Showing posts with label Minimum Wage Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minimum Wage Art. Show all posts

29 July 2010

Minimum Wage Art


1. Where and how would you display your work in an ideal situation?
I would display my work right where i sell it - at the farmer's market. My pieces are surrounded by ripe fruit and dahlias and homemade furniture. Over-friendly dogs step on my art and bugs land on the corners. My work is durable, so it works out well. It ages with the very things that inspired it.

2. If expository writing is good at elucidating and proving a point and
descriptive geometry gives us the tools by which to map objects in space
in relation to one another, what kind of an apparatus does art afford us?
What does art do best?
Art shows us the things we're too busy to see. I realize this statement implies a sort of superiority of the artist over the non-artists. I am not denying the accusation in all its serious and intent. My head is big enough to allow me to admit that I see things better than people who are not artists.

3. What can you expect from your audience/fans/viewing public? What would you
like them to know about your work?
The one thing that I hope for from my audience is a need to have art of their own. I began Minimum Wage Art as a way for folks to go home with a piece of art that they appreciate without selling a kidney.I  think many aritsts conflate the price of their art with its worth. This is valuable information to the viewer when the audience is trying to understand the perspective of the artist, and those prices often hold just as much information as what medium was used and what the title may be. My pieces are worth very little to me; its the process of planning, creating, and then selling art that gets me all excited. Since I use salvaged materials for my art, my time is really the only vaulable thing that is being invested; that is why i only charge minimum wage for the time that went into each piece. My pieces are like kittens - I just want them all to have a good home. When someone feels like they have gotten a bargain on a piece of art that they enjoy, then I know I have done my job.

4. Marcel Duchamp said - "Enough with retinal art!" What is your reaction as an artist to this statement?
Duchamp was brilliant and crazy.  He was also wrong.  Retinal art is doing perfectly well, and has been for the past 80-ish years - since he said that.

5. Do you think that there is still room for art movements in today's
pluralistic climate?
Art movements are always welcome!  Of course, the thing about art movements is that you don't know there is one until it's already past. 

6. What is one question you wished we had asked you about your art? Please
feel free to answer it.
The one question I wish you had asked is how I have time to paint while being a full-time scientist.  My answer is that I don't sleep for one night during the week, and stay up the whole night painting.  I store up sketches from the week to inspire me during my frenzy and make sure that I have lots of sparkling water and blueberries to keep me going until dawn.