What to do with'em all?

Dave Woody

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I have many many pictures in my backroom sitting idle, collecting dust...some are good, some are great, some are just ok.

What to do with works Languishing in limbo?
 
If friends and close relatives wanted one they would ask or simply take one: at least mine would. I toss mine and contribute to landfill of the wrong type but you can't burn them as they would be toxic.
 
I have many many pictures in my backroom sitting idle, collecting dust...some are good, some are great, some are just ok.

What to do with works Languishing in limbo?
How about donating some to second-hand shops? Or maybe a local hospital or nursing home might be interested? I've been in a few Dr's offices where artworks done by patients were hanging, and a few restaurants had artworks with price tags on them on the walls.

--Rich
 
Most artists have storage "problems," me being one of them. I look to donate some of mine to hospitals, but of course, I look to sell them first. I have done both. Out of the 1000+ pieces I've done, I still have a good 200+ still sitting wrapped in my garage. That's a lot of art! I have three stacks of flat files and three heavy duty shelving sets, and a little bit of wall space in my studio. Yes. It's a problem. I paint over old pieces once in a while too. I also have a good amount of my work at my gallery, and it sucks when they want me to take some of it back because I am never sure where to fit them. I've also lent pieces off to university offices (2 years, 5 years, etc.) to get them out of my hair for a while. I'm always trying to think of what to do with the work because, like Wayne said, you can't light them on fire.

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Let's make a limbo dot com website and show and give the works we hide in our garage and cellars... :) 30 years ago I destroyed a lot of oil paintings I'd made and I have always regretted it ...
 
Let's make a limbo dot com website and show and give the works we hide in our garage and cellars
If you did people would take them and sell them on eBay and such...with the cost of shipping you can't send them any distance without major cost and even for free art people would not accept the cost.

I figure I destroyed over 2000 over the last 5 years.
 
Another option I like is the "free art movement". (This is kind of what Erik just said). Whereby you leave a piece of your art in a public place, like a park bench. It's marked on the back, "Free Art, if you like it, keep it, take it home". Erase your name. A passing stranger finds it and is so taken by the mysterious beauty that they take it home and hang it in their bathroom to admire from the throne. Of course the mysterious beauty is the POS you want to get rid of.

I've seen this in action, someone passed through my area and left painted sticks, like native prayer sticks. I found one, still have it.

I'm considering this myself, just for fun. I have several miniatures that are okay, made from dabs of paint that went unused. I might slide a few into the stacks at local libraries. I live near a college town, I'm sure the kids would like to find something weird to hang in the fraternity house for a dartboard. :)

 
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Gift your relatives. Nothing says love like giving a non-artist a painting that they have to hang on the wall. :)

As Jean Rasczak says in that movie Starship Troopers, something given has no value. I have seen this in action: giving people paintings or drawings which end up forgotten in a drawer, or left to lie about collecting dust and getting damaged. But I don't have room to keep it all either.

Well, simple solution: burn 'em. Many failed pictures get burned anyway. Ones that look like successes now tend to look like failures in a year or two, when my technique has improved - into the fire with them.

It's less of a problem now: I used to paint on hardboard panels, which take up a bit of space. I have temporarily given up on painting altogether, and if I return to it, I'll likely paint on paper or cardboard, which is far easier to store. You can keep a year's output in a simple flip file or something.

For the moment, I quite deliberately use cheap materials: common old ballpoint pen and/or HB pencil, or sometimes colored pencils, on printer paper. Such pictures will not last anyway; I doubt if even a professional art restorer could save a piece done on printer paper. I give drawing lessons once a week at a local primary school, and I raffle off such sketches to the students, who don't really appreciate any of it either (something given has no value!), but I don't really mind. Alternative: printer paper burns even easier than hardboard panels. :)
 
Another option I like is the "free art movement". (This is kind of what Erik just said). Whereby you leave a piece of your art in a public place, like a park bench. It's marked on the back, "Free Art, if you like it, keep it, take it home".
Oh, my gosh! I love this idea!

Not the same thing, but a couple of years ago I picked up a child's drawing found on the sidewalk. I have a personal rule that if I pick something up, I am then responsible for it, so now I'm walking around with some child's drawing. I wasn't comfortable with trashing it (it was actually quite a happy little drawing), so I pinned it to a grocery store bulletin board, where it stayed for two years. It stayed until they took away everything from the board.

But anyway, great idea, Zen! Makes me think of those cool little free "libraries" that pop up on telephone poles and whatnot.
 
Oh, my gosh! I love this idea!

I suspect professional artists may dislike the idea for the same reason they dislike AI-generated art: in a world where art can be had for free, why would people buy it? In some ways it constitutes a threat to the professional, because it may well drive prices down.

In a way I like the idea precisely because it allows us amateurs to take revenge on the professional world in which we couldn't make it. 😃

Incidentally, I recently ran into the work of a quite fascinating artist by name of Percy Kelly (1918 - 93). He spent much of his life as postal worker, and made art in his free time. He was good enough that galleries invited him to exhibit, but he seldom did - he liked his own work and was very reluctant to part with it!

What he did often do though was to send family and friends illustrated letters, often with the envelopes also beautifully decorated:

Percy Kelly - envelope_19711.jpg


Percy Kelly - FZynCPfXkAAXfC-.jpg


Percy Kelly - H0027-L51443941.jpg


Now isn't that a great idea? I remember sometimes doing the same as a young man, back in the days when paper letters were still a thing. Alas, alas, no more.

I have considered sending family and friends paper letters again, just for the fun of it, but alas, our post office is one more thing that our current government has run into the ground, and sending anything via the post office is an elaborate way of throwing it in the garbage. One can use a courier, but that gets rather prohibitively expensive simply for the sake of a bit of fun.
 
I have liked the idea of the free art movement, but ore liked the free book movement even more. It was like a scavenger hunt kind of thing, but I forgot what it was called, where if you find the book, you go to a site and you connect it back to the originator or something, and keep leaving it in a public place again. It gets tracked throughout its life, provided no one keeps it.

I also tried to start an "open source" art movement that never took off where artists keep adding to the work and give it to a new artist to build on, but all the works I put out there, people just kept. I even built a website for it like that book thing. My ideas aren't always great ones. :rolleyes:

I'd have to agree about gifting to friends and family because they don't usually want them or appreciate them, and they will wind up in a dumpster. People don't treat "free" well at all.

I'd burn some of mine if they weren't oil paint.

I have destroyed some of mine before, but not that many.
 
Ayin, your storage is a model of organization. You are more prolific, and obviously are fortunate enough to uses your knowledge and talents to make a living from art. Since I have only painted occasionally over the years, and watercolors are smaller and lighter to store, I don't have nearly as much accumulated. I have saved lighter areas of used paper to swatch paint, and thrown away quite a bit of pieces from many years ago that I will never "miss". I photographed everything so I would have a record of my journey and progress. There is not one thing I wish I had back. On the contrary, too much stuff accumulated is suffocating.
 
It was tongue in cheek. Never give anybody a gift that they have to wear or hang on the wall. Food, booze, power tools are okay.
Beg to differ. Instead of burning or throwing out your unwanted art, give it to someone. That way, it's someone else's problem! 🤪

--Rich
 
Beg to differ. Instead of burning or throwing out your unwanted art, give it to someone. That way, it's someone else's problem! 🤪

--Rich
I never suggested burning them or throwing them out. I suggest donating them to a homeless encampment, late at night, like Santa Claus.
 
I have so many stacked back that if I am ever forced to sell out and downsize, I will be in deep doo-doo. That is one reason I like to do commissions, which many people hate to do. At least when the thing is approved, I have the payment and I don't still have the painting.
 
I never suggested burning them or throwing them out. I suggest donating them to a homeless encampment, late at night, like Santa Claus.
But where would they hang them? 😂 I'm only familiar with campgrounds with RVs and cloth tents, and the homeless I've seen in NYC were in MTA stations, so maybe I am missing something? (Other than a few screws, that is! 🤪)

But I was trying to respond to
Never give anybody a gift that they have to wear or hang on the wall
with the idea that someone else would have to store them. Maybe attach a note reminding them that the price of artworks goes up after the artist dies. (Hmmmm, may not be a good idea...)

Ah, well...

Regards,
--Rich
 
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