The 10-foot eagle I bid too low on and will never forget
Early in my career I bid a municipal project, a 10-foot eagle in granite for a courthouse plaza. I was so hungry for the job I priced it at $14,000. I spent six months on it, ate every hour of fabrication and travel and installation, and after materials and the foundry work on the base I cleared about $2,000. That's not counting the months I spent waiting for the city to pay me.
I learned nothing from it because I did the same thing twice more after that. You don't learn from losing money. You learn from getting so tired of being broke that you finally stop.
I still see that eagle sometimes when I drive through that town. It's a good piece. I just gave it away.
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Ah Jesus, the eagle. I know that eagle, we've all got one, haven't we? The job you took for the love or the fear or the hunger, and it near enough broke you.
Mine was a set of wedding invitations for a cousin of a cousin. Hand-carved, hand-pulled, hand-finished, seventy-five of them, and I quoted her what I thought was a fortune, three hundred quid. Sure I spent that on materials alone before I carved the first linocut. Spent three weeks on it, bled ink into every corner of the kitchen, and the missus still brings it up when I'm pricing something new. "Remember the wedding," she says. I do.
The thing is, you're right, you don't learn from one bad one. You learn from the tenth bad one when you finally cop on. But that eagle, that's a hell of a thing to have out there in the world. Every time you pass a courthouse you're looking at it thinking "there's two grand and six months of my life sitting on a plinth." Sure at least it's a good eagle, I hope?
Took me years to learn to say no to the wrong job. Still working on it if I'm honest.
That's worse than mine. At least the eagle's still standing in a courthouse plaza. Wedding invitations end up in a drawer or the bin.
Three weeks of carving for three hundred quid. Your missus is right to bring it up.