The Roadside Artist

For those of you who weren’t there, I had a couple of paintings at the Tillamook County Fair. It was a last minute thing and I couldn’t submit my best paintings because they are all on gallery-wrapped canvas and the fair requires regular frames. They are kind of behind the times in that respect.

Anyway, I submitted two bird paintings, and they won second and third place. The higher placing painting was the California Gull, which was NOT the best of the two in my opinion. I preferred the Snowy Plover. Well, judges are an odd bunch.

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At last years’s Tierra Del Mar art fair, I met someone who is a big wig with Nestucca Valley Artisans - Rosie Perez. She invited me to come see all of them at the annual show they have in the senior center in Pacific City. I thought that would be interesting because I don’t see much of the local artists. I live in the middle of nowhere but my work ends up in the big cities for some reason.

The day arrived, so I grabbed my little digital camera and headed into the public building. I’ve always been wondering what the locals were up to. But before I got one foot inside the door, some goon yelled, “Put the camera away!”

“huh?”

“No photography. Pictures aren’t allowed.”

“How nice for you,” I said as I turned around and left. I might have had more to say and I probably SHOULD have said more, but was just too taken aback by the whole thing. I got pissed off later.

Think about this group of artists you almost certainly have never heard of, protecting their enormously valuable work (faces?) from predatory visitors who might be out to steal their immortal art objects (souls?) by taking fuzzy digital pictures of the public event.

Do they really believe that someone could or would use such pictures to… what? Make prints of their art and sell it??? Hah! They should be so lucky!! If you are that good, you must be making six figures on your prints, right? You’d have to be that good for someone to bother stealing your work. And if that were the case, they would just buy a print (you must be selling tens of thousands of them) and use THAT to produce a hi-res copy. Cuz you are soooo good. *smirk* …NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

Even this amount of time later, I’m still dumbfounded at the level of ego and possibly paranoia displayed. I doubt that Picasso or Pollock ever acted like this. Of course, Picasso wasn’t scraping by on food stamps and generous relatives, either. It certainly came across as self-importance bordering on something pathological. I’m sure that not all of the Nestucca Valley artisans are like that, perhaps only the person who was charged with keeping the gate at this public event? Who knows, obviously some of these people have some serious psychological problems. Even if they were the superstars that they seem to think they are, only really jerky superstars are so arrogant.

Maybe they think - incorrectly - that this is how successful commercial artists are supposed to act. I guarantee that they are mistaken in this. There are a few self-deluded folks out there, but the rest of us steer clear of them.

Perhaps there is something about the nature of being an artist that lends itself to this sort of thing. Like maybe artists need to see themselves as too important to be photographed - it makes up for the fact that current American society places no value on their contribution to life.

So it isn’t their fault, not completely anyway … but it still makes me very upset whenever I think about this.. It also isn’t a very good excuse for rude behavior, and I think some in this group need to get a grip on reality. ..and if you have to be lectured by ME about getting a grip, you’re in VERY bad shape.

Oh and feel free to take pictures of every show I’m at - I always allow it. The more the merrier! If you think there is money in stealing my work and trying to reproduce it, at least be good enough to buy a good print first so you can have a real shot at it! It’s not really worth the illegality, though: the print market is mediocre at best and you’ll never make enough to pay for your bail and court costs. Thanks for the flattery, though.

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The Tierra Del Mar Summer Fair is over so I thought I’d share some pictures and thoughts with you. I apologize for the quality of the images: I’m still having some problems with my overpriced digital camera. I’ll probably have to replace it at some point. *sigh* Tierra Del Mar is a little community just north of Cape Kiwanda/Pacific City Oregon and their annual art fair helps fund the community center. I was put in based on the recommendation of one of their musicians but I think they regretted it.

Anyway, let’s get started…

The space was okay, but I had too many large format paintings and not enough smaller ones for the shape of the spaces I was working with. The organizer went out of her way to help, however - and the people were nice.

So you can hardly tell, due to the bad images, but they got a good mix and there were lots of compliments. A few people - - even admired and complimented my my work. Amazing.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one at the show! They were all very nice people (the artists, I mean) and are very very good at what they do.

Charlie Gibbs does many interesting things with glass, and is quite charming too. His work shows he has a real head for art.

Pat Schultz does amazing needle work - she teaches too. Her collection features Brazilian Needle art, and it sold well during the show.

This lady does Pastels and fabric art. Her fabric collages look a little like oil paintings. It’s very impressive. I don’t think the pastels sold well, although they are very competent renderings. Personally, I loved them. It was the fabric art that really was the rave of the show.

You know, I never thought of fly tying as an art, but rather as a skill. But this gentleman has managed to turn his craft into an art. People love his hand-tied flies in Christmas ornaments.

I enjoyed meeting local artists, inlcuding Rose Perez, who dropped by to say ‘hi’. I’m not much of a socializer and I don’t consider myself to be an artist in the same way as Rose or some of these other people, but it was fun anyway. And I don’ think the people who ran the event liked me. I’m not sure why. They just didn’t.

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No kidding… these guys really got to me. I received the CD in the mail yesterday and now I’m sharing - with their permission.

MPEG Audio: [ mp3 Podcast] Stereo, 3.7 MB

Real Player: [56 K Dialup] [Broadband]

It all started back when they sent me a CD in the mail, a compilation album. Unsolicited. And I was all like, “what the…?” but then I listened and it kind of grew on me. Not sure why. So I wrote a review of the album, not expecting anything back. And now this!

Interesting timing because I have been seriously considering giving up art. Over the previous 48 hours or so, some negative comments about my work got me to thinking and wondering if it is all worth it or not.

Okay, sure, I paint a bit compulsively at times, but this stuff is way too expensive for just a hobby. Sales have been up and down (you know, “despite the great economy”) so I was starting to think that maybe I’m just full of crap and really suck as an artist but am too stupid to know it…

And then Moe’s Haven kind of saved the day. A big hug to them. You can visit their web site at www.moeshaven.com.

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