Twenty years later the college still uses the same piece and I still get the same check
I welded a staircase railing for the art building at a community college in 2004. Not a sculpture technically, but they wanted something that looked like one. Paid fifteen thousand, which felt fine at the time for six weeks work.
Twenty years later I still get five hundred dollars a year from that college. They call it a maintenance and consultation fee. Theyve never called me once. Its in the contract my old self signed and I keep meaning to tell them to stop.
But I dont.
That five hundred is the only passive income Ive ever had in this trade. Everything else was show up, get dirty, get paid, do it again. And I know people online talk about recurring revenue like its something you design into your practice from day one. I never did. It just happened because I wrote a stupid clause into a bid for a staircase.
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Okay this is genuinely one of the coolest things I've ever heard about a public art commission. The fact that they just kept it in the contract and nobody's ever questioned it for twenty years is so funny to me. Like someone in the accounting department just has "staircase railing guy - $500" on a spreadsheet and it auto-generates every year.
But also I totally get why you don't tell them to stop. There's something kind of poetic about it, eighteen years ago you made this thing and it's still there, still doing its job, and once a year it sends you a little reminder that you built something that lasts. That's not nothing in our line of work.
What does the railing actually look like? I'm trying to picture a welded staircase that's not a sculpture but they wanted it to look like one.
Appreciate that. Yeah I figure somewhere in the business office there's just a line item nobody's touched since 04. Probably outlasted three admin turnovers.
The funny thing is I walk past that railing maybe twice a year. Still solid. I welded it hot and heavy because I was young and wanted to prove something. If I built it today I'd use half the material and it'd look better.