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offcntrGot a phone call yesterday from Tina Schrager. She used to be gallery director at Maude Kerns Art Center (where Club Mud is based); now she's with Schrager & Clarke Gallery, downtown.
Their current exhibit, The Resale Show: Work from the Collections includes a lot of art from the collection/estate of Hattie Mae and the late Max Nixon, professor of jewelry and metal-smithing at the UO for many years, and later resident jeweler at the Craft Center while I was resident potter. In addition to regional greats like Nelson Sandgren, Jan Zach, Maude Kerns and Hank Murrow, there were a couple of early pieces of mine. Could I help them with pricing?
I knew one of them, because it's the first piece I sold in graduate school. I was working on "story tiles," narrative sculptures combining simple pinched figures and rubber stamped narratives, childhood memories of life on the farm in Wisconsin. I did a number of them over a three-year period culminating in my thesis show, which included a couple of dozen small "pages," and one life-sized installation that included my brother and me, my dad with a calf on his shoulders, and a life-size ceramic cow.
The piece Max bought was an early one, called "Even Now," that reminded him of his childhood in Iowa. The tile is covered with stoneware cornstalks, running boys and dogs and a herd of cattle, interwoven with the text: Even now, ten years away from the farm, I can still be propelled off the bed, down the stairs and out the door--without waking--by the cry, "Cows are out!" I remember I asked $75 for it, and was amazed that this almost-legendary emeritus professor thought my work worthy of purchasing.
I later got to be good friends with Max at the Craft Center. He helped me with jewelry projects, including casting my wife's engagement ring. (He also took a hand building class from me, which reversal of the student/teacher relationship left me more than a little self-conscious.) Sometime during this period he acquired a second piece from me, a blue jay patterned pie plate.
Tina now has both pieces in her show, and wants to know how to price them.
Pricing is hard. Even now, I second guess myself on pottery, and sculpture? I never know. I know what I charged for the sculpture in 1987 ($75), what I charge for pie plates now ($33). Beyond that, I haven't a clue. I kinda sense that sculpture appreciates in value, pottery--unless it's rare, antique or by someone famous--doesn't. So we agree on $250 for the sculpture, $25 for the plate.
I'll have to go down and see them again, just to say hello.
Their current exhibit, The Resale Show: Work from the Collections includes a lot of art from the collection/estate of Hattie Mae and the late Max Nixon, professor of jewelry and metal-smithing at the UO for many years, and later resident jeweler at the Craft Center while I was resident potter. In addition to regional greats like Nelson Sandgren, Jan Zach, Maude Kerns and Hank Murrow, there were a couple of early pieces of mine. Could I help them with pricing?
I knew one of them, because it's the first piece I sold in graduate school. I was working on "story tiles," narrative sculptures combining simple pinched figures and rubber stamped narratives, childhood memories of life on the farm in Wisconsin. I did a number of them over a three-year period culminating in my thesis show, which included a couple of dozen small "pages," and one life-sized installation that included my brother and me, my dad with a calf on his shoulders, and a life-size ceramic cow.
The piece Max bought was an early one, called "Even Now," that reminded him of his childhood in Iowa. The tile is covered with stoneware cornstalks, running boys and dogs and a herd of cattle, interwoven with the text: Even now, ten years away from the farm, I can still be propelled off the bed, down the stairs and out the door--without waking--by the cry, "Cows are out!" I remember I asked $75 for it, and was amazed that this almost-legendary emeritus professor thought my work worthy of purchasing.
I later got to be good friends with Max at the Craft Center. He helped me with jewelry projects, including casting my wife's engagement ring. (He also took a hand building class from me, which reversal of the student/teacher relationship left me more than a little self-conscious.) Sometime during this period he acquired a second piece from me, a blue jay patterned pie plate.
Tina now has both pieces in her show, and wants to know how to price them.
Pricing is hard. Even now, I second guess myself on pottery, and sculpture? I never know. I know what I charged for the sculpture in 1987 ($75), what I charge for pie plates now ($33). Beyond that, I haven't a clue. I kinda sense that sculpture appreciates in value, pottery--unless it's rare, antique or by someone famous--doesn't. So we agree on $250 for the sculpture, $25 for the plate.
I'll have to go down and see them again, just to say hello.