Val Gal

If  the quality of my artwork is established how do I defend myself and the fruit of my labor?  Artists create luxury goods.  These are goods that are to be marketed for exceptional places.  So they have exceptional demands on things like living arrangements.  They need large enough spaces or comfortable enough spaces to practice there are at all. For example in simple places, art for art’s sake is frowned upon and so is any artist who is just an artist.  Creating art which is just beautiful and does not help the day to day living is frowned upon. Artists in poor communities like myself are expected to find extra means to physically defend themselves.  For example I lived in a troubled, inner city neighborhood so that I could be close to the many cultural activities of downtown Montreal.  My house was poor and for most of the time there was a relatively adequate system of defense.  But the minute the presence of affluent competitors...

One of the issues that concern me at this time has to do about the time that my art begins to attract a good amount of attention and fetches a good price. Lets call it:  The Myth of the Avant Grade The point of Discovery An artist must create a body of work in order to be called an artist.  Thus a considerable amount of work exists before someone’s work is discovered to be valuable...  So the worth of a work of art, say a painting can change in an instant. One second the painting is worth nothing since the talented artist has yet to be discovered. It is the point of discovery that will change this undiscovered worthless body of work into something of value.   The Danger that comes with the point of discovery This presents a danger to the artist in a poor place and to the evaluators of his/her work. The art has barely been discovered and has not yet left the community hub.   A poor community is obscure so very few people know about it yet (even th...

Superstitious?  What kind of rituals do you follow for good luck?  For myself, I like to take advantage of special times to see if I can reap good fortune.  For example, if I have something important to organize I am likely to do it on a Holiday or on Sunday. So planning this week's Studio work was a no brainer.  I had recently received a large amount of old jewelry from an estate. The choicer pieces had long gone and these were left.  They were supposed to be unsellable.  So I asked how they were organized. I said if you give almost them to me, I will organize them for you in the proper way.  But I was given them instead. The owner felt they were just cluttering up the house.  Luckily I have my jewelry collection. To get them they had to be quickly boxed and taken off the premises.  But once I brought them home, there was no time to organize them anymore because of the Holiday Preparations.  So this Saturday I took some time to c...

Hello Dear Readers, This Saturday I decided to do charting.  I had been contacting the support team at Google for a problem about my balance.  I wanted to use my balance on Google Play to pay for a membership with Gliffy flow charts or Mindmeister Mind Maps.  It turned out you need to pay for Gliffy only with a credit card.  And Mindmaster could be bought with the Google Chrome store.  The Google Play store was a different kettle of fish.  I had put on $100.00 on Google play and I could not transfer it in any way to use for either of these mapping programs. I must have been on the phone for five hours trying to figure out how to pay with the Google Play points.  One hundred dollars is a lot of money and I had it budgeted for the mind mapping.  I did not want to buy anything else, no matter how seductive.  Anyways finally I realized they have a  whole lot of gift cards you can buy with the points so the money will be used and on budge...

September 9, 2015 In the romantic novels the artist goes way up to his tiny attic on the very top of his house to create and be free.  Sometimes it has a great view of Paris.  Or sometimes the person is a writer who creates great novels and ideas. They both seal themselves from the rest of the world to do great things.  Well why not imitate?   I live in a woman's residence in a very small room. When I first arrived I imagined it as a womb.  A creative womb in which I would heal and rest and create great art.  I would sit on the bed cross yoga position with hands on my legs and look out the window and the blue sky. I would imagine I meditated.   I would imagine I was one with the blue sky. Well years have gone by and I no longer think of the room as a womb.  It became a small and impoverished cell for a while and then my imagination took over again.  I thought of it much like that attic. So now it is my studio in which I develop and fr...