Starving Artists

Posted on 07/02/2014 by Grumpa Joe

In my recent post “Horn Man” I went into an overly long essay on how I went about creating an original piece of art. I’m positive I could have done a better job on a photo essay with clever captions. During the sixteen week period during which I made four Intarsia pieces I thought a lot about the business of selling art. Could I make a living doing this? Could I even make any money at all doing this?

I thought about Michelangelo and Da Vinci  and the remarkable work they did. How did they survive? The simple answer is they had patrons who supported them in return for their work. Michelangelo’s sculpture of David took him two years or more to complete. It is not easy chiseling a larger than life-size man from a single block of marble. I wonder if he had any “oops” moments during that time. I had many “oops” moments during the making of Horn Man, but glue and more wood made it easy to either fix the “oops” or to remake the part. Da Vinci had a list of patrons as well. He lived with them while he learned the trade and then worked for them afterwards. When a patron lost his place in society, and could no longer afford to patronize an artist both Michelangelo and Da Vinci found themselves new patrons. While unpatronized they took part-time work by doing commissions for the wealthy.

Getting back to my thoughts about selling Intarsia art I pondered the value of my work. Would I charge by the hour and if so, what is the value of one of my hours? I know what I made while working as an engineer, would I use that value? If  not charging by the hour, then charging by the piece would be the next way to sell. I have seen Intarsia artwork at craft fairs but never at art fairs. The pieces I see are very simple and flat in form indicating that the crafter did not put much effort into the work. I have never been satisfied with the flat style of Intarsia. My pieces become three-dimensional and sculpted. That is why they take me so long to make. If you look at my bass, or the Blue Jay you will see that these pieces are more lifelike than a flat work. The value I see on Intarsia pieces at fairs ranges from twenty dollars to one hundred dollars, unless the picture has hundreds of discrete parts. In cases where a customer commissions a complicated work the value  can jump to thousands of dollars.

StrippedBass-1780845_10201407376251910_722702533_n

Stripped Bass

Blue Jay

Blue Jay On Apple Blossoms

Largemouthbass

Large Mouth Bass About to Eat

When I completed Horn Man I had logged one hundred and five hours on the project. At the current minimum wage of $9.80 per hour I would have to charge  $1039.00 for the Horn Man. If I use my hourly rate as an Engineer the price is $6300.00.

Horn Man

Horn Man

Let me assume I sold each of these four pieces at one fair, and I charged the minimum wage; I would have netted twenty-seven hundred dollars. Divide that by sixteen weeks of time and my gross salary is $169.13/week which extrapolates into a whopping $8794.50/year. No wonder people would rather be on welfare.

The reality of doing something I like loses to what I have to do to make a living wage.  Some of the latest spin by Liberals about why we need the Un-Affordable Care Act is that a person would be free to pursue his dreams if he didn’t have to worry about paying for health care. I recommend reading two recent articles, the first by Avik Roy who wrote a piece published by Forbes and a quote by Nancy Pelosi on Redstate.com

The idea of forcing me to pay for someone else’s dream smacks of slavery. It is different if I choose to patronize that person. Neither Michelangelo nor Da Vinci had healthcare benefits but they followed their heart’s desire to become experts in their field of art and invention by getting a job working for a patron.

Obama is transforming America into a socialist Utopia(Utopia is a place where pigs fly), and to do that he has to make the middle class worker like you and me into a tax-slaves who pay for those who follow dreams without a job. I don’t know about you, but I sure as heck would rather be free to work my ass off as I see fit, and to spend my wages the way I want to.

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Lower Than Stupid

Posted on 07/02/2014 by Grumpa Joe

Obama never ceases to amaze me. There are times when he sounds very smart, but most times he acts dumb as a rock. His goal to transform America is one of those dumb ideas. His campaign promise to “transform the greatest country on earth” is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. He never has told us what he was going to transform us into, not even during his snoozer Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly.

One of the more recent efforts to sell his Un-affordable Care Act is to spew the concept of people staying home to pursue their dreams instead of taking one of the several millions of new jobs he has not created. The logic is that if you have free health care you don’t need to worry about a job. That is lower than stupid, but it is his admin spreading that heresy.

How he amazes me is this, his base believes him and adores his father’s Kenyan thesis. Well, I don’t. I happen to believe that working for a living gave me self-sufficiency to pursue my dreams, notably a wife, a family, and some fun.

Watch this short video, put together by someone who is genius in graphic arts. Most likely this person didn’t let health care get in his way of creating an entertaining and insightful lesson in economics.

Filed under: Cartoons, Conservative, economy, Education, family, Government, Society | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Frankfort Terror Threat Shot in the Back

Posted on 18/09/2013 by Grumpa Joe
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An Very Recent (September 18, 2013) Example Of Obama Care In Action.

It seems funny that two days after attending a Tea Party meeting that blogger Grumpa Joe is shot in the back. The Department of Homeland Security branded veterans, and right-wing bloggers as home-grown terrorists, so it is not surprising to me that Grumpa Joe is a target.

This morning at 10:45 two escorts led me into the office of PCC (Pain Centers of Chicago) in Joliet. A Tea Party Patriot in pain is a terrorist, and all are warned to steer clear of a patriot in pain. Joe waited in solitary confinement for forty-five minutes before the door burst open by a tall slightly balding man of fifty-years dressed in a collarless green pull over shirt with green draw string pants to match. He relentlessly questioned Joe until he extracted a confession.  “I recommend you get shot,” he said, and left the room.

A dark-haired woman about five-foot-two entered and handed Joe a pen and a paper on a clip board. “Read this and sign.” Joe read the document and signed in his most readable penmanship. He did not want the PCC to misunderstand his dedication to this mission.

She left the room and left him in solitude once again. Five minutes later the door opened, and a faceless voice called out “Please follow me.” He jumped out of the chair and poked his head out the door, yes there was the dark-haired woman calling him to the next chamber. He followed her rather submissively into the chamber.

The chamber lights were bright and hurt his eyes, but he could make out a padded table with a ring like pillow at one end. A large machine displayed an x-ray like image of a spine from the neck to the tip of the coccyx. What kind of torture is this going to involve he wondered?

“Put your glasses and other pocket items on the table and unfasten your belt, then lay on the table face down.” “Yes ma’am,” and  Joe did as she commanded. He would have been the model Jew during the holocaust. He followed orders willingly thinking that the PCC had only his interest in mind, but what if they didn’t? What if they were an arm of the IRS out to kill Tea Party Patriots? Think positive he told himself.

The man wearing the green suit reappeared but Joe could only hear him. He yanked Joe’s trousers down to the middle of his buttocks and raised his shirt to the neck. “This will be fast and cold,” Joe flinched as the big guy smeared his back with alcohol. “Now you will feel three small pricks to numb the area.” Pow, pow, pow, Joe flinched three times as small-caliber shots pierced his back.  “Here comes the big one.” Joe wrapped his arms around the table and found a hose to hold on. He buried his face into the hole in the pillow and began taking deep breaths. Pow! He felt what seemed like at large AK caliber hit him in the back just under L3. He tightened his gluteus maximus and raised off the table as the missile burrowed its way toward the spine, then another POW! this time the missile directed to L4, a third Pow, the last slug of chemical directed at the center of the spinal cord. Each time his ass tightened and raised off the table as the sensation of the charge plowed through flesh, bone and cartilage to the target. True, he didn’t feel pain, but he felt the charges passing through him.

“It’s over Joe. If you feel this was too much, then next time, you may want to consider sedation, I’ll see you again in a month.” NEXT TIME, there isn’t going to be a NEXT TIME big guy, he thought to himself. Joe may just want to live a life of pain and not undergo the PCC treatment again. Only time will tell.

Joe put himself back together and looked at the computer screen. He asked the dark-haired woman, “Is this a picture of my back.” “Yes,” she replied sweetly. “What are these three dark lines here?” Those are images of the large-caliber missile-track the big guy poked into your back. “They are almost two inches long for Pete’s sake.” “But he had to get to the target,” she said.

“See these dark lines along the bottom of each disk,” she asked while pointing at a line? “That is arthritis.”

“Crap,” Joe replied. All of Joe’s vertebrae showed arthritis. “That means the next time I’ll be shot in seven cervical, twelve thoracic, and five lumbar vertebrae for a total of twenty-four times.”

“I highly doubt that,” she said.

“Are they working on spinal transplants yet?” he asked while walking out to set up his next visit to solitary.

“No, but Medtronic makes a pain killing drug pump that will take care of unbearable chronic pain.”

“I’m sure Obama, the PP-ACA death panel, and the IRS will see to it that a pain killing pump will be denied to a Tea Party Patriot.”

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