On 10/3/2012 3:33 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
SonomaProducts.com wrote:
I create
beautiful things in wood. I have pretty much sold everything I ever
offered for sale. I have tossed aside my failures. Not everyone will
love or even like what I do. I think of it like a pair of shoes. I
think most of them are ugly but somebody is buying them. I just buy
the ones I like. My art is offered in the same way.
Then don't sell or give your "art" to people who will not respect your
"artistry". You clearly think too much of yourself and not enough of
others. Just build your stuff to satisfy yourself and don't burden the rest
of the world with what they can't possibly understand. Build it, admire it
and go to sleep at night patting yourself on your own back. Just quit
bitching that others don't see it your way. You may do very nice work, but
you sir, are no artist. An artist is concerned for what the viewer sees.
You are only concerned for what you want them to see.
I think you are confused. A businessman may be concerned about what
others see, artists almost never care, and many do their life's work
unnoticed until long dead. Myself, I'm certainly not an artist, nor am
I a business man. I do woodwork for my own enjoyment, same reason I
like to program, or shoot pool, or take pictures. I don't do any of
these things for money, and don't particularly care who likes my stuff
besides me.
On the other hand, My daughter just got married and I made her an Irish
wedding goblet out of a gorgeous hunk of black walnut cut from a friends
yard years ago and sitting in my shop waiting for a special occasion.
It turned out pretty nice considering I haven't done much lathe work in
years but I was still hoping she liked it. She cried when she saw it
because I made it I guess. My buddy came in from out of town for the
wedding and when he saw the captured rings on the goblet, he reminded me
I made him a baby's rattle 35 years ago when his son was born with
captured rings, and he just gave it to his son for his new baby.
That's how "gardeners" gauge value, and when you want to take a custom
made wooden gift into the shower, you insult the gardener, when you
still have the gift 35 years later, and pass it down to your children,
you make the gardener smile, even when he is is a crotchety old man.
--
Jack
Add Life to your Days not Days to your Life.
http://jbstein.com