VoxPhotographs Weblog

Spread the word: artists need to stop giving their work away if they want to make a living at it.

I’m waging a one-person campaign to help artists understand it’s OKAY to say no when approached to donate your art to the umpteenth worthy cause so it can keep going. How does the artist keep going when they are giving their work away and not getting paid for it? For that matter, how does the art dealer or gallery owner make a living? We don’t.

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Pfeiffer Beach © Stacey Cramp, Courtesy of VoxPhotographs. All Rights Reserved. Jim Nickelson and Stacey Cramp are featured from July 15 -  August 28 at VoxPhotographs in a two-person show “Two Squared”.

(When the Portland Press Herald ran a front page headline story last year on the hugely popular NY Times article on Portland’s restaurants, Cramp wasn’t even mentioned. Why should she be? She was selected by the NY Times to be the photographer for the feature and about 18 of her pieces were included in what became the most e-mailed article of that day for the Times. But she became invisible when the big splash was reported as headlining news in the Portland Press Herald. Nary a word about one of Portland’s own photographers’ work making the article the success it became. Not one of her photographs was included either. Are Maine’s artists disposable?)

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Use the next request to starve to death (donate your work) to gently explain to the organization that they need to take a fresh look at how they are asking the arts community in Maine to sacrifice their livelihoods so their organization survives.

At VoxPhotographs my twelve exclusive artists learn from the get-go there will be no donations of their work without consulting with me, their dealer, the person who is putting everything on the line to get their work sold. And my answer will be “No.” One painter in Maine, a well-known and successful one, realized that she was getting so many requests to donate her work to non-profits in the state that it amounted to 30% of her annual output. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that is hardly conducive to putting food on the table. She now limits those donations to 2-3 each year to the causes that are closest to her heart and that respect her long decades of building a successful career  – allowing her to place a 50% reserve on the piece.

Even in Maine’s fine art photography community this disease is rampant. The new Maine Museum for Photographic Arts has asked artists to donate their work to the Museum to get the collection started while spending $18,000 on the website that will support the Museum’s cause. The highly esteemed Bakery Collective in Westbrook continues to auction over 150 donated photographs a year  to well-heeled and savvy collectors who understand this is the time and place to buy photographs in Maine because they can get them for as little as 10% what they are selling for in the artist’s gallery. That’s 150 photograph sales each year that are giving nothing back to their creators or their galleries. I left the festivities in tears two years ago.  How many photographs do you think Maine’s art collectors actually buy in a year’s time? If you answer “Not many” you will be right. Fine art photographs are considered the “affordable” art as it is. So, why not just give it away and be done with it?

You might argue it’s exposure for your work and you’re right. But the growing number of never-ending annual non-profit auctions in Maine that involve all or mostly donated art just create a bigger and bigger sinkhole under the art market -  you are giving away your livelihood and the fine arts community with it.

Why is it that artists are asked constantly to give away their work so others may survive and thrive? The bottom line is that their work isn’t taken seriously as a valuable commodity, but as something light and enjoyable and easily sacrificed.

If Maine residents want a vibrant arts community, that means committed and talented artists need to make a living at what they do and gallery owners need to sell art keep their doors open. Many arts professionals in this state refuse to attend or support these auctions and that sentiment is growing and rightly so.

If you are a serious professional who works hard to create a unique vision – stop giving your work away. Restrict yourself to one or two auctions annually that allow the artist to put a 50% reserve on the work. If there is a non-profit in Maine whose mission is close to your heart and to which you are deeply committed, then donate a piece that is not available through your gallery. But that should be a rare exception. And your dealer should be aware of and approving of this donation. Each piece of art given away means one less sale of a work of art a year. The art market in Maine is very, very small. Trust me, I know.

If you are not steel-spined enough to say no to donating your work, YOU will become the next charity, the next dinosaur, which, I might remind you, is an extinct species.

Barretts Cove, Dusk © Jim Nickelson. Courtesy of VoxPhotographs. All Rights Reserved. Jim Nickelson and Stacey Cramp are featured from July 15 -  August 28 at VoxPhotographs in a two-person show “Two Squared”.

This entry was posted on June 17, 2010 at 10:43 am and is filed under READ THIS! . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.