hiring an apprentice

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear Philippe,

I've been through this very difficult question. Instead of naming the kind
of worker you need, an apprentice, in advance I found that listing the kinds
of things that actually I needed help with from time to time. My work is a
little different to yours and I would find it very difficult to let anybody
do much of my actual carving.

I feared that if I took someone on full time I could start to loose some
quality control, money is great but integrity is better, so I make exactly
what I want make charge more and tell people that they have to go to the end
of the queue if things get a little out of hand

In this country there are so many regulations governing your management of
an apprentice that it would almost be out of the question in our line of
work. Unfortunately there is almost no training in techniques in art schools
these days but I have found one or two students who want to get an idea of
how its all done.

My main need is for someone to do a lot of finishing for me, I was very
lucky to find a person with a lot of natural ability in this area. I pay him
to do specific jobs at a proper rate. When I first started using him he was
an art student.

I also pay people to do all the jobs that just about anybody could do. You
would be surprised how that frees up your time to get on with the art. I
think that as artists we get into the habit of doing everything ourselves to
"save" money only to discover that we are very expensive lawn mowers.

In essence the people who work for me are self-employed contractors.

My guess is that your best bet is to find either an art student or even
someone on this list who lives nearby who would happily pick up many skills
etc while they are doing specific paid tasks for you. If we are looking for
an appropriate title for this kind of art worker I'd settle for "assistant".

Regards Clive

Web: www.cowwarr.com