Art, Murals and Contests

Although art competitions ostensibly exist to benefit the artists, the contest holder is always the chief beneficiary, as shown by a local hardware store’s mural contest a few years back.

Murals

The Victor Clothing Company’s Anthony Quinn mural in Los Angeles was quite impressive when I saw it years ago. Since then, murals have come into vogue in Southern Ontario.

Creating a mural is not easy, nor cheap, and requires maintenance. Currently the the stunning mural created by Eloy Torrez in Los Angeles is in serious need of restoration after 27 years.

Murals Come to Elmira

A competition was announced: five local artists were selected to design and create their own original 6′ x 6′ murals on the blank wall facing the Elmira Home Hardware Store parking lot.

1. Linda Brubacher

Elmira's enlisted - Lest We Forget

#1. Linda Brubacher

2. Trevor Martin

Sugar Bush

#2. Trevor Martin

3. Pat Lackenbauer

graphic

#3 Pat Lackenbauer

4. Jo Oxley

A quilt of local family names

#4. Jo Oxley

5. Paul Wilson

Sprts team logos in the 4 corners, fountain of memories etc

#5. Paul Wilson

The way the contest worked, interested folks could vote for their favourites, but voters had to pay for their ballot. In this way, the Home Hardware campaign “raised about $2,500”.

California’s Victor Clothing Company commissioned artists to create the now famous murals.

In comparison, Home Hardware got a wall full of free murals, a reputation both for “supporting local artists” and for providing the community with public art, a  charitable donation, and all the accompanying publicity.

The community got some nice public art which remains in reasonably good condition almost seven years later.

And the artists?

They had to undergo a selection process, then conceive an idea, plan out the design, and then actually paint the thing.

Trevor Martin’s winning mural paid him $500; not a terrible return for work he estimates took about 24 hours.

The other four artists each received $100. If it took them each ten hours to paint their murals, they may just about have managed to earn minimum wage.  My guess is that each mural took well over ten hours to paint, so except for the winner, none of the artists are likely to have even earned minimum wage.

Pretty good deal, right?

The rest of the money raised was donated to charity.

An argument is usually made that the artists get exposure from a contest like this.  In some cases it can be valuable, but artists still need to eat.  Plumbers need exposure, too, yet I can’t recall anyone suggesting that they should donate their work for it.  Perhaps in future supporting local artists might mean paying them a reasonable amount for their work.

But even if exposure is an important consideration, is a contest like this one the right kind of exposure?  Particularly when there is a “winner”, well, we all know what the word for a non-winner is. Does that kind of exposure really help an artist’s career? And who are the judges?

online

These days you can find all manner of art “contests” online.   The artist is generally required to herd their family, friends and fans to the contest venue to get them to vote.  Most of the ones I’ve seen don’t require a simple voting, but repetitive voting over time.  And before people can vote, they have to register, and give up a lot of personal information. (Guess where SPAM comes from…)  So again, the voters pay the price. Do you really want to do this to your fan base?

So I have yet to wonder about any net benefit to the artist.  Although a contest dangles a prize, is that prize worth the price you have to pay for it?

know what you’re getting into

Before even creating a contest entry, let alone posting your work, always read the contest rules. Any contest submission will necessarily transfer or sharing at least some of the artist’s rights to their own work to the contest holder. [As does posting your work to any website that you yourself don’t control.]   Be very sure that you know what you are agreeing to. And that you can live with it. For artists, the main advantage to the proliferation of art contests is that there is always another contest.

Because, after all, the main beneficiary of any contest is always the contest holder. After all, they get to make the rules.

The back wall facing the parking area with 5 finalist murals

and the winner is?


gentrification

19th Century Advertising: Seagram Distillers sign

When I was a child I didn’t much like downtown Waterloo because of the pervasive smell of the Seagram’s Distillery that hung over the city core.

Those days are long past, as manufacturing that decreases the quality of life is better relegated to more isolated locales. Waterloo today enjoys the reputation of being one of Ontario’s more livable cities.

Seagram loft windows with cheery blue probably decorative shutters

The Seagram industrial complex was remade into upscale loft housing some years back.

Barrel Warehouse Park sign

Originally there was an enormous pyramid of old barrels out front, making a wonderful historic bit of historic public art, but that has now been replaced by the more sedate “Barrel Warehouse Park”.

Seagrams Public Art

These days the park is graced by public art consisting of a few gigantic bits of miscellaneous machinery that presumably were once employed in the distillery business.

manmade waterfall in concrete

There is also an odd little man-made waterfall cascading out of a featureless concrete wall…

walled on the left side and at the back, a sloped concrete floor goes down to where a forlorn puddle forms beneath the waterfall

… to the floor of a sloped concrete enclosure. Presumably the puddle at the bottom is intended as a wading pool for local children.

ows of windows under the brick dentition at the top of the original exterior wall

But it is the ranks of identical windows flanked on one side by identical blue shutters that provides the real art to this architectural gentrification project.

rows of shutters


Comment on Decentralized Social Networks Do Exist by Laurel L. Russwurm

Certainly, and you don’t even need to ask, as the license info is in the sidebar. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License . . . which means the only restriction is that you can’t license it with greater restriction, you couldn’t add “No Derivatives” or “Non Commercial” or even “Copyright All Rights Reserved.”

However, even if your blog/webpage is itself published under a more restrictive licence, you can still use my work as long as you use the same or similar license as the one I’m using on the page on which you use it.

Comment on Geek vs. Nerd isn’t even the real question by Laurel L. Russwurm

Difficult questions, Deanna. I rather think that what we need is equality. The culture is made up of people, and so we are the ones who have to make changes.

I was horrified to see the house league soccer league we were with for years decided to segregate the genders for the kids younger than mine. This was apparently decided to protect the little girls from having to interact with the boys. This seems the opposite direction we need to be going. Nothing motivates gender co-operation more than sharing goals

Comment on Geek vs. Nerd isn’t even the real question by Deanna Dahlsad aka Pop Tart

Thanks for stopping by, Laurel :) Thanks for continuing the conversation!

I agree with you about the creators of the infographic being marketing hipsters, but the info for the graphic was pulled from somewhere. And while labels are not important to me, the whole thing makes me uncomfortable with the lack of recognizing women as part of these (however entwined) communities. And that’s rather my point.

Ultimately, many of the problems with this infographic actually mirror what’s wrong the culture itself.

How can we encourage women to profit from so-called geek and nerd professions (such as math, science, technology), to be proud of their brainy activities when the female-dominated professions of librarians, for example, are so dismissed? Why would women even to pursue such fields when they are so dismissed — and even are treated as sexist toys or gifts — in the culture?

Comment on Geek vs. Nerd isn’t even the real question by Shevi Arnold

I saw this poster on a friend’s Pinterest board. I agree with you: it’s so wrong!

I do see a difference between the terms “geek” and “nerd,” but it’s only in that being a geek is about being extremely enthusiastic about something, while being a “nerd” is about being extremely knowledgeable about something.

As in a Lord of the Rings geek loves Lord of the Rings; while a Lord of the Rings nerd know things about Lord of the Rings most fans don’t even know.

Geeks and nerds tend to have the same interests. You can be a tech geek (I am), but you can also be a tech nerd (sadly, I’m not that knowledgeable). I’m a book nerd, because I know a lot about books and writing. I’m also a book geek, because I love books with a passion. I’m also both a comics geek and a comics nerd. And I love Nerdcore almost to the point of geekiness (but not quite).

I think being knowledgeable and enthusiastic are wonderful traits, so I’m a proud nerd and a proud geek. We should ALL be. The world would be a better place if we could all unabashedly embrace our passions. Nerds and geeks rule!