Selling My Work

Since I’ve been working on my business plan I haven’t sold a thing. It’s getting to the point where it’s actually funny. Take today for instance. The women at the post office love my artistamps, and when I mentioned that I also sell digital prints they wanted to see them. So I took in about fifteen this morning to show them. Customers got involved too, and everyone was enthusiastic about what I’d done and picked out their favorites. Of course I mentioned that they were for sale, and the reaction? “You must design some stamps for Canada Post!” Good idea, but that’s a long-term project and frankly what I’m thinking about at the moment is the here and now, and selling what I’ve already done. Maybe context is everything. Perhaps it would have been better to take in sheets of my artistamps instead – or as well.
Randi Feuerhelm-Watts has a great story about the problem of selling in her Frida Kahlo Journaling Zine. Apparently Frida only had one exhibition of her paintings in Mexico and she was always short of money. When things got particularly bad, she would send one of her paintings to a friend who hadn’t asked for it and bill them for 10,000 pesos. If the friend didn’t respond – in Randi’s words – to “the mandatory art dealer thing,” Frida would quickly end the friendship.
I can’t imagine doing that to anyone I know, and I wouldn’t want to. But you have to admire Frida’s chutzpah – or whatever the Spanish equivalent of that word is.