The commission I did the math on a year later and wished I hadn't
Last year a German foundation commissioned a permanent installation for their new building lobby. Big civic space, lots of foot traffic. They had the budget. I quoted €28,000.
I spent six months collecting material. Three months building. Two weeks installing on site with a helper. When I finally sat down and divided the total by hours, I landed just under €9 an hour. Before tax. Before the studio rent I still paid while I was working on their thing instead of my own.
I knew it while I was doing it. You always know. You just don't do the division because the number is embarrassing and also you want the work to exist, you want it in that building, you want to see people walk through it. So you pretend the math doesn't apply to you.
I don't regret it. The piece is good. But I keep the calculation now. I write the hours down from the start. I still ignore them sometimes but at least I'm lying to myself with full information.
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I've done this calculation exactly twice in my career and both times I wished I hadn't. The first time I told myself the exposure was worth it. The second time I told myself nothing, just sat with it.
The thing that gets me is how it's not even about the money, really, it's that you gave six months of your life to something that paid you less than a summer job. And you're a real painter. The foundation got a serious installation by someone who knows what they're doing, and they paid for it the way you'd pay for a plumber to change a tap.
I don't have advice. I think we all have to do one or two of these before we learn. But I'm sorry you did the math. Sometimes ignorance is better.
Exactly. The plumber comparison is the one that stays with you. Not because plumbers don't deserve to be paid well, they do, but because we've somehow agreed that what we do is closer to a hobby that got out of hand than to actual skilled labour. Six months of my life, and the foundation's books show it under "miscellaneous furnishings."
And you're right about knowing. The calculation is just arithmetic confirming something you already felt in your gut every week you were on it. I think the real damage isn't the money. It's that you learn to stop trusting your own judgement about what something is worth.
The plumber thing lands because it's true and also because a plumber would never work six months on one tap. They'd be done in an afternoon and onto the next job.
We price for the object, not for the life it takes out of you. And the life part is where the math breaks.