No more galleries

Well, for now I am calling it quits on the gallery scene. I have pursued it for many years now and it just isn't worth my time, effort, and money. Long distance galleries are too big of a pain because I cannot monitor them and they need monitoring. I have had too many pieces, lost, broke, stolen, not paid for, or not on the gallery floor at these places and obviously I cannot visit them often enough to fix those situations. The galleries near where I live are too "home town" like to sell work within my price range. If they could, that would be the way to go. I have found that doing shows works best for me at this point. They are a lot of work, but I make sales and it pays off in the end. Right now my focus is getting the studio ready for this summer and my first round of classes. I see that as my primary income and selling my work as secondary.

Anxious times

Well after too long, our electrician is supposed to call me on Monday and set a time up to come out and do our electric. It hasn't been his fault. It has just been a matter of finances. Once this is put in place. Then I can begin to drywall, insulate and turn on the heat and continue to work during the winter times. We had our first snow yesterday! Too early for that.

Getting Burned

I've only been burned one time by a gallery until now. A while back I dealt with a gallery in California. It never did a whole lot for me to have work there, but I like it on my resume. One time I looked up the web site just for kicks, only to find out that it no longer existed. After a while, I found out that the gallery closed. Luckily I found the former owner of the gallery and after some time, I did get a few of my pieces back. I am sure I'll never see the bigger ones that I sent.
Now I have a gallery that I have been with for many years that is not paying me for several pieces. (22 pieces to be exact) A year and a half ago, the owner agreed to buy a set of minis sculptures that retails for $1500.00. Payment was offered within a month of the purchase. A year and a half later-no payment. Not only that, but when I called the owner, and she beat around the bush about it, I was told that some pieces were broken and already given away as gifts. I asked to have another set of mini sculptures at her other gallery sent back to me. When they arrived, I was missing two pieces. I emailed her and the response was that they were either broken or stolen, but she didn't really seem to know and she would send payment for those too. Funny though a few weeks later, a guy from Philadelphia emailed me saying he liked the 2 mini pieces at that gallery in New Mexico. I sent off one last email requesting payment at the end of September. Of course I haven't been paid yet.
You may have noticed I have failed to mention the specific name of the gallery, although if you do your homework, I am sure you could figure it out.
I am always amazed at the how gallery owners come off as if they are better or more important than the artists they "represent". I have read about it in books and articles and now I have experienced it. Unless you can pull big ass sales or a lot of customers in so the gallery can make sales, your pretty much on the shit list. In fact, I think when it comes down to it, your on the shit list either way. Your basically a means to an end to the owner. The art business is like most businesses- "it's not personal, it's business". However Art is absolutely personal and it's hard for artists not to take it that way.
Here is a great link for anyone who wants to read up on how to avoid scams and rip offs. I love this guys site. Look closely, there are lots of good things here. http://www.artbusiness.com/artists.html

Peter Pugger Rocks!

At the school where I teach, mixing clay has been laborious and messy at best. We had a small Soldner clay mixer to mix and recycle our clay and that was it. I have four, high school clay classes and we go through a lot of clay. Plus high school kids are not exactly stingy when it comes to producing waste. I had clay buckets everywhere with soaking wet clay in them. I would skim off the water, dump it in the mixer, and add dry mix. It took up lots of space, the clay dust was horrible and it didn't produce the best clay in the worked either. But it's all I had to work with.
So last year, I ordered a Peter Pugger and it arrived yesterday. I went in early this morning to put it together and give it a test run. I did my homework before purchasing this and I had high expectations. I ran my first batch of clay through, de-aired it and the Peter Pugger met ever expectation I had. This thing kicks ass! I was addicted and kept mixing batches of clay all day. When I moved into this teaching position last year, there was four, fifty gallon garbage cans full of rock hard clay. I fully plan to put the pugger to the test next week by mixing up all the hard clay. Well maybe not all of it.
If you ever debated if it would be worth the money to get one, my opinion would be a definite yes.
This is the model I got with the stand. http://www.peterpugger.com/pugmill-extruder/pm-20-pugmill.html