What Cost: Memory, Love?

I love these 3 images and this one of John. When I realized I had 4 Beatles records without sleeves from various sources, all with the rainbow Capitol label, I got excited to try something I've wanted to for awhile. I'll show you next week when I finish.

But first I need to tell you that I'm going to stop offering my pieces unframed for only $100 shipped. The price will be good on commissions requested before the end of this month, but then that's it. I've struggled with this decision since I started offering the pieces unframed at all, over a year ago.

Pricing in general is a tough one for me, not the fact that I make money from my art, but setting them so my work is accessible to even starving college students with the right priorities. I know my work has value, but what that value is eludes me. I started out selling framed pieces locally for $55 (the price of that Johnny Cash at auction currently) and raised them only when I realized that I needed to do so if I ever was going to be able to support our family eventually with my art. Even then, I've had people pay me more than I've asked at least twice and many people give me confounded looks when I tell them how much.

The thing is though, I feel comfortable with the $175 plus shipping price point for framed pieces. It feels good when anybody says "yes, I'll buy one". I don't want to raise that price unless I have so much work and I've already been able to hire my wife as my assistant, meaning when she can quit her job. I'll offer special things, like what I'm going to do with these unframed Beatles, that'll be at different, higher prices, but the standard piece, framed in front of the album sleeve will hopefully stay the same. When I do have that much work, I think I'll increase the price only when someone wants time priority placed on their piece.

But I don't feel good about the $100 shipped for the unframed. I feel a bit bad, like I'm going to be telling people not to buy my work by raising the price, but I don't want to hesitate when someone says they want it unframed instead of framed.

So, they're going up to $150. I feel like the quality and consistency of my work is worth that. Hopefully you'll feel your wall space, or someone else's, is worth that as well.

I don't know how else to value my connection to music, to art, to memory, to family & friends, to humanity. Do you?

Peace.

Those Crazy Drummers

Drummers are cool because they represent organized chaos. Operating within the beat, they go crazy. Totally crazy.

Ringo, John Bonham, Keith Moon and a mess of others keep their bands rocking and rolling with wild eyes and lightening hands. Who's your fav drummer?

Peace.

P.S. I case you haven't noticed, I painted all 4 Beatles again. I wasn't going to sell the Lennon, but if you buy all 4, you'll convince me to part with it. And you'll get $25 off each, also only paying shipping for one, making a total of $610. But if someone buys one of them individually, the deal's off.

So here're the PayPal buttons for Ringo by himself and for The Beatles all together now:


Ringo Starr 04/23/09

The Beatles 04/09

NVUJ

Well, it looked better than HELP.

I love stories of why things happen like that. I love stories period. Attached to objects, they kind of carry with them the human intent captured by the object. My head spins when I think of all the stories attached to the albums on which I paint.

Like with these 4 albums of the Beatles. Robert sent them to me because they were too scratched to do anything with but throw them away. Two of them even had a second copy of the same album! I don't know exactly where they all came from, so maybe he'll leave a comment about that for me, but in any event, what happened to them? Why are they so trashed?

Records of the Beatles are by far the most plentiful in my playable collection. I went a wee bit nuts collecting bootlegs on vinyl when they were still available in West Los Angeles record stores. I've talked about some of them here, those that I've archived digitally with my iRecord. I couldn't imagine doing anything even to duplicates to leave them in the condition of these records I just used.

I love records because they are a physical manifestation of something ephemeral. Records were the first way sounds were preserved, captured "for the record", as it were. It's pretty cool when you think about it. Like the Internet and printing press and video, the invention and mass production of vinyl changed the way our culture works a great deal. Beatle bootlegs are great, like the story of the "Help!" album cover, because they show how the creation of the music fits into the greater story of humanity and our creativity. Marvelous.

Peace.

Ringo Starr 11/07/08