we may record our emptiness…by Kahlil Gibran:
A lot of you out there loved the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” I loved it too. I also loved it because it introduced me to a great poet, W. H. Auden who was born in 1907 and died in 1973. The book, “Auden,” published by Alfred A. Knoff describes him this way…’(Auden) is the wittiest, the most urbane, the most civil, companionable, and worldly of English poetry’s great twentieth-century masters. He is also, with his exhilarating lyric power and his understanding of love and longing in all their sacred and profane guises, an exemplary champion of human wisdom in its encounter with the mysteries of experience.’
You may ask, “How in heaven’s name did this movie serve as the introduction to such a great poet? I mean Hugh Grant’s movies are all very good and entertaining, but not very deep!” Ah … but do you remember the funeral scene? To eulogize his beloved companion, his lover reads a poem. It was without a doubt one of the most beautiful poems I had ever heard, and its title, aptly enough, was “Funeral Blues.” I share it with you here:
“Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
scribbling on the sky the message: He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
I know that I’m about to T-off at least 50% of my readers, but I can’t help it. Many of you are guilty of a most perturbing and exasperating habit. You are the ones who make your fellow drivers miss out on their chance to make turns from their intended turn lanes because you insist on going so damn slow that they can’t get into their lanes in time to make their turns! Yes… you are the notorious RED-LIGHT CRAWLERS.
This is the term I came up with to describe all you inconsiderate drivers out there who insist on playing that silly game of trying to never come to a full stop before the light turns green. You start slowing up a good tenth of a mile away from a red light in hopes that you won’t have to stop at all! In the meantime, in case you never noticed, there are other drivers behind you who really need to get to that arrow light before it turns red. And those turn arrows go from green to red before the main light turns green. So, if you’re crawling along at 1 mile per hour, what chance does anyone have of making their arrow light? BUT DO YOU CARE?!? Hell no! You’re playing your silly little game with no thought of anyone else on the road but yourself!
You know how bad it feels to miss your own turn signal light. Heck, at a large intersection it can take a good three minutes before it turns green again. So why are you Red-Light Crawlers so unfeeling of others? I certainly can’t come up a good answer. I will say that all of you really need to become more aware of your fellow drivers. Look into your rear view mirror once in a while. Make sure that there is no one behind you who is obviously trying to get around you. If there is no one around, go ahead and play your silly little game. But for goodness sake, don’t do it at other people’s expense!!!!
Introducing: Artist Kate McCavitt Who Combines East and West Sensibilities With Seamless Perfection:
ChryZENthemum
Kate McCavitt
Kate McCavitt is an Asian informed Mixed Media Abstract Painter. In her work, East meets West in the fusion of contemporary experimental water media and ancient Asian brush work influences. Kate truly creates her original art “Between Two Worlds”.
In her previous lifetime this time around, about four years ago, she owned a corporate Project Management company for about sixteen years and stressed over enterprise voice and data installations which were hot beds of things busting and going wrong. Enough! She decided one day to do something she actually wanted to do. Risking her reason for it, she took her art to a full time adventure.
Trained as a Sumie artist, often called “Chinese Brush”, and self-taught in other genres, Kate lavishes all of her colorful, textured abstract paintings with the subtleties of Asian tradition. Rich layers of fluid acrylics, gloss mediums and metallic gesso capture between them both the random events of experimental techniques, and ancient icons of Zen Circles, delicate chrysanthemum, circling yin/yang figures, and representational foil spheres hand embossed by the artist.
Ocean
Colors, ratios, numerological philosophies, polarities and sequences all dance together within Kate’s unique abstract style. No two pieces can ever be the same. McCavitt’s titles for her work are often “Untitled” for she believes the observer will create their own through how they connect to the work. Many of her long “SuiteStickS” pieces also can be hung any way the orientation pleases the viewer.
A Marvelous Life Change
Kate McCavitt, a native of New York, lives next to a wildlife conservation corridor in Oceanside, California with the love of her life, grandchildren nearby, a resident hummingbird family, and bunnies, egrets, coyotes, bats, crows and hawks. Her studio is in her home and her home is her Catharsis Gallery for showing her work in a beautiful setting. She finds joy in the Artist’s Way, in writing and creating art journals, in being a grandmother, in long walks, scuba diving, teaching art and inspiring others. She tries to live by Martha Graham’s advice, “You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.”
“Up until age 40, all my art was practical. Today I look at the delicate crochet work my grandmother did, and I see exquisite art and pattern. I want to use it as a stencil for powdered gold against rich purple. Maybe this IS where my inspiration came from to do embossed foil spheres. All of my art is born of this attention and an awareness that everything in the world is immediately available for me to witness and that allows me to find the extraordinary. My inspiration is the infinite and the infinitesimal and mostly the Ordinary. How lucky we are to know they are all one and the same.”
Symbol Hunting
Golden Bubbles
“Symbol Hunting is an avocation for me, found in life’s small synchronicities. Standing inside the centuries old ritual tomb at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley of Ireland, the spirals carved thousands of years ago in the standing stones, become embedded within me. I can’t help it, it just happens and they will inevitably show up in some painting. Diving at 60 feet, floating effortlessly just a foot above iridescent purple tube sponges where neon orange cleaner shrimp and glowing yellow wrasse play around the openings, using only my breath to change my depth, I find my mind expands. It will manifest in my next artwork. Stunning sunsets, sleeping children, light through cobalt or ruby glass, a lover’s laugh or shoulder muscle, sea horses, colored sand patterns on a deserted beach all become part of my interior visual library and Iconography. I am very blessed.”
Spheres
Passion Play
“The Spheres that are everywhere in my art, started as simple rounds of foil or gold, copper or silver leaf and evolved into a myriad of icons. My hands were familiar with the Zen Circle or Enso and the Sphere became it’s solidified counterpart. The Enso is the place where the heart and the mind have become one. The Spheres are planets, mandalas, suns, moons, and parallell universes. They are Sacred Circles of all kinds; medicine wheels, sweat lodge, spinning chakras, and the eye of the Witness the Tao speaks of. Lenses on the subconscious; portals into my creative spirit and process. Black holes, bubbles, my grandmother’s doilies, galaxies and conduits to other places. They are the calm in the center of the chaos. Look closer; they contain the particle and the wave, the egg and the seed. They are the expression of the manifest and unmanifest potential.”
To See More Of Kate’s Work Visit www.RosettaStoneFineArtVideos.com
As a full-time artist and a gallery owner I am in the unusual position to see both sides of the same painting. Some artists own their own gallery or multiple galleries, such as in the case of the ubiquitous Thomas Kinkade, but these artists are mainly selling their own work. It is very different when you are representing up to fifty other artists.
I recently had a conversation with one of the artists I rep about the pricing of his work. This particular artist is a photographer and he reproduces his images as giclees on canvas. I explained that the normal way of pricing is to take your printing costs and double them in order to come up with your wholesale/commission price. Then I, as the gallery owner, would double that amount to establish the retail price. FYI: Most galleries mark up by 2.5 to establish their sales price.
Well, the next words out of the artist’s mouth, which I’ve heard from many other artists, was, “Why should you be making more money than I am?” This sums up one of the biggest problems that we gallery owners face not only with our artists but with our customers as well. The truth is that if we’re lucky and all of the planets are lined up just right, we make the same amount of profit as the artist. More often than not, however, the planets are out of alignment, and we wind up making less, breaking even, or even losing money. Thus, on balance, we usually never make as much as the artist on consigned pieces.
The fact is that no one, artist and customer alike, ever takes into consideration the costs involved in running a gallery. In my previous gallery that was located in a high-end shopping plaza with a minimum staff of one full-time and one part-time employee, my overhead was $20,000 a month. Besides the rent, utilities and staff there were the costs of art insurance, exhibition openings, advertising, off-site storage facilities, framing, and shipping. This is a snapshot of how the overhead for many galleries can be outrageously expensive. So if a month is slow, it is very easy for a gallery either just break even or to lose money! On top of all this, customers still try to bargain you down to nothing!!
It is disheartening to have your own artists think that you are taking advantage of them in some way. This is certainly not the case, and artists need to understand this, because the biggest problem that I have had is trying to keep their pricing reasonable enough to make sales for them as well as myself. And if customers want to enjoy the privilege of being able to experience art first hand and not just on their computer screens, then they should be willing to allow us gallery owners to make a living! After all, it’s one thing to buy art from the Internet that you are familiar with and have seen before in a gallery. But what happens when you force all the galleries to close their doors? Where will you see it then? I guess you’ll have to wait for that once-a-year street fair to roll around or hop on a plane to visit Miami for the week of the Art Basel insanity.
I’m sure that I speak for many gallery owners out there when I suggest, in all sincerity, that artists should try to see this business of selling their work from the gallery owner’s perspective. We are investing a hell of a lot of money by choosing to promote an artist’s work and for every piece of that work that occupies space on our walls it is costing us money. For every minute of every day that a painting remains on that wall and doesn’t sell, it is continuing to cost us even more money. So please, never, ever again ask a gallery owner, “why should you make more money than me?” You are lucky to have us…while you still can.
Designed by JB Berkow
“Free to Be” The New Women In Leadership Award
I have been a long time member of the Executive Women of the Palm Beaches. It is an incredible organization of vibrant, inspirational, career-minded women who believe strongly in giving back to the community. Each year they give out three ‘Women In Leadership Awards’ to exemplary women who have demonstrated extraordinary achievements and leadership in the private, public and volunteer sectors. There are other such organizations but we were the first; we initiated the paradigm. Some of these other groups have grown in size. Our membership, in contrast, is capped at 200 for regular membership, which we believe is an attribute to the selective process involved in becoming a member of EWPB.
Oil, Pastel and Acrylic on Paper
However, these other organizations had something we did not. They had a physical look to their awards that has actually helped to brand them. This year’s leadership felt the need to correct that. When they asked me to design a new award I was greatly honored and enthusiastic. I knew immediately, that I already had the perfect sculpture to fulfill their needs.
“Free to Be” was a sculpture that I created in the same year that I became a member of Executive Women of the Palm Beaches. Who could have imagined that eight years later it would become the basis of our new award! But the history of “Free to Be” spans an even longer period of time. It goes back to the beginning of my career when the main focus of my paintings centered around the female figure (example to the right). Most of them pictured women surrounded flowers. Eventually I fell in love with landscapes of Europe and I abandoned the female figure.
Many years later, however, I returned to the female figure, but this time in the form of sculpture. Again I combined her with flowers, specifically the rose and created a series called the “Gilded Rose Collection.” The series explores women in the process of self-discovery. It also depicts women who have found their voice and inner strength. The top-selling sculpture in this series falls in this latter category and was done in reaction to 9-11. “Freedom Rose” (image bottom center and right) shows a strong women determined to make a difference in the lives of not only Afghan women but those all over the Middle East.
"Discover" Cast Bronze
Cast Bronze Back
Cast Bronze Front
While researching books specifically made for sculptors, I fell in love with a particular pose. It portrayed a woman standing on tiptoes, leaning forward, head held high, and arms flung out to her side. It inspired three sculptures. The first two were meant to be a pair. “Budding Beauty” depicts a demure young girl standing atop a rose bud while “Fully Bloomed” shows the confidently posed woman described above on a fully bloomed rose. The figure turned out so well that I felt it deserved a platform of its own and hence “Free to Be” was born. It is the only sculpture that is not part of the Gilded Rose Collection.
Cast Bronze
I believe that personal experiences subliminally drew me to that particular pose and the ultimate creation of “Fully Bloomed” (pictured left) in order to portray qualities I wanted to see more of in myself as well as in other women. These qualities are determination, fearlessness, the ability to ignore stereotypical limitations, and the confidence to be all you can be. When asked by the Executive Women of the Palm Beaches to create an award for its W.I.L.A. recipients I knew “Free to Be” (pictured at top of article) had found its perfect purpose.
Besides Red-Light Crawlers (see previous rant), Turn-Lane Avoiders are my next big peeve when it comes to driving. These drivers, like the Red-Light Crawlers, are totally oblivious to anyone else on the road. I’m not even sure that they even get the concept of what a turn-lane is for.
If done correctly, most turn-lanes are designed to allow a driver to pull into it and still have enough time to slow down to a stop if the light ahead is red or if there’s on-coming traffic. Unfortunately, 90% of the driving public do not enter a turn-lane correctly. This leaves 100% of the drivers that happen to be behind them aggravated and down-right peeved!
You know what I’m talking about. Haven’t you missed getting through an intersection because you were stuck behind a TLA who slowed down in front of you and didn’t move into the turn-lane until the last few yards? Or worse yet, haven’t you come close to rear-ending one as they suddenly dropped in speed. And what about those times when you also needed to use the turn-lane but you had one of those TLAs in front of you. What an ugly test of wills that can be: The TLAs are slowing down and you are afraid of moving into the lane first for fear that they might cut you off at the last minute; there’s not enough time to go around them in the outside lane; and if you don’t start your turn soon, then the guy behind you who is also planning to turn, might very well cut<em><strong> ‘you’</strong></em> off instead. What a mess!!!
I must not be the only one who feels aggravated by this dilema. In fact, I would wager to say that there is a whole army of us out there. I have come to this conclusion because how often do you ever see the government respond to the peoples’ peeves? Not very often. But in this case they have. As of a year ago I noticed that turn lanes have been outlined in a very decisive way. Up until then most turn-lanes were simply marked with arrows and had no line work to delineate them. Now they are marked with a solid line defining their entire length with only a <em><strong>’short’</strong></em> length of dashes at the beginning part of the turn-lane to denote where you’re <em><strong>’suppose’ </strong></em>to enter. Do you think the government is trying to tell you something? Hell yes they are!!! They’re saying get with the program and stop slowing down in the traffic lane. Use the turn-lane to do your slowing…the lane that God and the government intended you to use!
As a gallery owner, I get confronted all the time with issues brought up by my artists that take thought and patience to figure out. One of the issues that recently came up stemmed from a conversation that I had with one my photographers. He was trying to make the argument that, unlike painters who make money on the sale of their originals, photographers should make more money on their giclee sales to make up that difference.
I don’t agree with this thinking at all…at least not when it comes to photography that is reproduced as giclees. The reason for my disagreement comes directly from my role as an art dealer. I’m the one facing the art-buying public on a daily basis. And believe me when I tell you that the average buyer does not differentiate between a giclee made from a scanned painting or one made from a photograph. All they see is a limited edition giclee print of a captivating image that they may want to buy. If I were to tell them that the photographic one costs more than the other because the photographer didn’t have an original to sell, they would not be able to wrap their heads around that. In all good conscious I would never be able to put forth such an argument. However, this dilemma only arises when photographers choose to reproduce their work as giclees.
If photographers want to charge more for their work, it is my advice that they choose a different form of reproduction. For example, I represent photographer who reproduces his manipulated images on brushed aluminum sheets. Currently he has created a highly unique series based on a stamp motif where the printed sheets have scalloped edges like a postage stamp. His name is Andre Van Der Kerkhoff. He is an Australian artist who is starting to make major inroads into the New York art market (look forward to a blog devoted to this artist in the near future).
Painters are truly limited in the type of reproduction techniques open to them. After all, if artists are trying to replicate the look of their original oil or acrylic paintings done on canvas then giclee reproductions printed on canvas is by far their best choice. By contrast photographers have a plethora of reproduction substrates open to them. By choosing a different reproduction technique photographers can price their work any way they wish, thus eliminating any problems of comparison.
Playing around in the kitchen can be a great source of fun and relaxation. However, if the recipes are too complicated and/or call for a long list of ingredients, then much of the fun and relaxation can be lost. That’s the reason I decided to create a cookbook specifically designed for working people who don’t have a lot of time but who still want to make something scrumptious for their friends and family.
Another thing that makes cooking fun is ‘knowing what you’re doing.’ That is why a good portion of the book is devoted to teaching good cooking skills and the theory behind them. I think this approach is a lot more productive than simply putting together a long list of recipes that can seem like a compilation of undecipherable mish-mush to most beginners. In other words, the main goal of this book is to give its readers a solid foundation from which they can go on to create their own distinctive dishes.
“Pasta Plus,” which is the working title of my cookbook, is mainly about how to prepare pasta dishes in less than thirty minutes. However, beside these recipes I decided to also include many of my other signature dishes. This explains the ‘plus’ in the title. There will be appetizer, salad, main course, and great desert recipes. Everything necessary to make an unforgettable meal.
The Right Equipment Can Make All The Difference
In order to minimize stress in the kitchen and make your cooking experience a happy one, it is absolutely necessary to stock your kitchen with the proper equipment. It is no fun trying to build a house without the proper tools. The same goes for putting a dish together. The following is a list of items needed to make any of my thirty-minute pasta dishes:
A Large Pasta Pot
A Large Non-Stick Six-Quart Chiefs Pan
Three Non-Stick Covered Sauce Pans in Large, Medium, and Small Sizes
A Pasta Scoop
Two Wooden Spatulas
Two Wooden Spoons
A Non-Metal Cooking Spoon
A Non-Metal Slotted Cooking Spoon
Three Extremely Sharp Knives in Large, Medium, and small sizes
Measuring Cups in 1 Quart, 1 Pint, and 1 Cup Sizes
A Garlic Crusher
A Large Wooden Cutting Board
Macy’s is an excellent resource for the pots and pans on this list. They carry top-quality brands at often half the price than other cookware stores. For the smaller items Bed, Bath, and Beyond may prove very adequate. They have a good selection of knives at very competitive prices. Everything on the above list can be purchased for below $400. In the near future I will be sharing some of my thirty-minute pasta recipes with you so be sure your equipment is lined up and ready to go!