The spring has sprung and for me as a sculptor, that means the beginning of art, garden, and sculpture shows.

“If you have to sell the art, it can’t be that good!  Art, if it’s good, will sell itself.”  Yes, I believe there is some truth to that.  I have had clients come and see a sculpture of mine and fall in love with it and buy it. 
 
Fifteen years later, I’ll see them around town and they can’t stop talking about  how much they enjoy it daily.  That’s a great feeling!  But the more I do shows,  the more I see that people sometimes need a good prompting to encourage them to  spend money on art.  I’m getting braver about this, too, because I realize I  don’t have much to lose.  As I talk to people, I’ve discovered that far more people suffer from ‘not buying regret’ rather  than ‘buyer’s regret.’

I’ve had people almost in tears pleading with me to squeeze one more out of an edition after they have found out that it has sold out and the sculpture is no longer available.  I, too, suffer from this same scenario.  It was while I was on my honeymoon with my young bride on one of the Gulf Islands.  On one of our day trips, we visited a local gallery in Ganges.  I fell completely in love with this stone sculpture of two stylized tumbling ravens.  It was great-it had so many under cuts and cut throughs and perspectively it was perfect from every side.  I was overwhelmed with the artist’s technical ability and the captured sense of motion and beauty.  The only thing that kept me back was the price.  At  that time of my young career as an artist, $5800 was a lot of money!  I didn’t  think it was quite the right moment to put that hefty expenditure on my bride!   Now, looking back, I sure wish I had.  I should have asked about a lay away plan  or scraped up every dollar I could have found.  I still to this day think back  on that piece and know if I had bought it, I would not have regretted it an  ounce.  Sure there would have been sacrifice, but it was well worth it.  So I  sit here with regret.

Note from ‘the young bride’:  As I sit here typing this up for my husband, trying to make sense of his scrawled words and correct his grammar, I have to add my two bits to clarify!  It was the dream honeymoon on a ‘small island in the Pacific.’  Well that small island was SALTSPRING which happens to be just a ferry ride away!  It was all we could afford!  I didn’t resent getting engaged before he could afford a ring, sewing my own wedding dress for a total of $100, going for the American-style luncheon instead of formal dinner, or even the week  on Saltspring instead of some exotic location because true love is worth all  that and more.  There are sacrifices involved with marrying an artist who has a  grand total of three sculptures in his collection!  $5800 was pretty well his  entire year’s income back then!  Buyer’s regret or no, had he shelled it out,  there would have been more than ‘buyer’s regret!’

If, however, he had been able to work out a deal where he could have traded sculpture, we would have both been happy.  My advice: a little balance is a good  thing!  Yes, art is important-it brings beauty and pleasure to us every
day, and  if you find a piece you love and buying it doesn’t mean deciding between the  piece of art or eating and paying your mortgage, by all means, go ahead.  If you  can cut in another area of pleasure to afford it, I say, ‘what’s taking you so  long?’  If you really can’t afford it but you love it, my advice is to talk to  the artist.  What is your business? What can you offer?  Find out if the artist  is willing to trade.  Artists love art.  They also don’t tend to have a lot of  cash for extra perks.   Be creative.  If a house painter offered to paint my  house on the weekends in trade, or a dentist offered dental work,
or someone had  nice furniture they were about to upgrade, or a person had air miles and a  week’s timeshare-I’d sure consider these!  All I’m saying is ‘be creative.’ Artists are creative by nature!  Just don’t be offensive.  We work so hard and  sacrifice so much in order to produce art.  Nathan has traded art for a week’s  vacation with our family complete with tours in the client’s private airplane,  several paintings and other sculptures, a new septic field, and most recently, a  hand-made electric guitar that he tells me is a work of art in itself even if he  can’t play a lick!  A fair trade makes everyone happy.

Back to Nathan:

Now back to my shows.  I see several people a year who see a piece of mine and are moved by it but walk away because of the price-or they think they’ll wait until next year.  I’ve started to wise up and realize that it’s not that people can’t afford it-they just have never spent this kind of money on art before.  They’d easily spend the same money on a vacation or on a home renovation, but they aren’t used to giving themselves the same pleasure through art.  I must point out however, that long after your vacation memories fade and your home renovation becomes obsolete, a good quality bronze sculpture continues  to bring pleasure to you every time you look at it.  After all, it does come  with a 10,000 year warranty!  It becomes an heirloom in your family for  generations. 

It also helps people to realize why a sculpture is so expensive.  Buying a hand-crafted bronze sculpture is an extensive process and the material costs are  a large part of it.  I can’t tell you how many people have taken a tour through  my foundry and seen the process we go through to create a sculpture, that come  out saying, “I had no idea there was so much involved to creating a sculpture!”

So when a perspective client is waffling, such as the two I had at a show last year, I ask them if they would regret it later if they walked away.  They both agreed that they would and took the risky step of buying a quality piece of  art for the first time in their lives.  Each walked away exceedingly pleased with their purchase.  They will enjoy it every time they see it.  If you love a piece of art, you will never regret the pleasure that it brings you.  In my experience, the more I wrestled with it and sacrificed to have it because I just  loved it, the more I enjoy it. 

A large portion of my sculpting is made up of private commissions and for that matter, public commissions as well.  I enjoy doing them as each is very different and I like the challenge of capturing the subject’s character and bringing the client’s idea to reality.  It all starts when I am approached by a client with an idea about a commission… and then the fun begins!


WHAT
The client usually takes a look at the sculptures I have already created and comes to me with a definite idea of the subject they would like sculpted: “I would like to have a statue of my grandchild/ child/ cat/ dog.”

WHERE
Now that we know the ‘what,’ we figure out the ‘where.’  I usually ask where they want it located and if they will be able to see it from a variety of locations.  The specific location may change the way it is sculpted.  The sculpture could be standing or sitting on a bench, a specific rock, a wall, or I  can provide a pedestal for it.  I’ve even sculpted one boy climbing up a flagpole with his shoes and socks in bronze at the bottom of the pole!  Details matter!

Where I live, we have a variety of seasons so we’re not always outside.  If the piece is to be outdoors, it is often best if it can be viewed equally well from the indoors so it brings enjoyment every day. 

HOW & OTHER DETAILS
Another question to think about is ‘How will the subject be interacting with its surroundings?  Will it be interacting with an animal, a (usually another) child or looking at something such as a pool or garden?’  The details of what the sculpture is doing will bring out its character.  

A few years back, I sculpted a clients two grandsons as toddlers.  Their personalities were very different from each other.  One was very sporty so he was sculpted playing with his favourite soccer ball and the other was very much into construction sites and dump trucks so I sculpted him riding on a big Tonka dump truck.

THE PROCESS BEGINS
Quite often the subject I’m going to sculpt has grown up.  The client often wants them sculpted when they were children.  I guess they were cuter then!  In these circumstances, we agree on a pose, the clothing and I go and find a model with the same body type and size.  I’ll take photos of the model in a couple of different poses and let the client decide which pose they like.  I then get as many photos of their child at the age they are to be sculpted and super impose that head to the body of the model.

Other times, especially with grandchildren, I’ll take photos of the individual or have a parent do that.  Then I’ll work right from these photos.  I  don’t do too much sculpting from a posing live model because nobody wants to sit  around for hours trying to hold a facial expression!  Sometimes after I’ve done  the bulk of the work, I’ll have the subject come in for a bit to do some final  touches.  Usually it’s the parent or grandparent that comes in and tells me to  tweek a little here and there until we’re done. 

Once the client is perfectly happy and has “signed off” or accepted the clay sculpture, this is the point where the transformation from clay to bronze begins.

MAKING THE MOLD
The mold making is next in the process.  This is the step of making a complete negative of the completed clay sculpture.  This usually takes about one  week to complete. 

CASTING
After the mold is prepared, the casting process takes place.  It’s a rather involved process that I’ll cover in another blog post, but you can see the basics on my website in a photo version.  It’s quite labour intensive and frankly, a royal pain in the ***!

DELIVERY AND INSTALLATION
The best part for me and the client is the delivery and installation of the sculpture.  This often happens several months after the process first began when  everything has finally come together.  My greatest compliment is when I exceed  my client’s expectations.