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December 08, 2006
Jessica's going to think I'm a complete tool for still being mad about this.
Yesterday I went down to the P.O. to mail some packages, one of which was a piece of art sandwiched between two rigid sheets of bookbinder's board. I asked to purchase insurance for the amount that I am being paid for the print, and the post office lady gave me a huge argument about how if anything happens to my package the USPS won't actually cough up that amount, but only the amount it would cost "to remake it".
What the fuck?
So she says, it's like, say you have a set of blueprints and you insure them for five hundred dollars. If they get lost or damaged, we'll only cover what it would cost to have them printed again.
Is that the way insurance is supposed to work? So I said to the lady, that's like saying that if you have a hundred thousand dollars life insurance and you die, the insurance company can say, well, it only costs fifty thousand to raise another child so we'll just give you that, it's the replacement value. No, you get the amount you insure yourself for. That's how insurance works.
Anyway. I know I obsess about this sort of shit too much and I should just let it go now that my package is on its way, and insured for the full amount. But what pisses me off is this: in comparing my work to blueprints, what she's saying is that the replacement value they would be willing to cover on my art is the cost of materials. If your blueprints get ruined and you have to go down to Kinko's to have them reprinted, you are paying a fee to Kinko's that included not only cost of materials but also labour, overhead and profit. If they ruin my art, do you think they are going to pay me a replacement value that includes profit? You bet your ass not. As it is, this piece was sold to a friend, at a friend price, and if I were to add up all of the time in this print including cutting the woodblock and sitting in the computer lab waiting for the Epson to print and multiply that by minimum wage, I could easily justify the amount I insured the piece for. (Of course, woodblock-cutting time is divided between all of the prints made from that block and I make many, many prints from each block, but that's not something I'd be telling the USPS, because they're assholes). It just seems to be another way in which artists get screwed.
Okay. Now I'm going to let that go. Deep breath. And centre myself.
See, I don't have anything more to stress about right now, so I've got to find something. Monday night, after collecting my students' portfolios and staying at school very late to get them all graded, I went to bed and dreamed all night about the students and their drawings. My students are all in their first semester of university and have to go through a portfolio review process to prove they're good enough to be in the fine art major (this review happened on Thursday morning, which is why I was grading portfolios before the last day of classes; I wanted them to have everything back in time for Thursday). So Tuesday night I dreamed that my students had all sorts of reading they were going to be tested on as part of their review, they were behind on it and really stressed out and I was trying to help them to figure out how best to budget their time and feeling terribly guilty because we'd been concentrating on drawing and not on the readings and I felt that I'd let them down. And the stuff they had to read was just awful, James Joyce and all sorts of other horrible crap. Ugh.
Up until last night when I was relaying this dream to Sandy, I thought I was just stressing for the students because of their review. But when I actually said the "I felt like I let them down" part out loud, I realized that the stress was actually about my meeting with my supervisor on Wednesday, because not only was I expecting to get in big trouble for a rule that I broke (I didn't get in too much trouble, and just have to, uh, not break that rule again) but he hadn't seen anything out of my class all semester and I was worried that he would think their work wasn't good enough. So, I thought that I was only thinking of my students but in reality it was all about me. Typical. (The meeting went fine. He was pleased with our work.)
But. All I have to worry about today is not getting to the airport on time, losing my bags, somebody crushing my big roll of Japanese paper that I'm (perhaps foolishly) flying with. None of which will happen, of course, and soon I'll be on a plane, worry-free, and on my way home to my beloved for almost a whole beautiful, blissful month.
Okay. Too many words and not enough pictures. I keep forgetting that the blog people are not all flickr people, and I do believe I forgot to show y'all this:
There are a lot of problems with this piece and the craftsmanship definitely falls well below my standards, but as it's really just a test piece, I'm okay with that. This isn't a piece that I will actually exhibit, but it has really helped me to figure out where to go from here, what my work wants to be about at this point in my career, and what I need to be concentrating on as I head into the home stretch towards my thesis exhibition. Expect to see more of these little rectangles, as I made about five times more than I needed.
Oh, and. I'm knitting a new sweater. It's going to be awesome.
Posted by jodi at December 8, 2006 10:32 AM | categories: self-absorbtion
Comments
postal insurance over here works for what the item is worth. So when the PO lost my sewing work I provided them with an invoice of what I'd charged the customer for the item and they paid me that back. Stuidly they won't refund your postage though, even though what you paid for never happened, I find that absurd!
Have a great trip home and don't forget to send me your addres so I can get this fabric off to you, need to start moving stuff about the sewing room so my parents can actually sleep in there at Christmas and not have stuff fall on them!
Posted by: Anna at December 8, 2006 12:30 PM
That's weird and bizarre and typical of the post office and the lack of cultural value we place on the arts.
Not that anything is going to happen to it. For sure.
Love the red yarn.
Posted by: Juno at December 8, 2006 02:05 PM
What a crock of shit with the post office. If you went and bought something from a shop, they'd insure it to the full value of what it was worth -- just because you MADE an item, doesn't mean it's worth any less.
Posted by: crumpet at December 8, 2006 06:06 PM
Wouldn't you say the intellectual content in the work is more valuable than even the labour? Funny you don't mention that.
Posted by: peter at December 8, 2006 07:18 PM
I have the same issues with the post office. Mine are not to do with art or even my work, BUT THINGS I BUY. I bought some antique pottery vases on eBay once and insured them for the amount of their value. They got smashed. I fought and fought, but lost, with them. They did eventually pay the amount I paid for the vases, less a deductible that they never told me existed ahead of time, but I had gotten a "good deal" on the vases. I said, "This makes no sense. I bought these for their investment value and it's none of your business what I paid for them -- I insured them for their VALUE." I had a professional appraisal, and a book listing of their exact value, etc., but that got me nowhere. They said they were already giving me a "gift" because the person shipping them to me was an idiot and did not pack them right. So I asked them, much like you did, "So what if someone were shipping me grandmother's diamond ring and it got lost, or a piece of china from grandmother's estate that is worth a lot of money, in addition to the sentimental value -- you'll reimburse me for a plate or a ring that I could buy at Wal-Mart?"
ERGH. At least I was more or less even -- it's not even analogous to your situation, because that is your work product and your livelihood. Assholes. It's analogous only to say that yes, Insurance is one fucked-up industry. FUCKED UP.
Posted by: Norma at December 10, 2006 11:13 AM
The insurance at the Post Office Sux. My problem with them stems from the time I did the cover paintings for Tournements Illuminated; they failed to deliver them in time for the magazine to go to press, and so they had to scramble to come up with something else. Do you think I got one bit of reimbursement for the lost business, et cetera? No, because they were able to find the paintings *eventually*, all I got was a refund of my postage. So much for their guarntees.
Posted by: Merouda at December 12, 2006 10:15 AM
P.O. with the PO, eh?
I think I felt a sigh from the Tundra the other night. You must be back in the moderately frozen North.
Posted by: Steph VW at December 12, 2006 12:37 PM
Definitely create invoices to show what the item is worth. Don't listen to the self proclaimed expert.
Posted by: Allyson at December 12, 2006 02:40 PM
Insurance in general is a huge ripoff. I feel your pain.
Posted by: NWJR at December 13, 2006 10:08 AM