Wealth and Rudeness

Wealth and Rudeness

I’ll just start with how much I truly despise rich people.  For over 50 years I studied and practiced making Art.  I was a paid Artist.  Probably sold over half a million in Art Work over that fifty years.  A lot of it was small things, like coffee cups at $20 or less (mostly less) and I sold thousands and thousands of those.  All handmade.  For nearly twenty years, I made a dozen or more coffee mugs a day, every single day.  And sold them all.  Along with maybe a thousand or more teapots and other table items.

But, I also made hundreds of paintings and pieces of sculpture – high dollar stuff, sold most all of that too.  For those first twenty years out of Art School, that’s all I did; i.e. make Art and sell it.  I raised six children with those wages.

The only problems I ever had were with rich clients and big galleries and businesses.  The Smithsonian Institute was the worst.  They took so long to pay, I almost went to court over that one. 

These super-well off, or famous, entities apparently have so much money (cash) laying around that they tend to believe those of us living really close to the line are kind of irrelevant.  When they put off paying for goods or services and we have to remind them, then we’re irritations, even maybe being rude. 

Then if they decide we’re just being too rude about it, we get stiffed.  If it’s Art work, it can often be returned – and often broken in that process.  I’ve had ceramics pieces just put in a box, without packing to protect it, and when I got it back it was reduced to ruble.  Individual wealthy clients just put it out by the curb, like it’s “recycling” or “garbage”. 

Galleries will put it in back rooms and pile so much other stuff on top that it either breaks or they “can’t find it”. 

I have always been a bit naïve and my work has tended towards the positive and fantasy and the parade, ignoring the road-apples.  Never had much reason or inclination to do Goth, or horror or bloody kind of stuff.  If my stuff was controversial, I went more towards the intellectual controversialist.   At a result, my lack of shock value was minimal and as such I never really received the big rage accolades. 

It doesn’t matter.  I, at age 72, have decided that it is just not worth it anymore.  The heartbreak, the bottom level social appreciation, the enforced poverty.  I’m just done.