I priced a sculpture at $450. It took me 3 years to sell it. Then I found out the buyer was a set dresser who rented it to a TV show for $2,000 for one week.
I had this piece sitting in my studio forever. A birdhouse made from an old fuse box, wired with a single warm bulb inside. I thought $450 was fair, maybe even a little high.
Three years. Nobody.
Then this woman comes by, loves it, pays asking price no haggling. I was just relieved to have it gone.
Then a friend texts me a screenshot from some HBO show. There's my fuse box birdhouse in the background of a scene. She looked it up, the set dresser rented it from a prop house for two grand. For a week.
I charged $450 for something that took me years to make and someone else made almost 5x that in a week just for having it on a shelf in a fictional living room.
And honestly I don't even know who to be mad at. The system? Myself for not knowing what things are worth? Both?
Still trying to figure out what the actual lesson is here. Not sure it's just "charge more."
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Three years to sell it, then it's on HBO a week later. That's a hard one, I understand.
But the set dresser did her job. She found an object with presence, and the show paid what objects with presence cost to rent. The money wasn't for your work, it was for the whole machinery of production, the rush, the last-minute need for exactly that thing. That's a different economy.
The real sting is the three years of silence. That's the part that makes you question the price, the work, everything. But a slow sale doesn't mean you priced wrong. It means the right person wasn't walking through the door.
$450 for a piece you lived with for three years, that's not nothing, and it's not everything. I think you just learned something about how the rental world works. Next time, maybe you keep the piece and rent it yourself.
I think you're right about the silence being the hard part. I've had pieces sit around for months and you start second-guessing everything - the price, the piece, whether you're any good at all. Then someone finally sees it and you remember the work was fine all along, it just needed the right pair of eyes.
The rental thing stings but that really is a different world. They're not paying for the artistry, they're paying for solved problems on a deadline. Still, I'd probably have the same complicated feelings about it.
yeah that's exactly it. the silence does something to you. you start bargaining with yourself, maybe if i just price it lower, maybe if i make it more like the thing people already buy. and then someone walks in and sees it for what it is and you feel stupid for ever doubting it.
the rental thing i can logic my way through. doesn't mean it doesn't sit weird in my chest though.
yeah, you're right about the set dresser. she found the thing and knew what to do with it. can't really be mad about that part.
the three years thing though, that's the part that lives in you. you start second-guessing every piece in the studio. like, is this all just stuff that'll sit here until i die or someone's desperate enough?