Image is of a zombie turkey, courtesy of biomek on DeviantArt.
By Terri
Both Ariela and I are exhausted from Thanksgiving eating and traveling. We hope you enjoyed your time spent with friends and/or family, and that you were not called upon for too much emotional labor.
A regular blog post will go up on Wednesday. After that, back to our usual schedule!
By Terri
Image shows a chibi Ariela under a pile of boxes and cardboard tubes saying "a little help, please..."
Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, which means that the $_WINTERHOLIDAY shopping season will soon begin in earnest.* As such, we wish to make you aware of the purchasing deadlines we will be using to make sure that you (or the recipients) receive your purchases in time for a timely gifting. Unfortunately, we do not possess a time machine, so we are unable to ensure Diwali gifts arrive on time. If someone could hook us up with with the TARDIS Express folks, we'll get right on that.
As per our FAQ, we generally ship USPS First Class. That requires the item be mailed by December 20th to guarantee delivery. In order to give Ariela adequate processing time, we will require the orders to be placed by December 14th to make sure that there is enough time to get things printed, matted and shipped to you.
*Seasonal creep is not a thing here at Geek Calligraphy. Even I, a longtime fan of holiday music, will not begin to listen to it until the Friday after Thanksgiving.
By Terri
Tired of playing broken telephone with the gabbai of your local minyan? Out of town and unexpectedly get called up to the Torah? Keep this card in your siddur and you'll always be addressed by your actual name!
Image shows Ariela's hand holding Terri's name card. Letters are in purple (of course) with gold tagin/crowns.
When Ariela moved to her current community, she noticed that they kept a box of file cards on the bimah with member's names in order to call them up for aliyot. Of course, since she was only there on Shabbat, she never got a chance to fill one out for herself. So she made one. And then (because she is a very lovely person), she offered to make one for her spouse thinking that he might like one. And then the natural realization that other people might want one followed. The idea for a sleeve to keep it inside the siddur came from the card being used as a bookmark and then falling out all the time.
Image shows a siddur with a name card in a sleeve attached to the cover.
They are available in 5 different colors, with ornamental crowns in either the color of the letters or gold or silver. The cards are laminated so that they are durable. The corners are rounded so that they do not poke you.
At the moment, if you would like to order more than one, you need to add each card to your shopping cart individually and fill out the personalization form. If you would like to order a large batch, please use our website contact form and request it. We will work with you.
Aliyah name cards are $45 each. We are also selling extra sleeves for $4 each here.
By Terri
Do you need something on your office wall declaring just how happy you are that Tishrei is over? Get one of these before we run out!
Note that this is a special bonus product for November. We will still be releasing a product on the usual third Wednesday of the month (oddly enough, this Wednesday).
Neither Ariela nor I are huge fans of Tishrei. The sheer number of holidays are exhausting. Ariela tends to be an very visible participant in her ritual community and I tend to live the stereotype of the Jewish mother who cooks way too much food and invites the whole world over.*
Needless to say, we were both pretty relieved to welcome in the next month, called Marcheshvan.** Ariela threw together this quick doodle to put up on our various forms of social media:
Image shows the words "Mishenichnas Marcheshvan Marbin B'Simcha" in green and blue.
It's a riff on the traditional line about the month of Adar, (which has the holiday of Purim in it), where we say that when Adar begins, happiness increases.
When we put this up, people started asking when it was going to be available for purchase. Clearly we had a niche product on our hands.*** So Ariela redid the art**** and printed out a limited number. The reason for the limited number of prints is that each one will be hand gilded. It's also why they're more expensive for the size. The original is also for sale here.*****
The irony of releasing a product touting the joy of this month is quite painful at the moment. Ariela considered not releasing it after all. Ultimately, we decided to go ahead with it because we want to believe that fear, bigotry, hatred, and violence will not be able to deprive us of all that is good in our lives. When we are no longer able to take pleasure in the things we still have, that is when we are truly defeated. We may give in to despair at times, but we do not want to give up entirely.
So we are sending this art out into the world in hopes that it will bring smiles to people's faces at times when they need it, and in faith that next year, we will once again be able to enjoy the respite we gain when Cheshvan 5778 comes along.
Mishenichnas Marcheshvan measures 8" x 10" (includes a silver mat) and is available for $50.
*My main ritual community doesn't welcome a whole lot of women's participation. It's a sore spot.
**Pronounced mahr-khesh-vahn
***Rather similar to "Rabbis <3 Cheshvan" shirts
****The initial plan was to re-scan the doodle at a better resolution. Unfortunately, this made it look even more like a doodle, and it was faster to do a new original.
*****Unless it's already been bought. Then you're out of luck.
by Ariela
"Vote" written across the Constitution in silver ink
Let's face it. I am not thinking about art today, I am too busy chewing my fingernails off.
If you are an American citizen and have not yet done your civic duty, please go and vote!
You can probably figure out our political positions based on what we say on this blog, but whether you agree with us or not, we want you to vote and support your right to do so.
So make a plan to vote. (FYI, you cannot vote by text.) Remember that there are local elections and ballot questions up as well as the presidential race. Check out a sample ballot online and do some research on candidates and questions. Learn what to do if your right to vote is challenged. And we will see you on the flip side of the election.
Image shows a grumpy chibi version of Terri tapping her foot, and staring at calendar largely blocked out by holidays. She is saying "Sensible design, my left foot."
By Terri
Your friendly neighborhood artist/calligrapher and her wrangler will be taking the entire month of October off. That solar month is overly stuffed with the fall Jewish holidays. As both of us are observant of the restrictions that these holidays bring with them, that makes it difficult to keep to our usual blogging and product release schedule, let alone any commissions that might come in.
So while you may see Tweets and the occasional Facebook post when we feel something needs to be shared, this blog is going to be quiet. While we will be taking orders for prints and greeting cards, they may be slower to ship than usual. We probably* will not be taking ketubah orders for the entire month. There will be no new products released in October. We hope you find the month enjoyable.
See y'all in November!
*Obviously emergency ketubah situations do arise and we will make our best effort (with applicable rush charges) to meet your needs in that case.
Need to proclaim that your time is worth money? Then boy do we have the print for you.
Please note that this print contains actual swear words, and should not necessarily be viewed at the workplace of your choice.
Read Moreby Ariela
Original art by Allie Brosh - hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com
Meme generated by Imageflip.com
Welcome back to week three of Artists' Rights Month at Geek Calligraphy. In week one I pointed out a lot of problems created by the Starving Artist trope, and now I want to provide some solutions.
This one should come as no surprise, but one of the best ways to support an artist is to buy their work. Helps us keep the lights on, the rent paid, selves (and families/pets) fed, etc. We like all these things.
Buy our stuff and don't attempt to tell us that we should be charging less. We put time and skilled labor into our work, and we set our prices accordingly. Things that go into how we set our prices include, but are not limited to: the difficulty producing the item in question, how many of them we make and whether the process can be made easier if we make more, cost of materials, cost of living while we produce the item in question. We don't set prices arbitrarily high.
For some kinds of artists, commissions are extra super awesome! If you think you won't be able to afford it, contact the artist and ask. Be up front about your budget and say that you know they may not be able to produce something in your price range, but you wanted to check. Make it clear that you like their work and respect their skill and their time. If they say no, accept gracefully.
But we know that you cannot buy everything all the time. So here are some other ways to help.
Creating art can be an exhausting process. Knowing that someone likes it, even if they can't buy it at the moment, can be an enormous pick-me-up. It lets us know that someone sees our stuff and likes it enough to take a moment to send us a kind word.
If you see something awesome posted somewhere you should totally re-blog/retweet/Share on Facebook/whatever, but it will help the originator more if you can do it with attribution. This can be hard, because sometimes you see things posted without attribution in the first place. take a moment and hunt the originator down to give them credit. Links back are also helpful, as they boost search rankings.
See something awesome and want to use it for your blog/podcast/website? Contact the creator and ask their permission. If they say they want you to pay for it, do so, or don't use it. If they say they don't want you using it even if you offer to pay, respect their wishes. Photographers in particular are frequent victims of this one as Google has made it super easy to search for any image, right click, and stick it somewhere else. I know it's easy, but don't do it. Be a mensch (a good person) and contact the creator before using their work.
Re-posting our stuff is great, but please, by all means, signal boost with a comment about how much you like it. Gush to your friends. Maybe one of them is looking for exactly what we're doing right now. This is particularly helpful if you can reach a different audience than the one that the artist might already have in their personal network.
If you hear someone reinforcing the Starving Artist trope, don't let it go unremarked. Point out that it is both inaccurate and unhelpful. If you hear someone complaining about how much an artist is charging, not in an "I wish I could afford it" way but in a "How dare they!" way, push back; bonus points if you can do this at work. If you are a creator yourself, portray artists in a variety of circumstances.
Honestly, I feel a bit funny about mentioning this one, as it is so much further down on my list of "Problematic Stuff People Say That Should Be Called Out" than say racism, sexism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, etc. But if you have a moment and some spare emotional energy and see the opportunity, go for it.
If you are a creator yourself, mentor newbies into your field. I am not saying that you should train them for free, but helping them to get a feel for the ropes can help everyone. If they set their prices too low, it can cut the bottom out of the market for everyone. Remind them that their work is worth paying for!
by Terri
Since we appear to have declared September to be Artist's Rights Month, I wanted to do a example* of the commission process gone right.
Full Disclaimer. I am the one requesting the commission from the artist in question. I have been friends with Ariela as well as a handicrafter myself for long enough that I fully appreciate how much work and effort goes into custom anything. I Get It, and tailor my expectations accordingly.
I knit a lot, and have fallen fair down the rabbit hole of interchangeable knitting needle sets.** As such, I need a case to hold all the various parts so that they don't get lost all over the house. I outgrew the binder that came with my first set*** about two years ago, though I pushed it to its absolute limit. Knowing that other people had success with worm binders, I purchased one from Bass Pro.**** Once I'd overstuffed it with my needles and cables, I realized that I didn't care for it at all. It would work as an interim piece and I would wait until some room in the budget opened up for something nicer.
I happened to come into a bit of fun money due to a survey, and decided now was the time. I approached Grace Fross, of Graces Cases on Etsy. Thankfully, this is relatively easy to do, although you are stuck in a proprietary messaging system.***** I had seen one of her products that I hoped could be adapted to better suit my needs. I also had seen something else that might have worked, and I could show her pictures of that. Both of these things will be important later.
While I opened the conversation with something relatively short, it referenced an existing product and how it might be adapted:
| me: | Would you be interested in making a $_STYLE style case, but with more pages? |
| Grace Fross: | Both the Standard and deluxe cases have more pages including a page for 2 sets of tips. But if you were thinking of a different layout then we do take custom orders. |
Once I knew that a custom piece was a possibility, I was able to further elaborate what I wanted:
| me: | I was looking for something that can store enough tips for 4+ sets of needles plus cables. I'm willing to pay custom prices. Something with as many pages as a Deluxe, but with the internal layout of the Tips Too. |
| Grace Fross: | We do lots of custom orders in a wide variety of layouts. There are a few restrictions though because sewing machines will only go through a certain number of layers. Custom orders have a wait list of around 10 - 12 weeks and there is a 20% surcharge. With custom you can select from fabrics I have on hand or supply your own in addition to a layout designed to fit your needles. |
| me: | The restrictions and surcharge are reasonable and understandable. So is the waiting list. |
Note the bolded text. I agreed up front to whatever Grace wanted to charge me for her work, before she even quoted me her terms. This might not always be the case for someone seeking a commission. If you don't know what the baseline price is, don't commit like I did. But I had an idea of what the general prices were based on the items in her Etsy shop, and was willing to pay up to half again as much for something that worked for me. Knowing what you can and are willing to spend is an important part of any custom commission. Also note that Grace was up front with the waiting list and pricing for custom work. I was able to make a decision about whether or not I could afford the work before anyone had expended time, effort or money. If I hadn't been willing to pay or wait, I would have responded as follows:
| me: | Thank you for your time. I'm sorry, but I don't think that this is going to fit within my current budget or time constraints. |
| me: | Do you require a deposit? |
| Grace Fross: | No deposit needed. |
| Grace Fross: | If you haven't heard from me by the end of this week, please remind me |
That delightful surprise was an important part of an artist's responsibility to communicate clearly. Without that, I would have happily waited, but with it I knew things would be speeding up a little.
Now I will sing Ms. Fross's praises, as she truly is the Fabric Whisperer. I mentioned that I like purple, and she came up with this gorgeous batik fabric for me:
Anyone who knows me well knows just how much I jumped up and down when I saw this.
At this point, further snippets of back and forth conversation would just devolve into jargon about what I wanted. Which, again, demonstrates communication. I was able to point Grace to another Etsy listing to demonstrate some particulars of what I wanted. Once she saw that, she was able to let me know that she would try to get it finished soon, but she did have a show that she needed to finish her inventory for. And once again, she checked in with me on the pricing, now that she was able to have precise numbers for me.
All of these things were laid out BEFORE any work was completed. All told, only a couple of hours in back and forth time were spent (which, had I not gone with this, would have been time not recompensed). And in the end, everyone was happy. I got what I wanted, Grace Fross was paid fairly. And that's a commission gone right.
*I ramble. The post won't be short.
**This was my first set. I have since discovered another company that uses the same manufacturer (cross-compatibility FTW) and am completely powerless in the face of pretty wood.
***Alas, it no longer ships with that binder. Nor do they make that binder any longer. Hence the need for something else.
****Yes, the sort you buy for storing fishing lures. Yes, this means I'll never stop getting Bass Pro catalogs. I've somewhat resigned myself to it.
*****Ms. Fross would like you to know that customers can also approach her via her email address at the GracesCases website.
Image reads "I am an artist. This does not mean I will work for free. I have bills just like you. Thank you for understanding.
Image found on thephotographer4you.com
by Ariela
"The Starving Artist trope needs to DIAF."
I have been having the same, or similar conversations, in various forms, a lot of late on social media. So I decided to write about it at more length than I can in 140 characters, even in consecutive tweet. The topic is only somewhat related to Labor Day, not being about an Artists' Guild or other organized labor movement. But it is about recognizing the labor of artists and valuing it properly, so I thought this would be an appropriate time to post about it.
You probably know the trope of the Starving Artist; it's quite common in American culture. It's the one that says that artists almost never make enough money to make ends meet and that aspiring artists have no sense of practicality and make no plans to support themselves while they blithely pursue their art. This trope needs to Get Gone.
The Starving Artist trope was popularized during the Romantic era in Europe and America, which peaked around 1800-1850. In America, it had a large overlap with the Bohemian movement. Both of these groups valorized the idea of devotion to art - be it writing, visual arts, music, etc. - to the exclusion of all else, particularly material concerns. In these environments, the Starving Artist was an aspirational model, not a negative image.
The 1980s and 90s saw a bunch of movies, TV shows, songs, and other artistic projects showing the young artistic hopeful arriving, usually in NYC or LA, with just a suitcase and a few dollars in their pocket, also presenting this image in a positive light. Jonathan Larson's musical Rent, based strongly on Puccini's Romantic-era opera La Bohème, was probably the pinnacle of this trend, though I'm sure some people would put in a word for "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey.
The evil counterpart of the Starving Artist is the Sellout, the person who has decided to abandon their artistic dream in favor of creating Extruded Art-like Product in exchange for money.
The stereotypes of the Starving Artist and the Sellout combine to create a double-bind of expectations for artists. Artists are starving, so if you want to be an artist, the immediate assumption is that you are an impractical flake with your head in the clouds and no economic sense. If you are already working as an artist and have the audacity to require payment for your work, you must be a greedy Sellout and your art can't possibly be good enough to be worth your quoted rate. Artists are "right-brained" people, so they don't pursue their careers logically and you can't possibly have a realistic plan or expectation of how hard you are going to have to work. And if you have a day job and pursue art on the side, why are you demanding to be paid for your hobby?
This is galling enough on its own, but even moreso when compared with the treatment of another group of creative dreamers in America: "entrepreneurs." Wikipedia defines Starving Artist as "an artist who sacrifices material well-being in order to focus on their artwork. They typically live on minimum expenses, either for a lack of business or because all their disposable income goes toward art projects. " But this description could also be applied to an entrepreneur in the throes of starting up a business. Startups have a high rate of failure, but we don't have a derogatory "Starving Entrepreneur" trope; in fact, people who do that tend to be lauded by the American capitalist machine. And I don't buy that this is due to the newness of entrepreneurship compared to art - the Romantic period that saw the birth of the Bohemian ideal was in large part a response to the Industrial Revolution, so the tension between these two groups goes back plenty long.
Someone who lives on ramen while working on the next big app, or mortgages their house to finance their restaurant, or works at a day job and then codes all night, etc., is considered "goal oriented," or at least they are if they succeed. We don't tend to hear about failures because they don't match the cultural narrative surrounding entrepreneurs and The American Dream. Artists who live meagerly are derided for "not having a real job," or living in an "unsustainable way;" those of us who work a day job are frequently condescendingly applauded for recognizing that our art will never be a going concern. Our failures are incorporated back into the cultural canon and our successes are forgotten because they don't fit the preconception of the Starving Artist. It's confirmation bias at its most basic.
This boondoggle of unrealistic and conflicting expectations is inextricably tied to and exacerbated by the way that our society values art. Or rather, the way that it doesn't value art. Art is seen as unnecessary, something not worth spending large amounts of money to obtain, or only worth spending top dollar for if one is so rich that one simply has nothing better to do with that money. I'm including more than just graphic arts in that estimation. Music, novels, theater, dance, and other media are similarly denigrated. One might think that wider access to the arts, through recording, scanning, printing, streaming, and other reproduction technology, might give people across class lines a greater appreciation for them and increase the number of people who understand their worth; alas it is not so. If anything, I suspect that it has further devalued them by creating false expectations about the cost. When art could only be afforded by the wealthy, of course it was expensive to produce; but when anyone can buy a poster, it's an huge sticker shock to encounter custom art prices. People who aren't in the habit of commissioning work don't think about the fact that the cost of production, including the artist's time, is amortized over the entire print run/album run/clothing line/etc. Sticker shock is normal, and I don't resent the clients who hear my breakdown of costs and expected labor time and say, "Ok, wow, that's out of our price range, but thanks for your time!" I also don't mind the ones who ask what the options are to cut the costs. It's the ones who get angry when I tell them my prices who are the problem. (Terri deals with most of this as part of general administravia, so I get off easy in this department.)
I am far from the only one who experiences this problem. Plenty of people attempt to get artists to do work on the grounds that it will be a good portfolio piece, or that the project will bring them publicity. The twitter account @ForExposure_txt documents some of the egregious examples of this trend. Another common trend is the non-profit that asks artists to donate their work "because it's for a good cause!" but would never dream of asking their plumber to do likewise. People who accept the quoted prices of consulting firms without a blink try to bargain artists down. The perceived valuelessness of the time and work of artists is, I suspect, one of the factors that causes Patreon to be so much more contentious than other crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter and GoFundMe. A society that derides us for not being able to support ourselves through our art and then turns around and demands that we work for free or insultingly low rates is hypocritical and sick. Our lovely capitalist machine demands that far too many people in a variety of jobs work below the poverty line, but what I am addressing here is the particular moral outrage expressed at artists who have the gall to say that they deserve to get paid, not just be snivellingly grateful for whatever pennies get tossed our way by noble and beneficent people with "Real Jobs."
Artists know our vocation takes an enormous amount of hard work, dedication, and perseverance. We're not in denial about this. For some of us this means we work a day job while pursuing art at night and on the weekends, sometimes for a few years, sometimes for all our working lives. For some of us it means paring away our expenses until we can live within our earnings as artists. For many it is a combination of both. We do this so that we can produce the art we love, which we hope you will love, too.
Artists make things that are beautiful, profound, disturbing, thought-provoking, challenging, and sometimes things that exist just to make you happy. We deserve respect for this work. And we deserve to get paid.
And the Starving Artist trope, which tells a story that we deserve none of this, needs to die in a fire.
Sometimes profanity is required. When someone asks you to work "for exposure," for example. Or for "portfolio development." Or tries to haggle you down from your stated prices by trying to convince you that you're not actually that good.
Remind yourself to stand firm and insist on being paid what you are worth with this print. Beautiful letters and graceful flourishes deliver a blunt message with class.
Available in three sizes. All come with a blue mat and ship flat.