In article ,
cindy drozda wrote:
..... And you can add to the list all artists in every medium that I
have spoken to about the subject.

Why is it that our society doesn't respect craftspeople as much as it does
lawyers, doctors, insurance people, etc.


I have always enjoyed photography and one of my personal heroes was Ansel
Adams. In an interview filmed shortly before his death he told how even
though he had been famous for 40 years, he hadn't been able to earn a
living from his art photography until the last few years of his life.

I don't think it's just our society, I think it has always been that way.
As near as I can tell, with a very few individual exceptions, artists have
never been paid well in any culture throughout history.

You'd think that a turner selling hollow forms for thousands of dollars
each would be raking in the moola, but it doesn't work out that way.
Above a certain level of quality and artistic merit, the big bucks are
paid for the signature on the bottom, and in order for that to happen you
have to spend so much time doing marketing - making a name for yourself -
that you have less time to turn. Plus, those high dollar sales come
slower, so that by the time annual tax forms are filed even the biggest of
the big names may not have more to report than the anonymous craft show
seller cranking out salad bowls all year.

It's not just turners, it's pretty much all artists and crafters, and I
think it has always been that way. Bummer.

-mike paulson, fort collins, co