COMMERCE AND ART 2024
JANUARY 17, 2025
I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year despite what portends to be a very troubling new chapter in our nation’s history. It’s very hard to uphold my own standards in either art or commerce when everyone else seems to have abandoned any sense of normalcy and expertise itself is ridiculed. But enough negativity.
THEY MAKE SOME NICE TREES IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND
Yet in the belief that every once in a while it is useful to assess my own state of affairs, I would like to discuss what my artistic and commercial efforts amounted to in 2024. I find this annual exercise enlightening in what it reveals about both the artistic and commercial challenges ahead for 2025. While I am just as stubborn as the next guy, I can use this information as a reality check, both positive and negative.
TWO VIEWS OF THE SCOTTISH COAST
Artistically, 2024 was a very good year. After a couple of years of having nothing much to shoot because of the dismal state of Downtown Portland, which constitutes “my patch” as my English detectives would say, Fran and I went on several trips that allowed me incredible photo graphic opportunities. This was the first year in a long while that I spent more time making new images than working on old ones. Six weeks in England and Scotland have hopefully provided us with enough memories to encourage us to travel throughout our coming years as “pensioners.” Another week in Death Valley also allowed us to enjoy a very different environment. And while Portland only was “getting better”, a new camera and a very steep learning curve forced me to explore familiar areas of town with the excuse that I had to learn how to even begin to master the new technology in my hands.
I FINALLY GOT TO CAPTURE SOME BLUEBELLS!
A GRAVEYARD ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER
These two dozen images in this essay are among the best images I created all year, in my humble opinion. I present them with a minimum of commentary, since most of them have already appeared or will soon appear In my blog posts this year. Consider them as very rare “untitled” images. 24 is an arbitrary number, and I could have narrowed it even further, but since I started with 140 I was satisfied that I had been critical enough. I would encourage everyone to go through this exercise even though I am not a big believer in “greatest hits.” But it is useful to take a look at your own art and to try to depersonalize it to the greatest extent as possible.
TWO FIVE THOUSAND YEAR-OLD STONE CIRCLES, BUILT BY PEOPLE WHO PROBABLY NEVER SAW ANY OTHER STONE CIRCLE THAN THE ONE THEY HAD BUILT THEMSELVES.
Try to pretend that you are just looking at images that move you, while ignoring the fact that you made them. Try to completely divorce yourself from the act of creation - how you felt that day, how hard it was to create the image, or how lucky you felt that you got to see these places at all. This kind of appraisal will eliminate enough images that you can go from 140 to 24 without killing yourself. It will allow you to realize that, all in all, you aren’t half bad as an artist. More importantly, the act of whittling down your photos allows you to discover that these images are truly your own. They are your way of seeing the world even when you have never been there before and might unfortunately never get to visit those places again. It is uplifting to realize that no matter how many images you have seen of a place on Instagram, your efforts seem to be just a little bit different. It makes all of your artistic work seem worthwhile.
TWP EXAMPLES OF WHAT INSTAGRAM CALLS "CLOUD PORN"
As could have been expected, about two thirds of these images come from England and Scotland. About half of these 24 images are shown in Black and White, but not because the color versions weren't any good. I believe Black and White frequently just captures the mood much better than a color version, no matter how”pretty” it appears at first glance. As someone who tends to move toward abstraction rather than documentation, it has always intrigued me how much viewers of my work can accept manipulation and abstraction of the real world as long as color is removed from the equation. They seem to accept a much higher level of abstraction once they allow themselves to believe in a black sky, even though they know it is blue.
MOST OF SCOTLAND IS VERY EMPTY
As far as commerce goes, 2024 was a very mixed bag. I actually did just as well, if not better, each day at the Market than I did in 2023. I even seemed to do as well, if not better, than most of the other visual artists at the Market. The trouble was that everyone had a pretty dismal year, so that by the end of the year we all had to admit that things were so bad that we really had to abandon our efforts to continue selling on Sundays. I didn’t mind since I had long ago determined that Sundays didn’t make sense for me, as long as I could handle a very long day on Saturday. It was very difficult for me to complain, much as I wanted to, since I seemed to make just as much (or little) working one day a week instead of two. Sundays had long been the day for locals, and they have not been coming since the Pandemic.
THE POWER OF BLACK AND WHITE TO CONVEY MOOD. GLEN COE IS AS FOREBODING AS IT IS AWE INSPIRING.
The most interesting thing about selling fine art photographs that people almost universally admire is that there is even less chance that they will actually purchase them - unless they too have been to those far-flung places. The market for photographs in Portland, Oregon really doesn't center around views of England and Scotland, no matter how much I would hope that people would admire my art. Now if some Highlander would just walk in my booth, I might have a chance.
TWO VIEWS OF THE QUIRAING, LITERALLY TAKEN IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS.
I had resolved to try to be more of a fair-weather vendor, and by the end of the year I succeeded beyond my expectations. Between our trips, bad weather forecasts and actual bad weather, I went to the Market for only twenty days in 2024. So I did well when I went, but it was a very small sample size. I only had two extremely bad days, about 5 really good days, and the rest fair to middling. Reports from my fellow vendors suggested that I rarely missed much. As long as it is nice out and I can meet enough people that I can have a nice time, fair to middling is OK.
ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS STILL INSPIRE ME, BOTH AT HOME AND ABROAD.
Of course it is nicer to make more money, but it really is nice to get my art around the world. I only had about 120 customers all year, about 6 per day. But 11 people from all over the world took my art home. More than 80 people from all over the country also bought my art. What says it all is that only 27 people from Portland bought art compared to an average of some 400 locals who have bought my art each year since 2010. So even though I now have art in Anchorage, Alaska, Regina, Saskatchewan, Assam, India, Nelson, New Zealand and Iquique, Chile, it is certainly tough to be an artist. On many days it seemed to me that I was selling things that people just didn’t seem to want. But I was not alone - a popular refrain among vendors was still the question “are many of these people aware that these items are for sale?’
TWO INCREDIBLY LONELY PLACES. IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT, MORE PEOPLE LIVE NEAR THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE THAN THE PLEASANT LOCH.
Among the things that do sell, my photo coasters were still my most profitable items. I made a profit of over $1600 dollars, even though coaster sales fell another third from 2023. My “miniatures”, small photos mounted on thicker wooden frames, also made money, earning more than $500 in real profits. My metal prints achieved oohs and ahs, sold fitfully , and still earned over $600 in profits.
A NEW CAMERA ENCOURAGED NEW ATTEMPTS AT FAMILIAR SUBJECTS.
I resolved to not bring any more new framed prints to the market, and lost more to breakage than I sold to customers. This really didn’t bother me that much since like most of the other artists I was pretty much giving the frames away anyway. It was much better going back to selling “prints in a bag” - I had over 40 new prints for sale, sold only 9, and still only lost $53.00 in the effort.
TWO "RICH PICTURES" OF VERY SMALL DETAILS IN MUCH LARGER ENVIRONMENTS, BOTH NATURAL AND URBAN
I hope you have enjoyed taking one last look at my self-selected Best of 2024. I also hope you have been encouraged to make your art, without any hope of actually selling any of it. Please pursue far more lucrative ways of making money, in the hope that you will share some of it with me this year at the Market. Hope to see you there.