Our get rich quick exhibit!
A mini review and original drawings now available
Dear Reader,
Hello and welcome to another newsy post from me. Last time we spoke I announced the Autumn Creative Course that will be happening at the end of next week-a couple of days of exploring/creating textures being inspired by nature, using a range of mixed media and sketching on paper and clay. It should be an exciting time and both Pippa and I are looking forward to welcoming participants to Lowenek Art Studio on the 3rd November. If all goes well we hope to offer this workshop again in the Spring-so stay tuned if you’re interested.
From the 7th-13th of this month we (Kriksis, Natasha and myself) participated in our first group exhibition under the title Nature’s Palette.
Coast Colour Canvas Gallery is a small artist-run gallery tucked away on the Lizard peninsula next door to Roskilly farm and cafe. It’s situated in beautiful surroundings, woodlands, ponds, animals and ice-cream with free parking and lots of walks around the area.
Kriksis and I set up on the evening of the 6th and with help from my husband hung around 50 original works of art in the gallery which were displayed along with greeting cards, postcards, calendars, prints, zines and stickers. We made use of all the space we had available with the lower benches displaying our smaller wares. If we had remembered to take a before picture you would have been surprised at how full we had managed to make it -as expressed by one of the artist owners when she entered the following day.
Coast, Colour, Canvas gallery allow artists to hire the whole gallery in April and October and then through the season May-September invite guest artists to show their work alongside their own work. As artists you pay a full gallery hire charge of £175 (which we split between the 3 of us) and then the gallery take a reasonable 10% commission on any sales that are made. Sales made in the gallery are only taken with card payment so a card fee of 1.75% is also deducted from our final sales, along with writing down each sale this is the way all sales are recorded and kept track of.
Why am I telling you this? Well on the whole we received positive feedback and visitors seemed pleasantly surprised and interested in our work and happy to purchase. But there was a conversation that my husband overheard outside the gallery when he happened to pass 3 ladies just leaving the gallery.
It went like this:
Did you see what they were selling? You’d need a mortgage to buy anything in there- it’s a get rich quick scheme I tell you!
I do understand there is a cost of living crisis and not all of us are able to afford luxury buys, which I know some would consider an art purchase to be, but in the case of suggesting we were a ‘get rich quick scheme’ I rather shine a light on the actual figures we took and then you can make up your own mind on whether there is any truth to their assumption.
To give you an idea of pricing we had on display a range of art as follows:
Framed originals ranging from £95-375
Giclee fine art archival prints ranging from £25-36
Unframed originals + postcards £12-75
Calendars, prints, zines £8-25
Cards, postcards, stickers, tape under £8
The majority of sales were made up of prints, cards, postcards, calendars, zines, stickers, tape with just a few unframed and framed art sales. Over the course of the week we had 175 visitors to the gallery.
These are the figures that were taken over the course of the week, bearing in mind on Wednesday we had a power cut and so the gallery was closed, although we did open in the evening we only had one visitor and the gallery kindly reimbursed us £25.
Our total sales were £2376.50
Deductions: Square commission @ 1.75% £40.71
Less CCC commission @ 10% £235.15
Less Gallery hire of £175
Additions: Rent refund for enforced closure
of gallery due to electricity £25.00
Total net payment £1900.64
This is our combined income, and my net income after deductions was £1217. Which may sound reasonable but that is before you consider the other costs that were made in the run up to the exhibition.
Framing costs, flyer printing, product printing it all adds up so if you take that away from my net income I’m left with just over £200.
Yes 200 quid.
So if I could answer those ladies this would be my polite response -here are the figures please do the maths.
Putting on an exhibition is an expensive outlay and one that should be considered. However would I do it again?
My answer would be yes!
One of the reasons being it concentrates the mind and gives you something to work towards, incentivising you get things finished. Framing all my originals may never have happened, or at least not in one big chunk, producing a zine of my sketches would have taken a lot longer, new card designs would have not materialised till next year… the list goes on. Having something you can aim towards really does help you complete tasks and then having the opportunity to share the work in a real space having conversations with people in person makes the whole experience a lot sweeter (even the overheard conversations you don’t want to hear)! Plus I now have work to share and sell over the winter season.
If you’d like to watch a video about it and see the gallery space watch my latest vlog here:
And here are my originals-framed and ready to hang and ship to you if you’re interested and based in the UK. Pick up options are also available just get in touch to discuss.
I hope you enjoyed this post and found it to be helpful or surprising, do let me know your thoughts if anything resonated and I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Great post. Artists are never paid for the work and creativity they give. Your accounting shows that very well. I wish people valued art more. Beautiful gallery with beautiful work by both of you
Thanks for that concise breakdown of the disconnect in expectations, especially since you set up, staffed, and broke down the show yourselves. Watching your video, I found your work surprisingly underpriced in my frame of reference. In my part of the US, galleries charge a "consideration fee" and a commission of up to 60% of the work. Most work goes unsold. I don't understand a world where a cup of fast food coffee is $3 and yet a $3 art sticker direct from a working artist is "too expensive." I only hope there are better days ahead. We have to keep creating and our audiences will find us!