Discounted as an Artist
It's an occupational hazard in the so-called "creative" occupations to think of yourself as having an artistic streak. Oh, not like the great ones, you don't have that burning genius and in particular you don't want to suffer for your art. But a flash of artistry, on a good day—that, you're capable of. Or so you tell yourself.
Well, I took a picture of an apple for the blog one morning ages ago, and I keep using it (other people do too, without asking grrr) and I just plain like it. So the other day I told myself I'd get it printed up nice and big, frame it, and put it on the wall to remind myself how awesome I can be once in a great while, at least.
At a local gallery they recommended a woman the next town over who does giclée printing, which is printing with an inkjet printer about the size of a Shetland pony. It uses archival quality inks on fancy papers, and it's a pretty good way to reproduce art work.
The price was right, so the lady printed it up, I loved the way it looked, so without even eating lunch I rushed it back to the gallery to get the framing going. I took it out and laid it on the table, and the gallery owner started purring over it. I've heard her compliment other framing customers over some pretty banal stuff—competent but uninspired cat photos, and so forth—but she did go on and on about it, pointing out the same qualities I thought it had myself. Then she asked if I were going to sell it as a limited-edition print.
Well! Um, sure I was! So she had me write "A/P" on the left and my signature and "'09" on the right. "A/P," I'lll have you know, stands for "artist's proof." On subsequent prints there'll be numbers, 27/750, say. It's done in pencil so the buyers know their print was touched by the actual hand of the artist in question, which in this case, I suppose, is me.
I am trusting and suspicious by nature (it's complicated) so on the one hand I knew this was really a pretty good image, and was pleased the doyen of the local art world thought so too. And I was pleased as well to be more or less initiated as the most junior member of that world. I did wonder if this were all a little too much, but told myself this woman has not stayed in business for many years by subjecting her customers to elaborate mockery, right? Then she wrote up the bill, and gave me a 15 percent artist's discount. At this point my remaining doubts threw up their hands and conceded. If there's a more effective expression of sincerity than giving a person money, I don't know what it would be. All right, fine, I get off a good one now and then, maybe I'm a little bit of an artist once in a while at times sort of, whatever.
So now it was lunch time. There was a place to eat a couple of blocks away, and as I strolled there, still feeling like an initiate, I pondered what to have. A burger to celebrate my new semiartistic status, fine, but what to drink? I mulled it over. Let's see, hmm, what if I were strolling down a street in Montmartre a century or so ago, and walked by the terrasse of a café, and Paul Cezanne and Claude Monet and Georges-Pierre Seurat were sitting there and they waved me over, because I was a little bit of an artist too. What would they be drinking? The answer seemed obvious.
When I settled myself on the stool and ordered lunch, the server asked me if I wanted more of the draft pear cider I'd been drinking lately. No thanks, not today. Just for today, I told her, I was wondering what they had in the way of red wines. She came back, set the glass in front of me, and went away again.
In the real world, I raised the glass, took a slow pull at it, set it down again, and smiled. In my mind, it was as if I'd sat at that Montmartre table unobtrusively, and pointed and said "I'll have the same" when the waiter came over. Said it quietly, so as not to interrupt the flow of fascinating conversation my new artistic confrere pals were carrying on. In my mind I sat there, just taking it all in with a happy sense of belonging because, as I'd sometimes suspected, it would seem that I'm occasionally an artist myself.
Well, I took a picture of an apple for the blog one morning ages ago, and I keep using it (other people do too, without asking grrr) and I just plain like it. So the other day I told myself I'd get it printed up nice and big, frame it, and put it on the wall to remind myself how awesome I can be once in a great while, at least.
At a local gallery they recommended a woman the next town over who does giclée printing, which is printing with an inkjet printer about the size of a Shetland pony. It uses archival quality inks on fancy papers, and it's a pretty good way to reproduce art work.
The price was right, so the lady printed it up, I loved the way it looked, so without even eating lunch I rushed it back to the gallery to get the framing going. I took it out and laid it on the table, and the gallery owner started purring over it. I've heard her compliment other framing customers over some pretty banal stuff—competent but uninspired cat photos, and so forth—but she did go on and on about it, pointing out the same qualities I thought it had myself. Then she asked if I were going to sell it as a limited-edition print.
Well! Um, sure I was! So she had me write "A/P" on the left and my signature and "'09" on the right. "A/P," I'lll have you know, stands for "artist's proof." On subsequent prints there'll be numbers, 27/750, say. It's done in pencil so the buyers know their print was touched by the actual hand of the artist in question, which in this case, I suppose, is me.
I am trusting and suspicious by nature (it's complicated) so on the one hand I knew this was really a pretty good image, and was pleased the doyen of the local art world thought so too. And I was pleased as well to be more or less initiated as the most junior member of that world. I did wonder if this were all a little too much, but told myself this woman has not stayed in business for many years by subjecting her customers to elaborate mockery, right? Then she wrote up the bill, and gave me a 15 percent artist's discount. At this point my remaining doubts threw up their hands and conceded. If there's a more effective expression of sincerity than giving a person money, I don't know what it would be. All right, fine, I get off a good one now and then, maybe I'm a little bit of an artist once in a while at times sort of, whatever.
So now it was lunch time. There was a place to eat a couple of blocks away, and as I strolled there, still feeling like an initiate, I pondered what to have. A burger to celebrate my new semiartistic status, fine, but what to drink? I mulled it over. Let's see, hmm, what if I were strolling down a street in Montmartre a century or so ago, and walked by the terrasse of a café, and Paul Cezanne and Claude Monet and Georges-Pierre Seurat were sitting there and they waved me over, because I was a little bit of an artist too. What would they be drinking? The answer seemed obvious.
When I settled myself on the stool and ordered lunch, the server asked me if I wanted more of the draft pear cider I'd been drinking lately. No thanks, not today. Just for today, I told her, I was wondering what they had in the way of red wines. She came back, set the glass in front of me, and went away again.
In the real world, I raised the glass, took a slow pull at it, set it down again, and smiled. In my mind, it was as if I'd sat at that Montmartre table unobtrusively, and pointed and said "I'll have the same" when the waiter came over. Said it quietly, so as not to interrupt the flow of fascinating conversation my new artistic confrere pals were carrying on. In my mind I sat there, just taking it all in with a happy sense of belonging because, as I'd sometimes suspected, it would seem that I'm occasionally an artist myself.
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