The Artist and Debt, Annie Leibovitz Images and Nightmares

The Artist and Debt, Annie Leibovitz Images and Nightmares

The Repo-man knocks at the door. “Let me in Let me in”! Not by the hair of my Chinnie Chin Chin is Annie’s reply to Art Capital Group. Today the old wolf at the door nightmare torments one of the most gifted artists in America; Photographer Annie Leibovitz who made a deal with a Company of Wolves with the hope of saving her home, her life’s work and her family.

Annie owes Art Capital Group 24 Million Dollars. To secure her 24 million dollar loan she used her real estate, her art collection and the rights to her artwork as collateral. Why she needed, such a large loan is at the heart of a story in the New York Times written by Allen Salkin about Leibovitz’s struggle with Taxes, Real Estate and Debt Management.

For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture NYTIMES July31, 2009 by Allen Salkin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/fashion/02annie.html?_r=1&ref=business

Annie’s struggle with debt was compounded by the recent deaths in the past five years of her long time partner Susan Sontag, the writer and her Father and Mother.  She also has children and recently added two giving birth to twins. At the same time of all of her personal issues, Leibovitz was managing the renovation of her three Greenwich Village properties, which alone was a source of enormous personal stress, controversy and a major financial impact on her personal fortune.

Who is Annie Leibovitz and how did she become a character in a nightmarish bedtime story?  In the beginning of her career Annie was I think simply in the right place at the right time combined with a genius talent to capture life on film. She became the staff Photographer for Rolling Stone Magazine when Rolling Stone was just another hopeful grassroots publication. Annie’s images dominated the cover with inside images of Rock and Rolls Greatest Artists. Her images sold copy and many believe were the catapult for the success for Rolling Stone Magazine. Along with fame came fortune and opportunity. Annie signed with Vanity Fair for a seven-figure salary estimated to be 3 million dollars a year with millions more in expenses for outrageously fantastic photo shoots where she made many of her trademark images. Annie was living the Artists dream of endless opportunity and budget to create her work.

Along the way, though she partied too much and developed a pattern of financial mismanagement. Just because a person is, an artistic genius does not make them good with money or debt management. Leibovitz’s ability to make money through her work offset her inability to manage money and debt until now.

Now is another moment of being in the right place but at the wrong time. Before Annie went to the Art Capital Group, who by the way is best described as a high end Pawnshop for the art worlds, Top Artist’s, Collector’s and Dealer’s, she arranged to sell limited portfolios of her work through the auction house Phillips de Pury. The auction that might have bailed her out fell short of the mark when the Art Bubble Burst in October of 2008. That left Annie in a real bind. She had spent millions on the renovations of her New York property and had to buy out a neighbor because of a lawsuit that added several million dollars to the cost. Then the taxman rang and wanted 1.5 million in taxes. With the economy and the art, market is shambles the wolf offered a deal that Annie gambled would save her.

Learn more about Art Capital Group and how it works.

That Old Master? It’s at the Pawnshop NYTIMES by Allen Salkin

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/arts/design/24artloans.html?fta=y

The fact remains that Annie Leibovitz has tremendous earning power and she may yet overcome this nightmare. Her photographic negative archive held by Getty Images is alone estimated to be worth 50 million dollars. That is why Art Capital is so aggressively after the rights to her images.

In fact, Annie still has time to pay them back because full repayment isn’t due until September 8^th, 2009. Never mind that fact Art Capital isn’t waiting they have filed several lawsuits against Leibovitz with the most recent this past week to gain access to her assets now. The prior suit was dismissed in part was to stop Annie from working for Getty Images because Art Capital alleged that it would make it more difficult for them to sell her Archive if she was working for Getty. The court ruled against Art Capital Group.

You may be saying to yourself that this story is outrageous and that Leibovitz is unique, but not so. In fact, in a city like New York where a one-bedroom apartment can cost a million plus she is in the small time real-estate market. When you combine renovation costs in New York City with the cost of property it is easy to spend a lot more money that you bargained for. I am sure that when Annie started this adventure the sky seemed to be the limit in the Art Market until the bust of 2008. Combined with the downfall of the economy and tight lending by banks Art Capital Group was in a great position to reap a profit.

Art Capital Group http://www.artcapitalgroup.com/Questions.html

The real enemy in this story is DEBT! Debt is the ball and chain that has hobbled Annie and it will do the same to you as an Artist. In fact, debt will stop you faster than a speeding bullet from achieving success as an artist.

Many artists are finished before they even get started because of debt. Yes, those student loans will sink you faster than the Titanic. You will find that the nice banker isn’t so nice and will tie you up in knots that you will struggle against for 20 years or more.

Even if you have overcome that obstacle and have achieved success, you still maybe burdened with the debt of a mortgage, car loan, credit cards and studio expenses like rent. All of the debt most American have, and when the economy goes south you still got that debt to pay back.

If this isn’t the reason most artists never make it; it has to be a close second and I don’t know what the first is. One thing I know for sure you as an Artist need to manage your money and debt in the most conservative way possible. Never count your chickens before they hatch. Pay as you go as far as you possibly can. And for god sake live in the Mid-West or Western States and stay off the coasts. New York City may be the Art Hub of the world but visit don’t buy.

You also need to understand contracts and the results of signing contracts not only with lenders but with galleries and dealers. If you don’t understand contracts then find someone who does like a lawyer so you can root out any fine print in the deal before you commit. You also need to use contracts when you are hired to do work or sell work so that your rights and the rights of the buyer or employer are clearly spelled out. What are the terms of ownership and who owns the rights to the image, painting or whatever?

The business of art is complex as is the business of money and they are equally the same. While your vision as an artist may be limited to your creative, genius the business of your art is all about the money and wolves are not endangered in the Art World environment.

Debt is food for the wolf and the wolf is always hungry and eager to make a profit or a meal out of your mistakes. Regardless of how outrageous your creative ideas are, keep your financial ideas conservative. The fact is most of us have to have steady paying jobs of some sort to just enjoy the basics in life, homes, cars, children. If you can limit your debt, you will in the long run enjoy more freedom to create your art.

If your lucky enough to make a lot of money spend wisely and pay cash when you can, never incur debt you absolutely do not have too. I know this isn’t what we have been taught but unless you want to be a slave shed the ball and chain of debt or better yet never let them shackle you to begin with. If you have to make a deal to get what you want be sure to very carefully weigh the all of the possible outcomes, good, bad and ugly. Is the risk worth the possible payoff?

I guess the other side of the story is as artists we all like the live on the edge. Risk seems to feed our creative nature. Somehow, we need to keep the benefits of life on the edge and maintain some control over our financial security. When economic times like today come the balance is tipped and we are, always going to have days like these sooner or later. Therefore, we have to plan for the reality while we are creating the impossible dream.

As for Annie, I am confident she will emerge from this crisis and continue to be successful. Art Capital will continue to find wholesome meals and Annie will earn more money in the next year than most of us will earn in our lifetime even after the wolves feed. She will also earn some profound lessons and they will serve her well as will the lesson of her bedtime story. When the Wolf came a Knocking.

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, How to, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Media, News, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Annie Leibovitz, Art Business, Art Capital Group, Art Loans, Art Pawnshops, Artists and Debt, Debt, Famous Photographers, Rolling Stone Magazine, Student Loans

Do the Arts Need a National Bailout?

Do the Arts Need a National Bailout?

Times are tough for the Arts in America. Even the 50 million dollars in stimulus money won’t help much as endowment funds nationwide are trashed. Robert Lynch, points out the 50 million in new money will do little to cover losses art organizations have suffered this year. Lynch uses San Francisco as an example, where art organizations have lost an estimated 40 million in state funding alone. The current loss of revenue in the arts nationwide will surely amount to billions of dollars.

Conversation with Robert Lynch, NewsHour post by Jeffery Brown

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/03/conversation-robert-lynch-president-americans-for-the-arts.html

Floyd Norris asks the question “What are art organization suppose to do”? He points out that many small organizations are devastated today and they have little financial power to offset their losses. He points out colleges are in the same boat. I would point out that the Big Art organizations are too.

In fact, I would suggest our largest art organizations may be in more trouble than our small ones. The big guys have big budgets and have suffered big losses. Big organizations also have the need and expense of large staffs. A small organization can in many instances reduce paid staff and maintain functional viability with a volunteer work force until the economy improves. Big organizations simply cannot or could not function without their professional staffs. Two very different worlds exist today where reality and needs are dramatically different as are fundamental funding realities. Many large museums spend more money on one exhibit or performance production than small organizations spend in their yearly operational budget expenditures. It may turn out that the weak market survives this crisis and in the end comes out much stronger.

The Money is Gone Now What by Floyd Norris NYT

“There was outrage earlier this year when Brandeis University announced plans to close its art museum and sell the paintings. The university’s endowment was devastated by bad investments.

What do people opposed to the sale of paintings think suddenly poor institutions should do? Close? Seek government bailouts? Should Brandeis close down a few academic departments, or cut back on scholarships, to keep its art?

Brandeis is hardly the only college whose endowment has contracted sharply. I suspect that when the final numbers are in — and colleges are not exactly rushing to disclose the sad details — it will turn out that colleges as a group did far worse than the stock market while the market was doing horribly”. Floyd Norris NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/business/20norris.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The question remains “Do you sell off your assets to meet your budgetary needs”?

As Ford W. Bell says in his letter to the editor, to do so would violate the public trust.

Letter to the Editor from:

Ford W. Bell
President
American Association of Museums
Washington, March 23, 2009

“Allowing a museum to peddle its collection to cover operating debts would be like allowing a financial fiduciary, such as a bank, to raid assets held in trust to cover a hole in its own balance sheet”. Ford W. Bell

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/opinion/lweb31museums.html

The fact is the Banks essentially did exactly what Mr. Ford says museums should not do, they raided assets held in trust for their customers through a series of bad investments. Just ask your elderly parents who’s retirement accounts are now only worth a fraction of what they were a year ago. Just look at your IRA or just about any other secure investment account you have, even trust funds. The reality of the facts, the reality of the depth of this economic crisis is reflected in the figures. It is no different for the Arts.

This past Sunday I was trying to help my youngest daughter with her college economics homework, she is an art student taking an economics course. I would compare my help to a monkey trying to perform brain surgery with a stick. I was going compare the monkey with a paintbrush in hand creating a master work of art to myself as an artist. I quickly realized that the monkey may in fact be far more skilled than I; in the creation of masterpieces and probably would quickly develop a profitable market for his art. I am looking for a monkey all I have is two old dogs who sleep most of the day and won’t work.

We were looking at the Elasticity of markets, Supply and Demand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

The example we were using was the farm market. In the example variables increased production while demand remained the same. When demand is lower than production increases in supply drive down profits, so even if you produce more at less expense you still make the same profit or less. Only when demand is higher than available production do profits rise, but even then given the variables over all income can remain flat. For example if a natural disaster creates a loss of production the increased demand raises prices but the loss of production balances the profits.

So it seems to me that if for example museums start to sell off assets, works of art the fire sale will drive value and profit down and in the long run everyone will lose. Just look at the Auto Companies or the housing market. Great deals will emerge from the flood of art into a depressed market but the flood will devastate value and profit. Perhaps Art Organizations can learn from the lessons of farming. Farmers often store their grain until markets become favorable.

Perhaps as bad as it will sound Museums and other Art Organization should temporarily close or reduce schedules until the viability of the market returns. They then would still have their assets. Many large organizations could use their collections or their talent in better or more efficient ways to reduce operating costs and maintain profits. Maybe they could find other ways to generate income from their collections and at the same time help smaller organizations present exhibits and performances that are more dynamic.

As an example, a big organization could loan artwork to a small organization. The two could share revenue generated by the exhibit as partners. Done creatively smaller organizations could increase the quality of their exhibits and stimulate increased attendance/audience. The big organization could create income from under utilized parts of their collection and increase audience and income. After all most big museums only exhibit small portions of their collections at any given time. Activity creates income for everybody.

I am sure Brandeis University could find another organization that would love to show artwork from their collection. They could also earn income from the loans of artwork even if the Rose Museum temporarily closed. They could possibly find more value in keeping their collection intact than they will earn by selling it off as a depreciated asset. Of course, they would have to figure out how to make a program work in a distressed market, but they are a university. Surely, someone on the university staff can figure out a smart (Creative) way to proceed forward and create a profitable program.

Maybe they could ask the folks over at the Museum Loan Network for advice; they have been working with large organizations for years, helping those organizations use their collections more effectively.

Museum Loan Network

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/mln/about.html

As an example: One organization reduces operational activities. They collaborate with an organization that is in better shape. They charge a reasonable fee to package and ship the exhibit. Then both organizations share revenue generated by exhibit. Movie companies have operated this way successfully for years. Your local movie theaters make profit from supportive activities, like popcorn and soft drink sales. Surely, the brainpower in the Arts can figure out supportive revenue programs combined with admission fees and memberships sales. Even the last two areas will produce profit when program quality and interest increase.

Small potatoes, well small potatoes can add up to big profits. Just look at what Matt Jones in Seattle has accomplished with his Mashed Potatoes program at Gasworks Gallery in Seattle. The Cooperative Gallery charges an admission fee paid for in potatoes or food for the food bank. They have raised millions of pounds of potatoes and other food supplies for the local food bank one potato at a time. http://www.mashedpotatoes.org/

Gasworks Gallery: http://gasworksgallery.com/

Matt Jones Delivers 50,000 pounds of potatoes You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=122fGSv4T8o

My advice to the Art Organizations of America is get creative and find sustainable solutions to your problems before you sell the cow for some magic beans.

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, Media, Movies, News, Politics, Uncategorized , Art News, Art Organizations, Bail out, Bail Out for the Arts, Creative Art, Fundraising, Money for the Arts, Museum Management

Big Art Big Theft; The Lawrence B. Salander Indictment

Big Art Big Theft;

The Lawrence B. Salander Indictment

Lawrence B. Salander of O’Reilly Galleries LLC was arrested on a 100 count indictment. Below, is a news release from the New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau about the case?

The indictment outlines how Salander built one of the most powerful art empires on fraud and deceit while he lived life as large as any Wall Street mogul did. Salander’s built an empire built based on illusion and manipulation of those who trusted him. He has pled not guilty to all charges. I predict that if Salander goes to trial that it will be the first time the secret details of how the Big Art Market functions will come to light and we will all learn the truth behind closed doors.

Link to NYC District Attorney Website

http://manhattanda.org/whatsnew/press/2009-03-26.shtml

DISTRICT ATTORNEY – NEW YORK COUNTY

NEWS RELEASE
March 26, 2009

Contact: Alicia Maxey Greene
212-335-9400

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced today the arrest and 100-count indictment of former art gallery owner LAWRENCE B. SALANDER and the SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES, LLC for stealing $88 million from investors, owners, and a bank.

The defendants, SALANDER, 59, and the SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES, have been indicted on multiple charges of grand larceny, securities fraud, scheme to defraud, forgery, criminal possession of a forged instrument, falsifying business records, and perjury against SALANDER. The crimes charged in the indictment occurred between July 1994 and November 2007.

The investigation leading to today’s indictment revealed that SALANDER, the manager and co-owner of the SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES, defrauded 26 victims resulting in the theft of millions of dollars. SALANDER stole from his victims in two primary ways: he sold artwork not owned by him and kept the money; and lured investment money in fraudulent investment opportunities.

Investors in this case are individuals or entities that paid cash in exchange for an ownership interest in a work of art. Investment deals were presented in two ways, as a pre-sale or speculative investment. In pre-sales, SALANDER represented to an investor that a work of art had already been sold to a buyer who needed time to pay. SALANDER told the investor that he could purchase a percentage of the work based on SALANDER’s actual cost and then share a corresponding percentage of the sales price when it was paid. For example: SALANDER would claim that he purchased a work of art for $500,000 and had a buyer who agreed to pay $1 million in the future. SALANDER offered the investor a 50 percent interest in the art work for $250,000 with the assurance that upon receipt of the purchase price the investor would receive his initial investment plus an additional $250,000 as profit. In a speculative investment, SALANDER offered an investor the opportunity to purchase a work of art with him at cost, and thereafter SALANDER would sell the artwork at a greatly increased value and they would split the profit.

The fraud in each investment opportunity occurred when SALANDER did not own the work of art he offered for investment in whole or in part, or he misrepresented the actual terms of the investment. The misrepresented terms included: inflation of the purported cost (cost fraud), the sale of greater than 100 percent interest in a single work (oversale), the fabrication of the existence of the pre-sale (ghost investment), failure to pay the return when the money came in on the purported investment, or the misrepresentation of the amount payable to the investor (fraudulent retention).

For example: Renaissance Art Investors, LLC (RAI) was one of the gallery’s largest investors. RAI paid SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES $42 million at closing for approximately 328 Renaissance works of art.  As part of the deal, RAI, which was put together by the Schupak Group, a merchant bank owned by Donald Schupak and his son Andrew Schupak, simultaneously consigned the works back to SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES to market and sell. The $42 million was paid based upon SALANDER’s representations of the deal. However, SALANDER misrepresented almost every aspect of this investment including the cost and source of the works sold. For example, SALANDER claimed to have purchased the majority of Renaissance artworks from private dealers and estates mostly throughout Europe, yet the investigation revealed that he actually purchased a large number of works of art from public auction houses throughout Europe and the United States. SALANDER also intentionally withheld from RAI the reporting of millions of dollars in sales of RAI artworks after the closing of the deal and failed to turn over the proceeds of the sale. To support his misrepresentations, SALANDER provided RAI with forged invoices, fraudulent cash disbursement entries, falsified internal documents reflecting source and cost data, and falsified monthly inventories.

Owners of art as used in this case are individuals or estates that own works of art and consign them to the gallery for sale, exhibition, or appraisal. Upon the sale of artworks at agreed upon prices, the owners were to receive the balance of the sale price minus the commission owed the gallery. The majority of the estates are the heirs of prominent 20th Century American artists, including the estates of Stuart Davis, Ralston Crawford, Elie Nadelman, Louis Kahn, Giorgio Cavallon, George McNeil, Suzy Frelinghuysen and George Morris. The thefts from this category of victims occurred pursuant to unauthorized transactions including: sales below owners’ authorized prices, sales of artwork not delivered for sale at the time of the transactions, the use of the artworks as investment vehicles for third parties, or the use of the artworks to satisfy debts owed to third parties. These transactions were completed without consent from, notice to, or payment to the owners.

For example: in the case of the Estate of Stuart Davis, SALANDER and the SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES sold over 50 Stuart Davis works of art consigned by the estate. The evidence showed that a majority of those works were sold without authorization at significantly reduced prices and without notice and payment to the Davis estate, a theft totaling over $6.7 million.  Altogether, the SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES failed to produce or pay for 96 Davis works of art consigned to the gallery by the estate after repeated demands for the return of all works.

The bank in this case is the Bank of America from which SALANDER applied for a personal loan for himself and his wife, Julie.  In support of his loan application, SALANDER offered certain artwork as security and provided documents to establish that his wife owned that artwork.  In fact, several pieces were never owned by LAWRENCE SALANDER nor Julie Salander, but were owned by other individuals, including John McEnroe and the Estate of Dr. Alexander Pearlman. After previous offerings of collateral were rejected, these false filings enabled SALANDER to obtain a $2 million loan.

The investigation further revealed that SALANDER used the stolen funds for two primary purposes: to finance his self-imposed mission to corner the market in Renaissance Art, and to support his extravagant lifestyle, which included travel by private jet within the United States and to Europe, a lavish party for his wife at the Frick Collection, and the purchase and maintenance of his Manhattan townhouse and 66-acre estate in Millbrook, Dutchess County, New York.

He co-founded SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES in 1976. In 2005, the gallery moved from its original location on 79th Street to a five-story building located at 22 East 71st Street. He continued to control the daily business practices of the gallery until it closed in November 2007, pursuant to the filing of an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy case.

The indictment charges SALANDER with 14 counts and the SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES with 13 counts of Grand Larceny in the First Degree, a class B Felony, which is punishable by up to 8⅓ to 25 years in prison; each defendant with 10  counts of Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, a class C felony, which is punishable by up to 5 to 15 years in prison; 3 counts of Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, 5 counts of Forgery in the Second Degree, and 5 counts of Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree, all class D felonies, which are punishable by up to 2⅓ to 7 years in prison; 6 counts of Securities Fraud under the Martin Act (General Business Law §352-c(6)), 1 count of Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, and 55 counts against SALANDER and 53 counts against the SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, all class E felonies, which are punishable by up to 1⅓ to 4 years in prison. SALANDER was also charged with 1 count of Perjury in the First Degree, a class D felony, which is punishable by up to 2⅓ to 7 years in prison.

Mr. Morgenthau thanked Detective Mark Fishstein of the New York City Police Department Major Case Squad for his assistance in the investigation.

Deputy Bureau Chief Micki Shulman and Assistant District Attorney Tanya Apparicio of the Frauds Bureau presented the case to the grand jury under the supervision of Frauds Bureau Chief Michael Kitsis and Deputy Bureau Chief Jeannette Molina and Chief of the Investigations Division Patrick Dugan.  Investigators Jeremy Rosenberg,  Jack Patterson, Siobhan Berry and Reginald Barometre assisted in the investigation under the supervision of Chief Investigator Joseph Pennisi and Deputy Chief Terence Mulderrig.  Others involved in the investigation included Investigative Analyst Yiyang Wu, and Trial Preparation Assistants David Lamb and Daniel Biller of the Frauds Bureau, and Financial Investigator Jay Liang supervised by Frank Puma, Chief of the Financial Crimes Bureau. IT Analyst Selena Ley and her supervisor, IT Deputy Director Steven Moran, also assisted.

Defendant Information:

LAWRENCE SALANDER, 5/29/49
Deep Hollow Road
Millbrook, New York

SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES, LLC
22 East 71st Street
New York, New York

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, Investing, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Uncategorized , Art Collecting, Art Market News, Art Theft, Investing in Art, Lawrence B. Salander

Investing in Big Art big gains or big losses another Secret Revealed

Investing in Big Art big gains or big losses another Secret Revealed

Tonight when I opened my Google News, there it was, another dirty secret made headlines. This time New York Art Dealer Lawrence B Salander indicted on the charge, he stole 88 million dollars from Art Investors, Collectors and Artists that consigned work with his upscale New York Gallery.

Art Dealer Is Charged With Stealing 88 Million

By James Barron New York Times, March 26, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/nyregion/27indict.html?ref=nyregion

Seems Mr. Salander sold the same painting to more than one buyer and that he used artwork that he did not own as collateral to barrow money. He also defrauded Artists who consigned work with his gallery. The article by James Barron is a more complete picture and I am sure that as this case goes to court more information will come to light. In fact, the real figure may be closer to 100 million according to Barron’s sources.

It just makes me sick when these kinds of things happen to artists and art collectors who are our patrons. We as artists go to galleries for representation because we need help marketing and selling our work. We need to make a living and we want collectors to collect our work. Then to be Ripped Off or to have our patrons Ripped Off is just plan Bad Business for all of us. I am not suggesting that Mr. Salander is representative of the art market as a whole but he does represent the bad side of a market fraught with risk.

As I have said many times before “Do Your Homework” before you buy, invest or consign your artwork to anybody. But how do you guard against someone like Salander. He is a Dealer who is established and appears to be respectable and has been around for a long time. I guess you just have to dig harder and use your gut intuition as your guide. If a deal is too sweet, beware. It is a deal probably too good to be true.

Barron’s NYT article says that someone with the investigation attempted to contact Robert De Niro Sr. about his paintings and his connection with Salander but that he didn’t return the phone call. Mr. De Niro Sr. Died in 1993. He is the father of actor Robert De Niro.

I was confused when I read about De Niro. I had exhibited several of his paintings in 2000 as part of an Abstract Expressionist Exhibit. I knew he had passed away. De Niro Sr. was part of the now famous group of painters the Abstract Expressionists.

Maybe they were referring to his son who is trying to recover 12 of his Dads paintings.

As it turns out Salander is accused of stealing 12 of De Niro Sr. paintings that had been consigned to him. Read the Article

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11202007/news/regionalnews/deniro_demands_pop_art_239232.htm

About Robert De Niro Sr. Abstract Expressionist 1922-1993

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-06-20-deniro_x.htm

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/de_niro_sr_robert.html

About Lawrence B. Salander

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/lawrence_b_salander/index.html?inline=nyt-per

Bloomberg News

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a.95n8ZwIPv8&refer=muse

Filed under: Art, Art News, Investing, Media, News, On Art , Abstract Expressionism, Art Theft, Investing in Art, Lawrence B. Salander, Robert De Niro Sr.

Is Art Dead? is this the End

Don’t worry Mr.Stubbs is just Acting

You might think so if you read the plethora of articles written on the end of Big Art and Non-Profit Art Organizations.

Auction Houses are reporting poor sales and the values of previously valuable artworks are in decline or on the skids altogether. More over the fate of many Art Museums and Non-profit galleries are simply stated unknown with their endowments devastated by the financial turmoil that is everywhere. Other Arts Organizations from symphonies to seasonal festivals are canceling their entire seasons and Universities are closing their art galleries and museums and talking about de accessioning their art collections to raise capital. Collectors are in a panic as their wealth is failing and want to rush out and sell the treasures in their collections at drastically depreciated values.

You the average artist might get the idea that the end is indeed here for the Art Market. That might be the case for at least parts of the big art market, but I believe that Two Art Markets exist in two very different Art worlds. Just as I believe that two financial systems or economies exist in America.

Let me start with the value of Art. One market professes that the value in art is an investment and it operates much like the stock market. The perceived values of artworks are abstractions that are difficult for even the top experts to understand. What makes a Damien Hirst or a Jeff Koones worth millions? Is it the aesthetic importance or is it a rare commodity. Is value a false premise to begin with? The world’s great art treasures certainly, have real value but are they really worth the hundreds of millions of dollars paid for them or are their values just as abstract as the values of stock derivatives.

The values of these treasures are as unreliable an investment as mortgage securities or stock derivatives. In fact, I would compare the Money that everyone is so upset about losing including me is a close cousin to Conceptual Art. It the money exists inside our minds as an idea without real substance. This money is simply numbers on paper or in a computer programs and has no real value except in the idea that is actually exists. In fact, recently when AIG was called (as in poker) to pay out insurance claims against losses they insured against they did not really have any real money. Their wealth was a concept on paper.

The same deal is going down in the Big Art Market. Values of artworks, endowment funds and the real value of all of these abstractions are now becoming Representational or Realistic, and the picture is a scary one to say the least. I guess because like the experts I just don’t get the whole concept and don’t know why it works or doesn’t for sure, maybe.

So where does that leave you the Artist, Writer, Musician, Actor, The Arts Worker. It leaves you with the second Arts Market and the Second Economy. Maybe I should just call it as I see it the real Market Place.

The Real Market is where real things get done, where actual work is preformed, real things are produced, and where real money, goods and services are exchanged. This is the market where the real value in what you produce exists. You write a book and you sell that book to someone that wants to read it. You sell a painting to someone that wants to hang it on the wall in their study because the real value is, they enjoy looking at the painting, it brings real pleasure to them outside it’s monetary worth.

It is where you take the money you earned from the sale of your painting and you buy lunch at the corner café. You tip the waitress and she takes the money she made waiting on you and buys fresh produced grown by a local farmer to feed her kids dinner.

The kids spent the day at the local Art Museum on school fieldtrip learning about art and making art projects and they share their new knowledge with Mom at dinner.

After dinner, Mom is amazed that the kids are forgoing TV and doing their homework. Johnny suddenly gets the math problem that was a conceptual enigma, but after seeing an abstract Artwork that the Docent explained to his class, he sees the math.

Jill is working on her English homework writing the poem she had been putting off but because the museum had, a poet read to the class she is inspired to write her own poetry.

Jimmy is in his room practicing his music lesson because at lunch, the museum had a drum ensemble perform and he too is now inspired to make music.

Mom decides that it would be a good idea to sign the kids up for more art experience classes and becomes a member of the museum that she pays for with the tips she earns from many different customers at her local restaurant.

Years later, her kids grow up and never forget the childhood experiences that the arts provided for them. They go to galleries and buy art, join museums and buy season tickets for the theater and local symphony.

And we all eat, drink and prosper. That is the value of the real economy. By now, you get the idea and if you think about it, you can insert any real product or service into the equation. It is this very simple premise, the exchange of goods, services and ideas that makes the real economy real and is where we Artists can find success.

How do we make this second economy work?

Once you begin to think about creating a real value economy you will figure it out, let your creativity your artist out to play.

I do not believe we can go it alone as independent artists.

We need to work collectively to create an Arts Presence. Places where multiple artists of every kind work in visible ways. We need to create a presence in our community, like an arts district. Even if we all cannot have a studio or shop, we need to create the availability a connection to each other. Some artists have formed co-ops where they work as a group and share the costs and work load.

The co-op does not have to be just visual artists. It could be a combination of disciplines. You could have a visual art gallery and a music center or performance component like dance or theater where the combined talents could offer dynamic combined events.

Examples of Artists Co-op’s

Tennessee

http://www.clarksvilleartists.org/

On-Line Co-op

http://burningartist.com/

Colorado

http://www.commonwheel.com/

West Virginia

http://www.icehouseartistsco-op.com/

Idaho

http://www.forestcraft.com/

Other artists have created Phantom Gallery Networks.

Before the current Boom and as business’s moved out of older Downtown areas for new digg’s in newly developed retail areas empty retail space became a problem across America. Many cities and towns had wide-open, depressed retail corridors that presented a dismal picture of the community. Artists working together with property owners, city officials and businesses filled those empty spaces with art. The programs also created events like Art Walks to bring people into these depressed corridors stimulated the local economy.

Today as the economy worsens and businesses close up shop, a lot of space is going to be available.

It will take someone with energy like you to organize and build a successful presence. You can sit around and wait for someone else to do something or you can take the lead and make it happen. Art is your life your lifestyle and your business.

Examples of Phantom Gallery Programs

L.A.

http://www.phantomgalleriesla.com/DowntownLA.html

Butte Montana: This link is to the Montana State Travel Site.

http://visitmt.com/categories/moreinfo.asp?IDRRecordID=16816&siteid=1

I added this link because it is a great example of how a presence can create value. Butte is in between two large National Parks Yellowstone and Glacier. Tourist travel I-90 and the Butte Phantom Gallery program gives them something to stop in town for. Most tourist use the internet to pre-screen their trips and stops. Tourists buy Art and Lunch.

More Butte

http://www.montanastandard.com/articles/2006/07/07/newsbutte/hjjdjcjciijigc.txt

Tucson

http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/96/13/04_1.html

My wife and I lived in a loft in an old Hardware store in Downtown Tucson in the 1980’s Downtown was vacant and artists created a presence. One Saturday a month the local Arts Co-op sponsored an ad hoc art walk that brought thousands of people Downtown. It was fun and changed the perception of the Downtown area.

Now with the economy again bad, folks in your community are going to be looking for something to do that is fun and free. Local business will like the idea too because they want people to come out and spend money. In Tucson, the little shops and restaurants sold a lot of merchandise along with art.

Another way to go is to use existing businesses as exhibit space. Café’s, Banks, you name it, will hang art on their walls and you can create events like art walks that will bring people out and into those businesses. Everybody wins.

Art Spots

One thing that another Montana Artist and I did in Kalispell Montana years ago was start an Art Spot program. Marshal Noice a local painter/photographer and I the Director of a local museum made Art Spot flags. We got all of the hardware together to hang a flag at an art location. We charged each location the cost of the flag, hardware, and publication and hung Art Spot Flags creating an Art presence throughout town.

We created and printed a simple two-sided card with the Art Spot business names and address on one side and a corresponding numbered map on the other side of the card. If you visit Kalispell Montana the program is still working. Tourists can easily locate local art businesses and museums following the flags.

Note: Kalispell has a sign ordinance that restricts signage that is why we chose a flag. Most cities do not restrict Flags but do restrict signs and banners.

We had had a vision of doing something statewide with signage on the interstate to locate art hubs in towns across the state. It could still happen.

Art Spot Link

http://www.hockadaymuseum.org/Links.htm

The Internet

Today the internet is a very good place to start a collective or Social Network for Artists in your town, county, state or across the nation. I started a Montana Artists Network a couple weeks ago. The purpose was to create a site where anyone interested in the Arts Artists in Montana could communicate with each other to network and promote the arts.

I used Ning, which is a social networking platform to create the site. Ning is free for anyone to use and you can create your own network with ease using Ning. http://www.ning.com/

I want to stress that this type of social network is very different from a website. The format is far more interactive and flexible. Members control their pages and can do a variety of things to communicate and promote their art. Members can up-load Photos, Videos, create discussions, chat, list events, blog and many more. This type of format is dynamic and easy to use and it is free.

Examples of Ning Type Networks (I am a member at all three)

Montana Artists Network

http://montanaartistsnetwork.ning.com/

Brooklyn Art Project

http://brooklynartproject.ning.com/

Arts for Arts Sake

http://artsforartssake.ning.com/

We need to work together and create real value for our communities and our customers.

In Philadelphia, a Group of Artists are Bartering, Art for Goods and Services.

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090308_A_barter_economy_for_art_in_Phila_.html

Many of these ideas are not new they just faded away with the boom times of the last decade. These Gorilla Marketing tactics grew out of need during the last down times, some hung on while others did not.

Today as we again face economic challenges in the arts, we need to explore ideas outside of what became the Box.

Looking for a new gallery may be the real challenge in today’s market. It might even become impossible as galleries scale back or close their doors along with museums and other non-profit art organizations.

You might just get a show if that gallery owner sees your work hanging in a vacant window a Phantom Gallery he or she walks past on the way to work.

As for the Big Art Market, most of us never got there to begin with. That market has been a far away illusion that made sensational headlines and captivated our dreams of fame and success. For the majority of us our market is still right here in front of us. All we have to do is create value to find success.

Success is measured in many ways, your success is personal, what do you really want from art, what is success to you.

The value of the arts is like a spider web, woven in many directions touching many places.

There are no limits of what we can do together only our imagination will limit us or free us. Put your creative thinking cap on and let your imagination fly.

Do the Arts Need a National Bailout

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/do-the-arts-need-a-national-bailout/

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, News, On Art, Painting, Photography, Politics, Uncategorized , Art and the Economy, Art Co-op, Art Marketing, art sales, Investing in Art, Phantom Gallery

The Art of Propaganda and Tattoo Removal

Cutten the Pork

As the Senate labors to pass the 2009 Appropriations Bill, H.R 1105 the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 John McCain labors to derail spending for the federal government because of Pork Barrel Earmark Spending. This Bill Funds the Governments Budget for the rest of 2009 and has been in the legislation process for more than a year. The Congress couldn’t get their act together last year to pass the budget and enacted a continued resolution that runs out today. They did today get it together enough to continue the funding resolution until next week so the government could continue to operate.

 

 

http://appropriations.senate.gov

 

John McCain offered the Senate his top ten list on earmarks as evidence to support his failed amendment to continue level 2008 funding for the 2009 budget year. Well as many Senators pointed out, we are already half way through the 2009 budget year that runs from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009. McCain was like the Rancher who tried to call the Ponies home after the coral gate was left open and they all ran off, only in his case the Ponies ran off last year. One earmark that he repeatedly pointed out was $200,000.00 for Tattoo Removal. Quickly the propaganda machine noticed his qua and Bill O’ Riley vomited that he hopes Angelina Jolie didn’t show up to get her Tat’s removed because she can afford to have that done on her own. And of course Sean Hannity jumped right in with his profound words of wisdom to pan the Tattoo removal program. Now all we need is Rush to lead us to the chosen land.

 

McCain’s Top 10

http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2009/02/27/earmarks-john-mccains-top-10except/

 

This wasteful Earmark was pork added to the bill by California Representative Howard Berman. http://www.house.gov/berman/index.shtml

 

The Earmark is $200.000 to purchase a Tattoo Removal Machine. To be used to remove Gang Tattoos and other types of Anti Social Tattoos that prevents people from moving on with their lives and becoming productive citizens. The program that would receive the funding removes these types of Tattoos free as part of a violence prevention program. The Providence Tattoo Removal Program helps former gang member’s reform and enables them to become employable and productive. Local Law enforcement praises the program for its success.

http://www.providence.org/losangeles/services/tattooremoval/default.htm

 

What is an Earmark? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earmark_(politics)

 

An Earmark Specifies that specifically identified funding must be spent on a specified program. This is how the congress has maintained power over the Executive branch of Government in regards to spending. That bridge you crossed on the way home might be an Earmark. This is how the Congress works and has worked for many years. Yes it controversial. On the other hand, it is how your representatives take action on your business. These Earmark programs are real programs and they provide real benefits to you the taxpayer in most circumstances. That is not to say there isn’t room for improvement or a better system. Like an open budget, that Obama just proposed.

 

Ok so I had the Flu this week and spent a lot of time watching CSPAN. So I watched this whole thing unfold as I lay on the couch whining or whimpering because I was sick.

 

However, what really pissed me off were John McCain’s top 10 and his remarks about the Tattoo Removal Earmark. Pork I hardly think so!

 

So now, here is the rest of the story.

 

Back in 1984, I went to work as a vocational instructor in a one of those wasteful spending programs in Tucson Arizona, John McCain’s district.  I worked with Juvenile offenders, gang prevention; in a program that provided vocational training, we had a print shop. Being an Artist, Printmaker, Photographer I taught kids the basic skills to design and print Tee Shirts, Bumper Stickers and Signs. But most importantly I taught them how to work, how to keep a job. We also offered these kid’s the opportunity to get a GED and many did. Many of our kids had Tattoos, Gang Tattoos. This was before Laser Tattoo removal had been invented and they were just stuck unable to move on. You see Gang Tats are specific to cultural geographic areas and if you live in a specific area, your Tats are a big sign hanging around your neck.

 

So one day in mid 1985 I went to a Dermatologist for a skin check, to get a mole removed. On my upper right arm was a Tattoo. It was a military Tat that I wasn’t real happy with so you can imagine how I felt when the Doctor asked me if I would like to get it removed for free. He told me that a Doctor from the Cleveland Clinic was coming to Tucson to train him in Laser Tattoo removal and that he needed people to volunteer to let him work on them. He told me he had been in Cleveland and practiced removing tattoos on Pigs whose skin is very much like human flesh. Well I was in, I agreed to let his experiment on me after all it worked out for the pigs. I always wondered what kind of Tats do pigs get anyway and where do they get them?

 

So to make a long story short I showed up at my appointment and became the second person in Tucson to have a Tattoo removed by Laser although as it worked out I think the Doctor used a Phaser. The Tattoo was gone and so was a significant portion of my arm, vaporized. Turns out the new machine was a little to hot not like today’s machines and instead of a bad Tattoo, I had a horrific scar after seven months of painful healing. The Doctor felt terrible and offered to attempt to reconstruct my upper arm, but I had had enough pain and opted to leave well enough alone. From there the Doctors perfected the Laser and treatment we have today, which works just fine in most cases.

 

Ten years later in 1995 I was again working with at risk youth in Tucson still John McCain’s district. The Gang problem had grown to epidemic proportions in ten years and every part of Tucson faced rising gang violence. As I was told over and over by the kids we worked with your either in a gang or your nothing. Kids are constantly recruited to join gangs in the neighborhood where they live they live in fear or join. Once you become a gang member there is no easy out. Gang tattoos are more like brands on cattle, the gang owns you period. Other gangs just see the Tats as identifiable targets and target you. Only your gang can protect you now, that is unless you leave and that is not allowed.

 

I remember a young man, about 18 years old who came to our program to get a job. His hands and face disfigured he told us a story about what happened to him. He quit his gang and so his old friends became enemies and kidnapped him. They took him out into the desert and removed his Gang Tats with a screwdriver, gouging away at his fingers, neck and face until the symbols were gone. Then they burnt him, ran over him with a car and left him for dead. The kid just wanted to finish school and get a job. Well he did. He was one of John McCain’s constituents.

 

But he never got any help from John “No Pork” McCain. After tens years working on the streets of Tucson, I can’t say many people in the Barrio have gotten much help from Big John. In his defense I have to admit that one of his aids in the Tucson Office was a great community asset, Lillian Lopez Grant did care about the people and tired her best to do the right thing for people who couldn’t change there own circumstances.

 

The fact is McCain is out of touch out of date. He has no idea what the people need and what is important for California or for that matter Arizona. That is why California elected their, own representatives. Yes John, Bill and Sean Tattoo removal is important and necessary for those people who are locked into the violence of gangs. They need help to move on and break the cycle of violence that has dominated their lives and the lives of generations of family members and the communities they live in. Don’t you all want these people to change to become productive citizens? 

 

There can be No change at the expense of political propaganda.

 

John, Bill and Sean count on the fact that you won’t seek out the real story the real truth. They rely on the political sound bites to enrage you to mislead you for their own political or entertainment ratings gain.  There is real power and real danger in the Art of Propaganda. You and I are the victims of false truths.

 

John held up H.R Bill 1105 and said look at the size of this bill over a thousand pages with over 9000 earmarks. Well frankly, it is big; it is a big Budget Bill for a very big country that has a big government that costs big money. Maybe John should have read the even bigger manager’s reports that accompanied the bill; maybe he would have learned something from their hard work to produce content to support the legislation. No John, never read the Bill or the Manager reports, he said so I watched him say it as part of the congressional record. It was just too big for him to understand. Well that’s why you guys hired the managers to oversee the complexity of the legislation.

 

More Frankly, John why didn’t you and your crew go to work to eliminate the Pork last year or for the six months you have had a continuing resolution? Why now at the end in the last minute is it now so important? The process the earmarks is the current system of congressional government at work John you have had nearly 30 years to fix it if you wanted too. You didn’t you haven’t so move forward.

The Old Ponies have all run off and they isn’t a cumin back, so lock the corral now before the New Ponies run off. If you don’t like earmarks then change the way congress appropriates funds. It seems to me that is what the President is trying to do with a fully transparent planned budget. We will see how that works out.

 

I hope the Provident Tattoo Removal program gets their new machine.

 

It is worth every Penny! 

 

Howard Berman if I were you I would post that Earmark prominently on my website for everybody to read, you should be proud you supported such an important program.

 

 

 

Filed under: Culture Economey, Ink, Investing, Journalism, Media, News, Politics, Tattoo, Tattooing, Uncategorized , Art of Propaganda, Barrel, Congress Spending, Earmarks, H.R.1105, John McCain, Pork, Senate, Tattoo Removal

Living on the Edges of 2012

Plum Creek winter 2007

Living on the Edges of 2012

A cold damp wind blows across my face; it burns the eyes, as I look toward a sky empty of artificial clouds of steam and smoke that once dominated my view of the valley where I have lived for the last 13 years. Today only, a passing car breaks the silence, as the constant hum of Plum Creek one of the largest sawmills in the Northwest is quiet. The sound of nothing is deafening and suddenly frightening. The mill had operated seven days a week working three shifts, seldom was there ever a break in the clouds of smoke and steam. The economic collapse that has rocked America has arrived in Columbia Falls is a small town of around 5000 residents known as the industrial heart of Northwest Montana with a stunning blow to our small community.  Plum Creek is one of the largest timber corporations America. They are also one of the largest landowners in the country only second to the Federal Government here in Montana and they are in desperate trouble. The demand for wood products have ceased with the collapse of the housing bubble.

My mind wanders as I listen to nothing this morning. I think about Last year 2007.

It seems like it was so long ago now that my son and I took a road trip to Death Valley. It was only a little over a year ago now. Our purpose was to take photographs to document our trip. It was a photographers outing. We both just wanted to get away from the must do’s of work and life itself. But that trip turned into something far beyond what I expected as did the coming year 2008. We had two weeks to ourselves, no obligations. The impending changes of 2008 that December before were just talk. Talk about how improbable it was that Barrack Obama would even make it through the primary elections let alone become President. The economy was not really on the radar as much as climate change. We drove south from Seattle down the coast where a category 3 hurricane type storm battered the northern west coast like never before. The road, lined with trees torn out of the ground, snapped off mid trunk as if twigs were a testament of the power of that storm. Seawalls breeched by record tides flooded; devastated the small towns along the west coast that were now in a state of organized recovery. No national press about this storm dominated the news like Katrina but the damage was impressive, severe. We stopped to take pictures and walk on the beach in Oregon. You would hardly know that only a few days ago the ocean covered shoreline up to the first stories of homes and hotels along the beach except for the line of debris that had been contained along the sea walls. People were collecting wood scattered by the storm, building fires to warm themselves as they waited for the sunset. A man was moving big logs on a stairway that led up to a patio at one of the hotels, was asked him how all those logs got there. He told us about the storm and that he had never seen the water come up as far as it did water pushed by a weeks worth of hurricane force winds. He told us how the town of Oceanside had been cutoff with no escape by tidal flooding that blocked the roads. He told how the residents banned together to help each other and share food and whatever else they had.

As we journeyed on toward our destination, we talked a lot, about the effects of coastal flooding we had witnessed and changes that were occurring right now. Maybe it was just random events as weather is, or maybe not. We talked about the Mayan calendar and the Hopi prophecies http://www.geocities.com/whitecrystalmirror/prophecy.html that predict and end to this phase of modern civilization in 2012. We talked about how these prophecies might play out, how this might happen. Would natural disasters like Katrina, Oceanside or the results of climate change, play a role in the end of modern civilization? Or would our behavior today as a society be the catalyst for failure.

After a long day of driving, we approached Death Valley it was dark. Night comes early in December.

Stop here I have to take a leak. Here was nowhere in the middle of nothing, just a dark road, where no artificial light could penetrate the darkness except the headlights of the car that connected Death Valley with the rest of the world. Turning off the car and headlights, we got out of the car, lit a smoke, and proceeded to relieve ourselves when the sky lit up like a roman candle.  As monstrous greenish blue fire ball with a tail that stretched across the horizon burned right over our heads. Did you see that? “What the Fuck was that”, Jake said. “A meteor I think”, I answered. Excited by the event our consensus was, let’s go!  We jumped into the car and headed down a steep grade that seemed to go on forever to the valley floor. Every now and then as the road turned the headlights, spied large water tanks located in turnouts. The water tanks were a reminder of where we were and how fortunate it was December and not August because the modern automobile is still no match for natural heat of that desert.  As we arrived at Stovepipe Wells, we were still taking about that Meteor. That Meteor and the hundreds we saw over the next couple of days really change me, as did the scorched wasteland that is Death Valley. That was little more than a year ago December 2007 before the turmoil of 2008 had occurred. I really didn’t know then what I know now because now was the future then.

Now it seems that economic collapse is perhaps the immediate threat to the system of how we live. The cascading failures of banks and businesses that have sustained our way of life are collapsing. Perhaps the Mayans and the ancient ones of the Hopi Indians knew that history has a way of repeating itself, that human prophecies are self-fulfilling. These events of collapse and failure are the historical facts of life of written history of history no longer spoke by silent voices. A silent history recorded in the ruins of past civilizations here in the American Landscape. These Ancient ruins and ghost towns preserve the presence and failure of our ancestral people and our history.

Today the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company, CFAC is also quiet; their plotlines are cold and empty, as the demand for high-grade aluminum has vanished and the costs of energy and material have soared.  CFAC as we call them around here has announced that they can no longer operate at today’s prices in today’s metals market on Christmas Eve and they have decided to close permanently.

Semi Tools a high tech company a front-end manufacturer in the computer industry, a company that supplies the computer manufacturing industry worldwide with the machines that actually make your computers.  Announced they have to reduced production and cut their workforce by more that fifty percent. These dramatic events have occurred over the last two weeks, with CFAC announcing on Christmas Eve they will close permanently and Semi Tool and Plum Creek making their announcements this past Friday January 9 they will curtailed until further notice. This news came to workers who were on mandatory furlough for the past month as an emergency cost saving measure by all of these companies had returned to work after the first of the year. In addition, Plum Creek has told all of their contractors to stop work, stop logging operations. The news is devastating for a small town a small community and for America, that is already suffering the effects of the housing and construction market failure. In one week, more than a tenth of our small population lost theirs jobs and these were the highest paying jobs in the Flathead Valley as well as Montana.

We moved to Columbia Falls about 13 years ago where I became the Director of the local Art Museum located in downtown Kalispell Montana. This was at a time of franchise infancy in the community. Wal-Mart and Costco arrived to the Flathead valley just after the first McDonalds. Before that, the infrastructure of the Flathead Valley was local Mom and Pop un-franchised businesses. The Flathead Valley of Northwest Montana was mostly untouched by the mass distribution of corporate enterprises that dominate the larger communities of America. Its sense of place was unique; a small Home Town, a Rural Paradise that offered a haven from the large urban communities of modern America. It was a place where a kid like Jake can grab a towel and walk to the end of the street to the community swimming pool with no worries. Thirteen years after McDonalds and the explosion of Franchise Businesses I can hardly recognized the original community I moved too in 1996. The valley has taken on the same visual characteristics as the rest of America it has become part of the Homage-O-Nation! As you drive through the valley on U.S 93, the landscape reveals the same architecture, a true assimilated American Community. Wal-Mart, Boarders, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Walgreen’s and a plethora of corporate franchise restaurants to supplement a major anchor complex. You seen one you seen em all. This is how goods and services are delivered today, the Architecture is functional and predictable, a box with ornamentation stuck on it giving each box an identifiable appearance, or as I like to think of it, a CODE. One-step farther inside the box and we identify the product line. It really doesn’t matter what McDonalds you walk into anywhere on the planet, you know you can get a Big Mac and you identify the product with the architectural Code. The architecture is the reinforcement of the Code an image of the corporation, the franchise; it is part of the brand. This is where the sameness of products of the landscape, cityscape and culture started. The code or brand reinforces the product into our culture and our ideas about ourselves changed. We began to seek our comforts in unifying products. These products help us define our status or place in the social economic pecking order. These product identifications, brands, codes enhance our personal likeability our sexuality to others. Many of us now live in towns in houses and neighborhoods that all look alike. Even the color of the houses and building are regulated, all the same color scheme, no variation on the theme is tolerated.

The Development that we have come to believe we need, that we want, has created a sameness that has overtaken the cultural landscape across an America of endless McDonald’s, Strip Malls and Big Box Stores that has grown into new cities and towns, not built to live and walk in, but to drive to. Development and Sameness has changed us as a culture. Perhaps this is how it happened? Developers brought us development and products and we were all told we needed them and we believed the developers, the corporate retailers, and their advertising and we believed we needed these products. This idea is in stark contrast to having true needs and then developing products and services to fill our true desires and needs. I am sure we all really want a MacDonald’s hamburger that is smaller than the pickle slices on the bun. But “Your Love n It”.

Today’s headlines detail the failure of our way of life, a human system on the brink of Collapse. If the effects of this rapid growth this manmade disaster only impacted Columbia Falls and the Flathead Valley then perhaps emergency aid and relief could help stabilize the situation. The effects are in fact global and not centralized to us alone. The effect of our modern model and its collapse will touch all of us around the world in ways; we have yet to experience because of “How We Live” and our dependence on a global market place that apparently according to world leaders has become un-stable, unsustainable.

This is not a new story in the history of civilization. It is a story of transition from the past to the present and an uncertain future. Several years ago, I read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780670033379,00.html

He compares modern Montana with past civilizations. He writes about the people of Chaco Canyon http://eubank.home.bresnan.net/ and the failure of their system, their way of life. They exhausted the natural resources that had been the source of their success as a culture. In the end the climate, the environment changed and civilization failed. Throughout the Western United States lay the ruins of the past. The people vanished as their environment no longer sustained them, from the Wupatki http://www.nps.gov/wupa culture in northern Arizona to the Chaco http://www.nps.gov/chcu Culture in New Mexico they were gone with countless others. Today the reasons why these civilizations failed is part speculation and part science, the mystery of what, when and where they went remains un-spoken in stories of a vanished civilization. After reading Diamond’s account of the failure of the Chaco Culture, I wanted to go to New Mexico and see for myself this place of mystery of un-spoken stories. As I embarked on my expedition of discovery in November of 2006, I went as an Artist not as a Scientist. My discoveries are intuitive, based on my feeling about this place.  My intuition, my gut feeling about what happened and what remains were my source, my sense of this place. Diamond writes about an enterprising culture that had a purpose to develop beyond their limits and technology to sustain them. They were a culture that destroyed their sustainable environment for the sake of development of expansion. It is un-clear in the forgotten stories why this development was so important to the Chacoan’s.  Some archeologists believe the people used the pueblos during ceremonial seasons and that only a small population of people inhabited the area year round. As the story goes, thousands of visitors would come to Chaco during the ceremonial seasons to celebrate their stories, their beliefs. Perhaps this account is true or maybe there is a story untold. Diamond writes about how the people deforested the landscape. They cut down all of the trees of what once was a forest far beyond what the eye can see into the distance from the canyon so they could build their city. What remains is a desolate landscape void of any large trees. Ponderosa Pine covered the landscape before. Diamond estimates that the Chaco people cut down tens of thousands of trees as far away as a sixty-mile radius from the Chaco site. This was a time when horses did not roam the landscape and all of the timber moved was by the manual labor of the people. They carried or pulled the fallen trees to the city and they built great structures. In the process, they changed the flow of water, their life substance and slowly the environment turned against them. Corn, which was the food of the gods no longer, grew in this place. Slowly they vanished as a culture. There is evidence that the last Chacoan’s began recycling. They salvaged material from older buildings and reused them to continue building new ones. But this was an effort too late because the environment became the master of this land– a land unable to sustain a human presence. To be sure, descendants of the Chaco Culture still exist. Fragmented disenfranchised from one another they either sought survival on their own or assimilated into other groups. They became us a thousand years into the future or perhaps we have become them and as future inhabitants look back from a thousand years forward.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=IESYMFtLIis

For me Jared Diamonds story of Chaco Canyon has real meaning as a modern Montanan. As the economy, stock markets and global development soared to never before seen heights, the evidence of the cost of that great expansion are present all around us. Building boomed as more people bought homes and big rides SUV’s. Corporate development seemed destined to reach every undeveloped area in the modern landscape while small and large sawmills closed by the dozens and left once thriving communities dependant on them devastated in the wake of their failure. If you look at a map of Montana where the forests cover the land every community saw, mills go out of business. They failed in the midst of one of the most prolific periods of building and development in our history. Over the last ten years, year after year dozens of wood product, timber businesses failed after decades of sustainable production. Why, the availability of harvestable timber was not, is not available, it is gone. The once abundant old growth timber stands are gone, harvested. The existing stands today are in a second harvest or re-growth period. The re-growth period of Timber in this region spans the measure of a human lifetime, about 80 to 120 years. The second growth timber now harvested, replaced the old growth stands harvested a century ago. Add to this the devastation of forests by fire and rural development the supply of harvestable trees declined disproportionately with the development of our society. Today’s demand has placed unsustainable pressure on the natural system, demand on the forests for trees. Timber a renewable resource for the wood products industry is now on the fringe of collapse with the pressure of current demand. Time is the enemy in our current business model. Demand operates on a much faster clock than natural growth.

People ask me if I am a religious man and I tell them I am a spiritual man. Religion I think is a collection of ideas that a group of people agree on, principles that the group shares and follows. A spiritual belief recognizes the ideas and principles of all religions and agrees to share with tolerance those that seek a higher truth the fundamental truth of all things.

Jake and I discovered a joy in the adventure together and found that our ideas, our hopes, our paths were spiritually connected through our individual work as Artists, Photographers, Writers and our relationship as Father and Son”. While we were sitting under a sky full of falling stars in the desolation of Death Valley, we arrived at a moment, an idea that things fall apart that all things change and are renewed. We talked at length about the environment and the impact of our modern society. We talked about how millions of modern people have never seen the real sky, unmasked of the artificial illumination of modern cities. We talked about the disconnection of modern human beings from their natural environment and we wondered how civilization could go forward with out reconnecting to the natural environment in a sustainable way. Our present time is shocking and full of fear and the unknown, of what the future may bring. But if we are still the masters of this place this land this planet then we have the power to choose our future a sustainable future.

Elders Speak

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1299816/indigenous_native_american_prophecy_elders_speak_part_1_5/

Coming Soon Energy and Metal

About The Project http://davideubank.wordpress.com/about-jacob-and-david-eubank-and-the-living-on-the-edges-of-2012-collaboration/

Sources:

Semi Tool

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/11/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_01.txt

Plum Creek

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/09/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_02.txt

CFAC

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/articles/2009/01/09/news/local_montana/news_8768521326_02.txt

CFAC and Plum Creek

http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/

Plum Creek Formaldehyde pollution

http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/facility.tcl?tri_id=59912PLMCRPOBOX

http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/articles/2004/09/29/news/news01.txt

About Plum Creeks New Bio Filter System

http://www.timberbuysell.com/community/DisplayNews.asp?id=3681

Blog about Formaldehyde

http://www.toxictrailers.org/2008_03_01_archive.html

Toxic Emmissions

http://static.uspirg.org/reports/toxics03/toxicreleases1_03report.pdf

• Coming Soon Energy and Metal in Montana

Filed under: Art, Art News, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, News, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Columbia Falls Montana, Economic Predictions 2009, Obama Stimulas Plan, Plum Creek, Sustainablity

Dave’s Psychic Art Predictions for 2009, what are your Psychic Predictions for 2009

• 2008 was a year of years for sure, who could’ve predicted Two Thousand and Eight.

I dun’ no but here are some of my predictions for the New Year 2009.

 

 

 

• Wall Street Investors and Bankers who bought multi-million dollar artworks of various livestock genre to hang on the walls of their mansions will begin to create recipes for new and unusual entrees.

Beef Formaldehyde-tine, and of course, the new hamburger rave, the Mad Cow. Yes, it is a lot of beef but let’s not forget about the sea food menu. Pan Sautéed shark in a cream formaldehyde sauce with “capers”. This is a quick variation on a stuffed flounder recipe. And I predict Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern will show up at several of these feasts wearing a new Damien Hirst Tee Shirt and exclaim, now boy that’s really good as he samples the various delicacies.

• My prediction for the art market and art sales for the New Year is the same as last year.

Art will still be sold to the highest bidder and perhaps to the bidder that is“High”… But from what I can see is we all want the relationships between the artist and the market to change, well I predict that it will. Those questionable galleries that we all complain about, well they are going away in 2009. Artists will re-invent the Art Market Place by taking their art to the streets. Most will be holding signs, that they painted that read, “Will Make Art for Food”. But just maybe you have an unrealized ace in the hole? Christie’s reports that Collectable Wine sales reached the third highest ever $50,665,602.00. Global sales were $1,898,068.00. The top seller was a vintage 1961 Hermitage La Chappelle for $60,000.00 The good news for me is I found a vintage bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry 1968 or 69, who can remember it was the sixty’s,  while cleaning out the old VW Bus getting it ready for the scrape yard. So I predict if you look under that sofa or under the cushions you might just be rich. As for art sales I dunno, Art Business.com Reports that trying to track art sales is like trying to count the stars in the sky.

 

• The Associated Press reports that nobody knows where the first 350 billion of the bailout money went.

They contacted 21 banks that received a billion dollars or more to find out. Nobody is talking. They asked, how much did you spend, what did you spend it on, how much are you saving and what are your plans for the rest? Only JP Morgan/Chase commented and they said, “We’ve lent some of it, we’ve not lent some of it, we have not disclosed that to the public, we’re declining to.” REALLY that was their answer. So I predict the next $350 billion will be spent trying to figure out where the first $350 billion went. I also predict that throughout corporate lunchroom’s you will hear, Hey Morgan can you pass the  1961 Hermitage La Chappelle, this Beef Formaldehyde-tine is a little dry. Here you are Chase, by the way do you miss “The Golden Calf,” by Damien Hirst that was in the boardroom. How bout those hooves and horns of 18-carat gold. You did save those didn’t you?

 

• I predict that the global Environment will improve; better cleaner air and water.

With the downturn in manufacturing, I see un-looked for benefits that will help the environment. Except for the floating continent of Plastic trash http://davideubank.wordpress.com/man-made-continent-of-trash-a-fantastic-story  in the Pacific Gyer, Its size will increase by an untold magnitude as trillions of new small bits of plastic turn up this year. I predict scientists will trace the increase to all of those credit cards we will all be cutting up and disposing of in 2009. And don’t burn them either or Global Air quality will plummet.

 

• I predict the old Obama slogan of Hope will be replaced by Obama’s new slogan What the F_ _ _ were they thinking.

He will also be heard yelling, they did WHAT!…

 

 

• One more prediction for 2009 is that if the New Year is anything like the old one it will be exciting and unpredictable.

But artists are the creative pulse of the human existence and creativity is our business. Many new innovative and creative ideas begin in the arts. Artists recognize the new first and then the rest of society well follows. So I predict we will be the creative leaders of the future as we have always been. . Don’t blow it!.. Stay positive and create.

 

• And please share your predictions for 2009, come on have some fun.
• Happy New Year!…

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, Environment, How to, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Politics, Uncategorized , 2009 predictions, Bailout, Barack Obama, Collectable Wines, Economic Predictions 2009, Environment predictions 2009, Floating Trash

The Cultural Homogenizing of America or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wal-Mart

• A Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death on Black Friday.

And scores of shoppers stepped over his body and trampled other Wal-Mart employees attempting to help the poor man. Did the idea of Falling Prices become, chumming for Killer Sharks, creating a shopping frenzy.

You might be asking yourself, what in the world could Wal-Mart have on sale that would cause such a tragic display of human behavior; a Human Shopping Frenzy. I can’t Imagine! And Who’s or What’s to Blame!

I am going to blame the Corporate Cultural Homogenization of America and soon the World.

• Sameness to the degree of insanity.

Not one Wal-Mart on this planet has a unique product on it’s shelves for sale. Every item in the store is massed produced and can be purchased at any other Wal-Mart in the world, for the same price. Maybe if you don’t get out much you don’t know this? But having traveled around the country and shopping at different Wal-Mart’s I can testify that they are all virtually the same. Same store layout and the same products. Oh you might argue that a Super Wal-Mart or Sam’ Club has more items, but they too are the same.

As a Visual Artist, I Noticed the Endless Development of Box Cities with Endless Parking Lots across America.

Every Exit Ramp is Home. MacDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, Target, Loews, Home Depot, you can fill in the blank. Each offers the same food the same products. A Big Mac is a Big Mac; where ever you are…! And now suddenly we Americans are worried we can’t get more of the same stuff that has been mass produced in numbers unimaginable. Why? So we can all wear the same Team Tee Shirt. Oh Right; there are different teams.

Or… Maybe the frenzy resulted from a call to arms to stop the now doomed system failure at our doorstep, to save our new homogenized culture to get more stuff before supplies become limited to only millions or hundreds of thousands of the same thing.

So how did this cultural change happen; how did consumerism become a belief system that perhaps is the New American Religion, Consumerinsanity.

• I will tell you another scary story…

I moved to a small community in Northwest Montana about 13 years ago where I became the Director of the local Art Museum located in downtown Kalispell Montana. This was at a time of franchise infancy in the community. Wal-Mart and Costco arrived just about then after the first McDonalds. Before that, the infrastructure of the Flathead Valley was local Mom and Pop un-franchised businesses. The Flathead Valley of Northwest Montana was mostly untouched by the mass distribution of corporate enterprises that dominated the larger communities of America.

Its sense of place was unique, it was that small Home Town, that Rural Paradise that offered a haven from the large urban communities of modern America, a place where a kid can grab a towel and walk to the end of the street to the community swimming pool with no worries.

Thirteen years after McDonalds and the explosion of Franchise Businesses I can hardly recognized the original community I moved too in 1996.

The valley has taken on the same visual characteristics as the rest of America it has become part of the… Homoge-O-Nation!

As you drive through the valley on U.S 93 the landscape reveals the same architecture, a true assimilated American Community. Wal-Mart, Boarders, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Walgreen’s and a plethora of corporate franchise restaurants to supplement a major anchor complex. You seen one you seen em all.

This is how goods and services are delivered today, the Architecture is functional and predictable, a box with ornamentation stuck on it giving each box an identifiable appearance, or as I like to think of it, a CODE.

One-step farther inside the box and we identify the product line. It really doesn’t matter what McDonalds you walk into anywhere on the planet, you know you can get a Big Mac and you identify the product with the architectural Code.

The architecture is the reinforcement of the Code an image of the corporation, the franchise; it is part of the brand.

This is where the Sameness of products of the Landscape, Cityscape and culture started.

As the code or Brand was reinforced into our culture, our ideas about ourselves changed. We began to seek our comforts in unifying products.

These products help us define our status or place in the social economic pecking order.

These product identifications, brands, codes enhance our personal liability to others and our sexually and sex appeal and appearance.

Many of us now live in houses and neighborhoods that all look alike. Even the color of the houses and building are regulated, all the same color scheme, no variation on the theme is tolerated. No more directions, Turn Right at the Desert Brown house on the corner, or you will be trapped in a maze of cul-de-sacs.

As a reformed Minimalist and Photographer this might have worked out well for me, all I need to do is take one picture of any one of these boxes and my work would be done and I could just reprint the image any time inspiration over came me.

The Development that we have come to believe we need, that we want, has created a sameness that has overtaken the cultural landscape across an America of endless McDonald’s, Strip Malls and Big Box Stores that has grown into new cities and towns, not built to live and walk in, but to drive to. Development and Sameness has changed us as a culture.

• Perhaps this is how it happened?

Developers brought us development and products and we were all told we needed them and we believed the developers, the corporate retailers, and their advertising and believed we needed these products.

This idea is in stark contrast to having true needs and then developing products and services to fill our true desires and needs.

I am sure we all really want a MacDonald’s hamburger that is smaller than the pickle slices on the bun. But “Your Love n It”.

• Four questions I would ask you:

Does the New American Culture fulfill your True needs?

Can we develop what we want, what we need in a more thoughtful way?

Is originality culturally Dead.

Is Art Dead…!

• I have an idea for you.

It just might be original in today’s culture. Go out and find a local art gallery and buy an original piece of art for yourself this holiday season. Spend as much as you can afford and buy something with the thought that you want to live with it for the rest of your life. The art could be a painting, a sculpture, a photograph, any thing that represents an individual original creation. It could even be a fine craft item that you could use or wear. But it must represent individual creative originality. Then live with your new art purchase and enjoy it throughout the many seasons to come. Don’t worry your appreciation for your artwork will change continuously as you change because of it.

I noticed something in my community that was a direct result of mass distribution and coding, it is the OPEN sign. Our local Costco Wholesale Warehouse carries these signs as does Sam’s Club, we don’t have a Sam’s Club but it is coming soon. What these signs do is tie or link the most diversified group of businesses together, as a brightly colored thread weaved through out a tapestry of individuality.

The signs use an established and functional Code, OPEN for business. They shine brightly throughout your community and mine; in small unique business that can offer you the consumer a new market and new products, like the local art gallery in your neighborhood or town. In fact, I started to collect pictures of these signs in diverse business in my community and across the country.

A sign of originality connected by sameness, Open for business. In the space of a couple hours one day I took dozens of different Photographs of signs in an incredibly diverse selection of businesses that only have the sign in common. Once you start looking for OPEN SIGNS you will see that these simple, functional signs dot the Urban Landscape like Dandelions in a well manicured yard.

• And maybe your find a good Hamburger too!

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, How to, Investing, News, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Buying Art, Consumerism, How to buy Art, Open Signs, Urban Development, Wal-Mart

Did the Art Bubble Burst ?

• Or did it just float away.

The recession has arrived in the once unlimited high priced art market of just a few months ago. Art’s too expensive said Damien Hirst after his painting of four skulls that was estimated to sell for around 3 million dollars in New York this November did not sell. The work “Beautiful Artemis Thor Neptune Odin Delusional Sapphic Inspirational Hypnosis Painting had No Buyer.

But don’t despair Hirst is estimated to be worth 200 million pounds, so he will be just fine.

Damien Hirst with Friend

Who Is Damien Hirst? http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/hirst_damien.html

• But those who have invested in high priced art recently while the market seemed to be a safe haven for their money may not come out of this Depression unscathed.

Hirst says in a philosophical way that this is what Artists really want.

• “People who bought things are not going to sell them that day. That is what an artists wants, for people to hang the works on their wall”. As an artist, you don’t stop making art because people are not buying”, said Hirst.

If you are a working Artist then you must see the humor in this current art market situation. If you are a buyer enjoy your gutted cow, on your wall.

• First if you are a working Artist, Recession is a way of life, Recession is ever present in your career.

Most of us are not Damien Hirst’s. Most of us just struggle to keep working and yeah we make art even if no body is buying. And yeah we all hope that someone will come along and appreciate all of our hard work and ideas and buy our art to hang on their walls.

• But art has become an investment for many buyers, art is not an aesthetic thing for them.

Art is a commodity, goods for investment and exchange. And with the recent decline in the financial markets it was hoped to be a safe haven for their money.

• But that idea, that kind of thinking about art left most of us out in the cold begging for paint so we could go on making art even if no one was buying. At least we have the skills to make signs,
  
• “Will Make Art for food”…!

Perhaps those art investors will trade for signs that say, “Will work for a Hirst or Picasso”. But where will they stand with their signs, at Wal-Mart or Sotheby’s?

• Now I don’t want you to think I am trashing Damien Hirst, I really am not.

I’d take 3 million for a painting in a heart beat. Hirst is a remarkable Artist and Art Marketing Genius, no doubt about it!

• The Collectors and Dealers are part of the “Art Market”, a market that is driven by it’s own forces.

Sometimes by forces that are brutal and sinister.

• Adolf and the boys murdered thousands of Collectors and Art Dealers for their art collections during WWII. But this is just a foot note in how sinister the art market can be to make a point.

Read about the PBS documentary, “The Rape of Europe”, great art in the grip of the Nazis. The program airs or aired respectively Monday November 24 th on PBS.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2008426931_tvrapeofeuropa24.html

• So back to you and me as working artists.

How do we deal with this art market. Most of us are asked to pay to show our work by galleries, museums, art shows. We are expected to do all the work and then pay to exhibit our work. We even are expected to pay fees just to get someone to look at our work.

• These fees are part of the SUBMISSION applications for art shows.

And yes I am as guilty as any other curator who has produced art shows or art fair and art auctions. When I worked in the museum field we asked artists to pay fees to look at their work, to pay for shipping and framing and we expected to take our cut if the work sold. But it did bother me as an artist and I did except it as a curator who wanted to produce a show, and raise money for a fund raising art fair. Frankly as a Non-Profit art organization we needed the money to keep operating. And so I could as a curator justify my behavior.

• After all it is how the market works, isn’t it.

It is SUBMISSION to the market forces. I can tell you that it is a part of the market that weighs heavy on the minds of many curators and art directors in non-profit gallery’s and museum’s around the country. But they have to keep their organizations going, so they continue to do what works, for themselves.

• But who’s at fault?

Someone came up with the ideas to charge these fees and we artists agreed to the pay them. And so the rest of the story is history.

• And how much money have you made as an artist paying to show your work, did you gain the respect; notary you had hoped for?

Did your career advance or did you just buy another line on a resume; so you could pay to show your artwork in another show that you paid to show in?

• Recently I was solicited by a gallery that wanted to represent me.

I won’t name the gallery or state, but I will tell you about the offer, which I thought about and investigated seriously.

The gallery charges a yearly fee of $800 dollars, Then an exhibition fee of $1200, Then a Framing Fee if needed, estimated at my price for 20 paintings at about 4750. dollars. I would pay shipping to and from the gallery. Most of my work is large and I estimate shipping and crating to be in the $5000. dollar range. Then add insurance another $1000. and the total cost to get a show $12,750. dollars. And then they want a meager 30% commission on all sales.

• Not a bad deal really, is it.

So if I sold say all 20 paintings, yeah right; I could gross $50,000. less $12,750 for costs leaves $37,250 which is what I would pay commission on which is $11,175.dollars. That would leave $26,075 which then if I take material and labor $8. dollars and hour off, $12,550, that leaves $13,525 profit, not bad. The only problem is I have to invest $12,750. up front and I would have to sell all 20 paintings.

• But why would a for profit gallery be expected to take the chance on me without any financial risk on my part?

Business is business after all and this is where Damien Hirst excels. He makes that investment, he takes those risks and he has been fortunate up to now and I think he will continue to be successful.

• As an artist I may be fooling my self about the time I or you put into your work so the Minimum wage may be a fantasy. And my sales may not be as strong as say Hirst’s. And then there is the reality that if I invest $12, 750. dollars into a show I might just need that sign, only mine will say,

“Won’t Lie I Need a BEER”.

You read this far and thought I had the answer, sorry dudes I don’t but would appreciate yours.

• But back to Hirst, he says he is willing to sell for less because the Big Bubble floated out of the auction house.

So what is his next idea, it is a different market and a different market tactic. He is looking to capture the middle and the lower end with volume.

• He has opened a store “ Other Criteria”, 36 Bond Street, London, England and on line.

https://www.othercriteria.com/index2.php

Hirst offers goodies from $30 pounds to well thousands. You can buy prints, Photographs, Tee shirts and sculpture. Marketing to the masses.

But to be sure many of the items are affordable for most budgets and are worth looking at if you want a Authorized Damien Hirst. He also carries the work of other artists in the shop. I like the Tee Shirt, MENTAL on the front and HEALTH on the back by Rachel Howard, in red of course.

I don’t care much for the FLASH gallery it loads to slow.

You can get a poster of the Diamond Encrusted Skull that was produced for the show “Beyond Belief” at White Cube designed by Hirst for 30 pounds among others. And you can get Prints like “All You Need is LOVE LOVE LOVE” Silk Screened, thats the heart with butterflies for 9500 pounds. Really not a bad price when you consider Hirst fetched I think around 6 million for one of the original paintings.

• Yes the Recession has arrived and Damien Hirst like us is ready to chip away at the market bit by bit to make ends meet.

But then you and I have been here in this depressed bubble for well, EVER.

So what worked for Hirst, how did he succeed, what did he do or realize that we all missed? Some people say, well Hirst does not do his own work he has an Art Factory. True so did Tiffany and hundreds of other artists throughout history, didn’t they. Even Di Vinci got his start in an Art Factory, only it was called something else because factory’s hadn’t been invented yet. So as for Hirst that was a good idea, volume has rewards.

But is that why we make art, is that why we should make art.

• Hirst and his mass production and marketing and his work is ART, I think.

The Hirst phenomena is art itself. A reflection of the society that we have become. Raw and open Hirst’s work slaps us and the collector in the face, but we didn’t notice because it is what we are. We have become Gutted Cows or perhaps Sheep. We follow the trend. We Consume and Consume. Damien just brings it all home and it is gobbled up like the Thanksgiving Turkey. And we come back for seconds. Does this make him bad, no it just makes him smart.

• So I ask.

What could I do with that 12,750 dollar investment, what could you do, What could 10 of us together do with that money. We are all going to spend some amount of money over the next year and if that money were pooled together what could emerge?

• How many artists do you know that are trying to make a living or want to make a living.

How many $25 dollar fees and shipping costs will you spend this coming year to show your work. 10 times the investment I talked about for that proposed gallery show is &127,500 dollars.

• Could you and your friends start your own version of an Art Factory, Gallery.

For that kind of investment you could hire a sales assistant to staff the operation while you produce art.

• You will spend the money any way and you know you will.

We have all SUBMITTED to the system as it is today. But we have a chance to change that system if we choose too. Damien Hirst used the existing system to his benefit very successfully, now he perhaps sees the next evolution.

• Imagine if collectors started buying original art to live with, Imagine if your neighbors became those collectors, people who want art for it’s “Artistic Life Quality” value above it’s market worth, “Art For Art’s Sake”.

• Wait that could be arts market value? “Quality of Life”.

The possibilities are limited only by our imagination by our submission to what is the system.

Now if your a gallery owner who wants to give me a show because you have faith you can sell my work, because you have buyers that you feel will buy my work and you are willing to earn your 50% commission then call me, or write me or email me. And we will talk and perhaps reach an mutual agreement to both our benefits. Oh just kidding I got a check book.

• But this article is for you the working, living artist, who needs to make a living and a living wage.

But going it alone is hard and often unrewarding. Think about collaboration, talk to other artists you know.

We have been taught not to sell our work, not to collaborate to be individuals. To be teachers, it’s a job that has a pay check. Just ask a university art professor, who just invested $100,000 dollars into their education. Who works a job so they can be an artist as you and I do at what ever pays the bills.

But we do need each other and each other’s talent and ideas to succeed. And if the current system works for you keep on keeping on.

For the rest of you and for me, “What’s New, What is New, What Can Be New, Changed or Perhaps Recycled. ( History ? ) Arts and Crafts movement?

Recycle Ideas, Renew, Reuse. Maybe that’s a Green statement. It could be green in your pocket?

• I know an Art Dealer who only represents deceased artists. They don’t talk back or have new ideas or opinions or make new work. I am not ready to sign with him either.

Related Stories/Links

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/arts-too-expensive-says-hirst-worth-163200m-1021669.html

Is investing in Art a Safe Haven for Your Money, “Is Art the New Gold”? by david eubank October 2008

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/is-investing-in-art-a-safe-haven-for-your-money-is-art-the-new-gold-2/

Do the Arts Need a National Bailout?

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/do-the-arts-need-a-national-bailout/

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