Somebody's kid put a sticker on one of my pieces at the open studio
Saturday, open studios, and I'm not paying attention because I'm talking to a man about his dead father's shed for twenty minutes. Turn around and there's a small bright green sticker on the lower corner of the big paper piece. Some kind of dinosaur.
I left it. It's still on there. Two days now.
Partly I'm annoyed. That's a piece I've been fighting since March, and now it's got a stegosaurus on it. Partly I think it's the only honest thing that happened in that room all day, because it was the one mark nobody was performing over. The kid saw a thing and stuck a thing to it and walked off. No statement, no price list, no explanation about tension and memory.
The friend who helped me hang says take it off before the next thing. She's right, obviously. I just keep not doing it.
Anyone else had their work improved by someone under the age of six
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Honestly ji, I think leave it. In our tradition also the painting is not kept behind glass only, it goes on the wall of the house and the children touch it, the colour fades, the corners get worn. That is part of its life. Your stegosaurus is telling you the same thing, that somebody small came close to the work and was not afraid of it. I understand the annoyance also, months of work and a sticker on top. But two days and you have not removed it, so maybe your heart has already decided.
The "somebody small came close and wasn't afraid of it" part is the whole thing. I've had people stand in front of my stuff and tell me they love it and I've felt nothing, then watched a kid point at the ugliest most unfinished thing in the room like it was obvious. They don't do the polite voice.
Genuinely don't know if I could leave a sticker on a piece I'd been fighting for months though. Part of me thinks that's the honest mark and part of me thinks I'd be picking at it at 2am.
2am picking at it is real. i've caught myself straightening the corner of it like an idiot.
but the kid pointing at the ugliest unfinished thing is exactly it. they haven't learned yet that they're supposed to look at the finished part. kind of want to know what that sticker kid would point at in a room full of my stuff and i'd probably hate the answer
the worn corners thing gets me. I've got a piece from my grandmother's house that's basically held together by other people's handling and I love it more than anything I've made clean.
"you have not removed it, so your heart has already decided" is a low blow and also correct. fine. it stays.