No Direction Home 36/36

Its been an interesting year from a personal perspective as it relates to interactions with the real world and the meaning I derive from my interactions within it. I’ve got to try my hand at a number of things in the contexts of business management, steel based manufacturing, labor intensive production, art promotion and now some time running a local gallery as a boutique business.

What I’ve already realized is that our culture values art fairly low, well below heat, food, clothing, dental care, and so on. All things considered, its valuation is probably about where it needs to be. The romantic flights of fancy in our youth about what art owes society and what society owes the artist are an inside joke when they are remembered at all.  

Making it is about the only part I enjoy, getting it somewhere is a ginormous pain in the ass. For instance, this summer I’m leaving behind a pile of paintings on old slate shingles that could probably each get about $5-10 at a yard sale and a small pile of metal sculptures. At this point, after some hands on gallery selling and self promotional experience, I’ve realized that just leaving them in a pile somewhere is the easiest, hasslest free way of dealing with it. They might even do something useful someday like mend a leaky roof. 

The only thing I’ll make an attempt at monetizing in the future is turning some of the visual crap I make into a print image service at foliotwist or redbubble. Any other way takes up too much time given that I’m also trying to take designing and implementing a fluid dynamic water system for a permaculture farm in Thailand and help manage my brother’s manufacturing business.