Stone Carving Prices

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

Hi all,

This question of prices goes around quite regularly doesn't it?

John wrote, "Has anyone had better experience selling sculpture by getting
the customer
involved in some carving?"

In a way these words get right to the heart of the matter, I don't give
people the chance to actually carve the stone but my studio is open to the
public. Regular published hours on our main web site etc.

Before I go too far I should say that when I decided to stop augmenting my
sculpture practice with teaching we sat down and had a very careful look at
every single component in the making a living as an artist mix, I wouldn't
have done this but my partner has a marketing background and it was second
nature to her.

In typical SWAT analysis mode everything went on acres of large sheets of
paper until slowly we could begin to strip away many of the standard
traditional art ways of doing things. Ultimately we came up with a general
philosophy that asks, why, if artists claim to believe in themselves, do
they remain almost hidden.

Given that this happens all the time what other "business models" could be
applied to our practice? You also begin to notice just how bad many
businesses and organisations are, inefficient, often lazy and easily capable
of driving any client mad. To counter this we simply decided to treat
everybody as we would like to be treated, before I go too far, this does not
mean glib sales chatter or keeping a little book with all the clients
children's names in it so that we can pretend to care about them! In essence
this all really means that our "business model" completely matches our own
personality, well, the better or even best side of our personality. Once put
that way it gets very easy.

I looking back I would say that the single most successful feature of what
we do is that we take a great pride in being efficient and professional. If
you think about it carefully there is no good reason for artists to foster
the stereotypical myth of creativity being linked in some way to an
inability to exist half reasonably in the real world. Having a reputation
for being very easy to deal with, always on time and always attending to
every little detail probably results in people trusting us, telling others
about us and ultimately giving them confidence to spend their money.

I've got to end this now because another bus tour is coming through to see
the gallery, our building and my studio in half an hour, 40 senior citizens
all asking questions, touching the stone and all going away happy does a
hell of a lot of good in the long run. Must go.

Regards to all Clive

Sculptor Clive Murray-White
Web: www.cowwarr.com