Artist bashing.
I'll probably wind up posting a variation of this on my jewelry blog, but I sort of want my completely honest take here. I'll clean it up a bit before posting there.
I've seen a lot of artists bashing other artists lately. Or more so, crafters bashing artists. I hate to make that distinction, but it's one the offenders make themselves, though that's really a topic for another time. I'm as sick of the artist vs. crafter dialog as much as I am of the traditional publishing vs. indie publishing and ebook vs. dead tree book ones.
Anyway, when an artist calls themselves an artist, those who, for whatever myriad of reasons don't think of themselves as artists, automatically get a little snooty about it. It's messed up and backwards. You'd think it would be the self-proclaimed artist who's snooty, but it's really all the supposed lowly crafters out there who stick up their noses touting, "she must think she's better than the rest of us or something." Yeah, how dare she wait for some committee that doesn't exist to dub her with the prestigious title of "artist".
Those same lowly crafters will band together in little shaming parties on various social networking sites. You'll see a link to an item on Etsy or Artfire with a caption of "WTF?" or simply just "o_O" or maybe a "are they serious?!". Then there's a chorus of comments that almost always back the original poster: "How dare she charge so much! How does she possibly think that piece of junk is worth that? Look at that model! She needs a freakin' sandwich."
Really? Really.
I've seen it more and more. Maybe it's just the people I had been following. This was one of the things I considered as I decided to withdraw from social networking. I sincerely think that if you're an artist/crafter/whatever you want to call yourself... if you make things and sell them for a living, you should never post links to others who make stuff to sell for a living for the sole purpose of pointing out how it's overpriced or ugly or inferior or over-inflated.
If you're going to post a link to an item on Etsy or Artfire or anywhere else, take a bit of advice from your mom: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Put the link away. Have a little private outrage and move on. You're wasting breath. You're wasting precious time you could be working on your shop or more items to sell. You're wasting energy on negativity that will ultimately consume you and everyone around you as they jump into your dogpile on this hideous item that someone expects (hopes) to sell.
Let me take a moment to say a little something about sites like Regretsy and Cake Wrecks and such: I freakin' LOVE those sites! They are hilarious, good humored, fun-poking (that sounds dirty). There's a difference between that and what I'm talking about. Now, this could get very long indeed if I got into all the justifications for that differentiation. But let me just say, there are things out there that are totally worthy of a good laugh. Things that people made by hand and maybe put a lot of love and effort into them may still look like a steaming pile of crap. There are people with a complete and utter lack of self-awareness who make these things and think they're good. There are also people that make ridiculous things on purpose. There's a whole niche market for that sort of thing (GIANT BRONZE THUMBS, FTW!). But the things I'm mostly seeing are actually very lovely items that are in a certain price bracket that might be out of reach for most people.
I get that as an artist (and for the sake of brevity, I'm calling everyone artists from here on out), you can pick something apart with your eyes and figure out pretty much how it was done. So while you're looking at something critically and pulling it apart, you get wrapped up in the "I could probably do that... and I would never charge that much for it" mindset. That's when you need to hit the brakes and admit what you don't know.
Who does anyone think they are to assess the value of someone else's item? Particularly those who don't make anything remotely similar to the item in question. If you're a professional appraiser, sure, you've got the expertise and likely years of training and knowledge and experience to back up your assessment. If you're a stay-at-home mom who makes jewelry (as I am, so that's not me being judgmental, it's just using myself as an example) you probably don't have that expertise and your assessment is worth pretty much nothing. I can look at the materials and gauge their worth, but beyond that, I'm out of my expertise on a lot of things. If it's similar to something I make, I might have a better idea of the time and effort it took to put together. But I'm not the artist who priced it, so I can only assume what went into it. There are all sorts of hidden factors that are, frankly, none of my business.
Exhibit A:
Above is the simplest looking pendant I've ever made. It's minimalist, with just four pieces of silver wire crossing it and a tiny length of wire that binds them in the donut hole, then all gathered up at the top to create a bail. I was asking $70 for it. More if it came with a chain. That may seem like a lot, considering I probably have less than $10 of materials in it. But jeebus, was that thing a bitch to put together! The mess of wire that's hidden under that bail that I had to do in order to make everything work the way I wanted is atrocious. Getting those four wires bound in the center of that tiny hole in the donut was a nightmare! This item has gone to Jonah's school to be auctioned in a fundraiser. I had never done a piece like it and probably never will again. But I wasn't about to take a loss on the hours I put into it. I earned every cent that thing will make. I strung it on a chain, gift boxed it and delivered it with a stack of my business cards that will go on the silent auction display, notating that the item worth was $80 on the donor form. The lady taking the donations told me I should bring more promotional materials because when people see that piece they will want more of my work. Kind words like that make me want to pick up my pliers and do it again. Someone saying "oh, I could do that, and better, and cheaper" makes me want to quit.
My point is, you never know what drove the price of the item. Maybe the beads came from their dead mother's stash and carry some sentimental value. Maybe they're just starting out with this technique and it took them an enormous amount of time to complete. Who am I to tell them that they ought to take a loss on their salary (because that is the largest portion of an item's price and often the factor that drives prices up) because they had to take time to figure out how to make something work. I say, charge for your materials, take an hourly wage and be honest with yourself about what your time is worth and how long it took you to complete the project. If an artist is paying themselves any less than $10 an hour, they are cheap-skating themselves. If that formula drives the price of your item into the hundreds or even thousands, by god, take some beautiful photos, put that price tag on it and list that sucker in your shop.
Here's the deal: you take a chance every time you list an item. You take a chance that it might not sell. But really, that's the least of your worries. What if you priced that item lower and it did sell. Well, then you just wasted your time and lost money on an item that should have been worth much, much more. You've permanently skewed the buyer's perception of your work as something that is worth less. Sure, it is better to sell an item, even at a loss sometimes, than it is to have it languish away in your shop forever. But if you come out of the door, first thing, with a price that's taking a loss on it, that's not at all fair to you or your customers or every other artist out there who is trying to price their items fairly and getting railroaded by people who price things too cheaply.
Come out with confidence in your work and price it straight up. Materials(x3 for retail markup) + hourly wage. Done! If it doesn't sell in a given amount of time, consider lowering the price. Use the piece as a promotional item. Auction it off. Rent it out for special occasions. Hell, take it off the market and keep it as a signature piece for what you can do with your talent, displaying it proudly at every show you work, putting it on your business cards and web banners and every piece of promotional materials you create.
But it never, ever hurts to try. You never know when someone might be looking for a really special item and all those $100 or less items that flood Etsy and Artfire's pages just aren't doing it for them. There's this thing call perceived value. Often when you price things too low, there's a very large set of consumers who will assume your item is inferior to a similar item which is triple the price. You price it cheap, the consumer assumes it's cheap crap. So, say this consumer who is sick of looking at "cheap crap" for their special occasion suddenly stumbles on your $1000 masterpiece and screams "SOLD!" at their computer screen as they hit the "add to cart" button. Wouldn't you feel like an asshole if you priced it lower than it was worth?
Sure, that's a dream scenario. But isn't that kind of what being an artist is all about? Are any of us here because we just need a J-O-B and McDonald's wasn't hiring? I didn't think so. Each one of us is following a dream. And if you're going to follow a dream, fucking follow a dream, damn it!
Naysayers, follow your own damn dreams and leave everyone else's alone. Looking down your judgmental nose at someone who is doing something you'd never do isn't doing you any favors. Think about how you would feel if the tables were turned. Because I can guarantee that if you go around posting links to people's items for the sake of calling them out, the chances of someone doing that to you are greatly increased. Karma is a motherfucker, whether you believe in it or not. No one wants to hear someone bash something they put a lot of creativity and effort into. And I don't know anyone who makes things to sell who doesn't put a lot of themselves into everything they do. Be gentle with yourself and be gentle with your fellow artists. You never know what hell someone else might be living, so it's best not to assume anything. It won't kill you to fight the urge to post that link. I promise.
I'm not saying there aren't perfectly ugly, over-priced items out there. I'm just saying it's not our job to point and laugh at them. Regretsy does that just fine and they're definitely more witty than you or me. It does nothing to build us up as individuals or as a community. So let's stop it, m'kay? Artist bashing is wrong, m'kay? You shouldn't bash your fellow artists, m'kay? M'kay.
That said, I'm so sick of this trend of artists using Photoshop blurs to artistically obscure their item photos to the point that there's a single pinpoint of focus and I can't see the rest of the damn item. Down with that sort of thing!
I've seen a lot of artists bashing other artists lately. Or more so, crafters bashing artists. I hate to make that distinction, but it's one the offenders make themselves, though that's really a topic for another time. I'm as sick of the artist vs. crafter dialog as much as I am of the traditional publishing vs. indie publishing and ebook vs. dead tree book ones.
Anyway, when an artist calls themselves an artist, those who, for whatever myriad of reasons don't think of themselves as artists, automatically get a little snooty about it. It's messed up and backwards. You'd think it would be the self-proclaimed artist who's snooty, but it's really all the supposed lowly crafters out there who stick up their noses touting, "she must think she's better than the rest of us or something." Yeah, how dare she wait for some committee that doesn't exist to dub her with the prestigious title of "artist".
Those same lowly crafters will band together in little shaming parties on various social networking sites. You'll see a link to an item on Etsy or Artfire with a caption of "WTF?" or simply just "o_O" or maybe a "are they serious?!". Then there's a chorus of comments that almost always back the original poster: "How dare she charge so much! How does she possibly think that piece of junk is worth that? Look at that model! She needs a freakin' sandwich."
Really? Really.
I've seen it more and more. Maybe it's just the people I had been following. This was one of the things I considered as I decided to withdraw from social networking. I sincerely think that if you're an artist/crafter/whatever you want to call yourself... if you make things and sell them for a living, you should never post links to others who make stuff to sell for a living for the sole purpose of pointing out how it's overpriced or ugly or inferior or over-inflated.
If you're going to post a link to an item on Etsy or Artfire or anywhere else, take a bit of advice from your mom: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Put the link away. Have a little private outrage and move on. You're wasting breath. You're wasting precious time you could be working on your shop or more items to sell. You're wasting energy on negativity that will ultimately consume you and everyone around you as they jump into your dogpile on this hideous item that someone expects (hopes) to sell.
Let me take a moment to say a little something about sites like Regretsy and Cake Wrecks and such: I freakin' LOVE those sites! They are hilarious, good humored, fun-poking (that sounds dirty). There's a difference between that and what I'm talking about. Now, this could get very long indeed if I got into all the justifications for that differentiation. But let me just say, there are things out there that are totally worthy of a good laugh. Things that people made by hand and maybe put a lot of love and effort into them may still look like a steaming pile of crap. There are people with a complete and utter lack of self-awareness who make these things and think they're good. There are also people that make ridiculous things on purpose. There's a whole niche market for that sort of thing (GIANT BRONZE THUMBS, FTW!). But the things I'm mostly seeing are actually very lovely items that are in a certain price bracket that might be out of reach for most people.
I get that as an artist (and for the sake of brevity, I'm calling everyone artists from here on out), you can pick something apart with your eyes and figure out pretty much how it was done. So while you're looking at something critically and pulling it apart, you get wrapped up in the "I could probably do that... and I would never charge that much for it" mindset. That's when you need to hit the brakes and admit what you don't know.
Who does anyone think they are to assess the value of someone else's item? Particularly those who don't make anything remotely similar to the item in question. If you're a professional appraiser, sure, you've got the expertise and likely years of training and knowledge and experience to back up your assessment. If you're a stay-at-home mom who makes jewelry (as I am, so that's not me being judgmental, it's just using myself as an example) you probably don't have that expertise and your assessment is worth pretty much nothing. I can look at the materials and gauge their worth, but beyond that, I'm out of my expertise on a lot of things. If it's similar to something I make, I might have a better idea of the time and effort it took to put together. But I'm not the artist who priced it, so I can only assume what went into it. There are all sorts of hidden factors that are, frankly, none of my business.
Exhibit A:
Above is the simplest looking pendant I've ever made. It's minimalist, with just four pieces of silver wire crossing it and a tiny length of wire that binds them in the donut hole, then all gathered up at the top to create a bail. I was asking $70 for it. More if it came with a chain. That may seem like a lot, considering I probably have less than $10 of materials in it. But jeebus, was that thing a bitch to put together! The mess of wire that's hidden under that bail that I had to do in order to make everything work the way I wanted is atrocious. Getting those four wires bound in the center of that tiny hole in the donut was a nightmare! This item has gone to Jonah's school to be auctioned in a fundraiser. I had never done a piece like it and probably never will again. But I wasn't about to take a loss on the hours I put into it. I earned every cent that thing will make. I strung it on a chain, gift boxed it and delivered it with a stack of my business cards that will go on the silent auction display, notating that the item worth was $80 on the donor form. The lady taking the donations told me I should bring more promotional materials because when people see that piece they will want more of my work. Kind words like that make me want to pick up my pliers and do it again. Someone saying "oh, I could do that, and better, and cheaper" makes me want to quit.
My point is, you never know what drove the price of the item. Maybe the beads came from their dead mother's stash and carry some sentimental value. Maybe they're just starting out with this technique and it took them an enormous amount of time to complete. Who am I to tell them that they ought to take a loss on their salary (because that is the largest portion of an item's price and often the factor that drives prices up) because they had to take time to figure out how to make something work. I say, charge for your materials, take an hourly wage and be honest with yourself about what your time is worth and how long it took you to complete the project. If an artist is paying themselves any less than $10 an hour, they are cheap-skating themselves. If that formula drives the price of your item into the hundreds or even thousands, by god, take some beautiful photos, put that price tag on it and list that sucker in your shop.
Here's the deal: you take a chance every time you list an item. You take a chance that it might not sell. But really, that's the least of your worries. What if you priced that item lower and it did sell. Well, then you just wasted your time and lost money on an item that should have been worth much, much more. You've permanently skewed the buyer's perception of your work as something that is worth less. Sure, it is better to sell an item, even at a loss sometimes, than it is to have it languish away in your shop forever. But if you come out of the door, first thing, with a price that's taking a loss on it, that's not at all fair to you or your customers or every other artist out there who is trying to price their items fairly and getting railroaded by people who price things too cheaply.
Come out with confidence in your work and price it straight up. Materials(x3 for retail markup) + hourly wage. Done! If it doesn't sell in a given amount of time, consider lowering the price. Use the piece as a promotional item. Auction it off. Rent it out for special occasions. Hell, take it off the market and keep it as a signature piece for what you can do with your talent, displaying it proudly at every show you work, putting it on your business cards and web banners and every piece of promotional materials you create.
But it never, ever hurts to try. You never know when someone might be looking for a really special item and all those $100 or less items that flood Etsy and Artfire's pages just aren't doing it for them. There's this thing call perceived value. Often when you price things too low, there's a very large set of consumers who will assume your item is inferior to a similar item which is triple the price. You price it cheap, the consumer assumes it's cheap crap. So, say this consumer who is sick of looking at "cheap crap" for their special occasion suddenly stumbles on your $1000 masterpiece and screams "SOLD!" at their computer screen as they hit the "add to cart" button. Wouldn't you feel like an asshole if you priced it lower than it was worth?
Sure, that's a dream scenario. But isn't that kind of what being an artist is all about? Are any of us here because we just need a J-O-B and McDonald's wasn't hiring? I didn't think so. Each one of us is following a dream. And if you're going to follow a dream, fucking follow a dream, damn it!
Naysayers, follow your own damn dreams and leave everyone else's alone. Looking down your judgmental nose at someone who is doing something you'd never do isn't doing you any favors. Think about how you would feel if the tables were turned. Because I can guarantee that if you go around posting links to people's items for the sake of calling them out, the chances of someone doing that to you are greatly increased. Karma is a motherfucker, whether you believe in it or not. No one wants to hear someone bash something they put a lot of creativity and effort into. And I don't know anyone who makes things to sell who doesn't put a lot of themselves into everything they do. Be gentle with yourself and be gentle with your fellow artists. You never know what hell someone else might be living, so it's best not to assume anything. It won't kill you to fight the urge to post that link. I promise.
I'm not saying there aren't perfectly ugly, over-priced items out there. I'm just saying it's not our job to point and laugh at them. Regretsy does that just fine and they're definitely more witty than you or me. It does nothing to build us up as individuals or as a community. So let's stop it, m'kay? Artist bashing is wrong, m'kay? You shouldn't bash your fellow artists, m'kay? M'kay.
That said, I'm so sick of this trend of artists using Photoshop blurs to artistically obscure their item photos to the point that there's a single pinpoint of focus and I can't see the rest of the damn item. Down with that sort of thing!