Friday, Fabulous Friday

I went to the PO first thing yesterday morning. I got the lovely, ex-Catholic School Paul. (We swapped stories before.) We discussed the prices, speed and insurance for the parcel to Santa Fe. I filled in the Customs form and I wrote an expected ball park figure of retail price as the value of the goods. Then he asked if these are "art or craft?" Huh? "Paul, we can talk about it for the next 30 years and we won't come to a conclusion." "But you can wear these, so they are craft?" "You can't buy my stuff for craft prices.) I didn't want to cause a scene, but where did this come from? "If these get lost can you replace them? "No, don't want to make the same things and haven't got one kind of yarn any more." "Hummm...." Yeah, hummmm yourself, mate. "The thing is, if the contents are irreplaceable, I cant' insure them." "Oh, gotcha. No, they are definitely craft. Craft is fine. Thanks, Paul. Craft is fine."

Also, a question I had last time but I forgot to ask you; what determines the country of origin for handmade work? Once I was told that with yarns, the country in which the yarns were dyed are the origin. Is that true? If you buy fibers "made" in a country other than yours, but you made the artwork, do we talk about the material or the artwork? How do you fill your forms?

And the value; if you are sending your stuff to a gallery who is going to add the markup to sell your work, is the value what I can expect to get paid, or the expected retail value?

Class. It wasn't much of a collage session for me. I just couldn't get into it. Ronette said to think of negative space, too. I did. I did a bit of déformé , too, to entertain myself. In the left, I exaggerated his arms and make them Popeye-like. In the right, the feet were farther apart but since I ran out of space, I made one much higher than the other, which made the whole thing so out of kilter. I made the feet first, but got a bit confused when I added the pant lets in collage. It would have made more sense to make them using negative space, too, but that's the way the cookies crumbled.

Then I fidgeted and drew with smelly felt-tip pens for the rest of the time and got a little high on the fume.  I was so tired from a week of intensive work Ronette drove me home after lunch. I was going to make drafts for the cashmere warp, but collapsed on the living room floor and slept for three hours.

I hope I have better luck this weekend. And it's raining. Yay! Lovely!!