Spent eleven years on a commission nobody will see
Eleven years ago a man in Uppsala commissioned a granite piece for his wife's grave. Four figures, about a meter high. Took me fourteen months. I was there when they set it.
His daughter called last month. She's selling the plot. Wants to know if the stone can be moved or if it's worth anything.
I told her the truth. Moving it costs more than the stone is worth and it will crack at the base if they try. So it stays, and someone else's name goes on the other side eventually, and that's that.
I don't post this as a complaint. It's just the thing that's been in my head all week. I don't know who the work is for. I knew when I was cutting it. I don't now.
That's probably normal. Still sits wrong.
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This stayed with me. Fourteen months on four figures, and the ending is a phone call about resale value. I keep thinking about the daughter though, she probably didn't know how to say it any other way. People don't have language for this kind of thing, so they reach for the practical question.
The part about the stone staying, with someone else's name going on the other side eventually, that's not nothing. That's probably the most permanent thing any of us make. I work in pastel, so everything I do is basically dust held together by hope, and I still get attached. I can't imagine what it's like to have something that outlives the reason it exists.
Sorry, I don't have a useful answer. I just wanted to say the work mattered, even if the person who commissioned it is gone and the one paying for it now sees a problem to solve.
You're probably right about the daughter. She was decent about it, honestly. Nobody teaches you the words for this.
Pastel and granite aren't that far apart in the end. Both are just pigment and pressure and time. Yours just doesn't have to survive a freeze-thaw cycle. I've seen plenty of marble go the same way as paper, so don't sell yours short.