Architectural Sculptures

My set of three Nortown theater Art Deco panels brought about a rather interesting couple of emails since this summer, first one that came was from an architectural salvage dealer Ive purchased about $8,000 worth of pieces from over a few years time, the last one was the very large $5,000 terra cotta eagle that graces my front parlor.
Seems that when I requested they refrain from sending their newsletter to no less than three of my emails (when you buy from THESE people they force you to subscribe to their spammy newsletter by default it seems) My request was met by an odd sort of implied accusation to the effect that I was “knocking off” “their” salvaged panels from this Nortown theater! moreover, it demanded to know if I had ever been to that theater in person!

How would that matter whether I had been to the theater or not??

I saw the photos of these panels and decided I would like to model them, the designs were very easy for me, and they look good.

Long story short, I wrote back that first of all, the designs are antique and the design is in the public domain, secondly, that the photos of the theater I have on display have nothing at all to do with him or his salvage place, and that they came from a flicker account with a “creative commons” free-to-use license granting the rights to use the images with a few restrictions.

Ok, so the guy writes back and says, that’s not what he was referring to! LOL, ok, so now it comes out- get ready for it- he was upset (to put it mildly) that people have been emailing him asking about… and this wasn’t real clear to me… if he had originals to sell, or if I had original panels to sell.

First of all that’s a real curious one for a couple of reasons, one is why would anyone contact this guy asking if I have any originals to sell or if I had been part of the salvaging of them??? You’d think they would contact me directly to ask such questions, especially since nowhere on my site do I ever claim to have salvaged the originals, and moreover- I state on at least one page here that I do not sell original pieces at any time.
Furthermore, my pages on the panels clearly show me modelling the designs from raw clay and explain the story of the theater’s history, and that my works are reduced in size from the original scale for todays’ smaller modern homes.

The other curious thing to me in thinking about that- a smart salesman would use that free contact opportunity to say something like: “I don’t have them any more, BUT I do have X and Y available that you might be interested in.“ So that is a complete fail LOL.

A few months go by and I continue getting these stupid newsletters, by this time I had already decided I wasn’t going to purchase another item from this jerk ever again, so the other night, quite late I sent all three back with a REMOVE in the subject line and a line that I have no interest in ever purchasing anything from this company again.

Not seven minutes later, I get a reply!

So he degenerates into personal insults via email now! then it hit me, and I figured out what this jerk’s game was, he was STILL upset that my version of the panels have been selling nicely since they were created, and that as he put it- he was angry he has to “deal with” people asking him about the original salvaged panels after seeing mine on the web! so his game was- he was going to annoy me with his stupid newsletters in a childish retaliation because:

1) He isn’t smart enough to act like a SALESMAN when someone contacts him about something he doesn’t have.
2) His hilarious insult calling me a “knockoff dude” and a few other nasty remarks I won’t repeat- made me think that a glorified junk salesman as he is doesn’t have the TALENT or skills to create art that people appreciate, and that he has to resort to SELLING other people’s artwork much like a vacuum cleaner salesman has to sell Electrolux vacuums LOL.

So while artist like myself create art with our skills and talents, he has to resort to SELLING used art that has limited availability, hey, maybe I should hire him to be my SALESMAN working on commission or something, since that seems to be the best he can do- sell other people’s art

Anyway, the biggest irony of all is that his nasty-grams motivated me yesterday into aiming my marketing efforts on these specific Nortown theater panels, and last night, just hours after I put back the web page for them (I had it down till after the holidays) I received an inquiry from a possible new client who is interested in perhaps two panels to incorporate into a new Art Deco styled fireplace he is building.

Funny how that worked out, two panels probably sold because of a jerk and his newsletter and email thing

Also, I had an earlier inquiry for three of these panels recently which I turned down at the time because I had all but used up my supply of casting materials, I was hanging on to what I had for casting some small items as I wasn’t planning to order any right now till after the holiday slump.

But I went ahead and ordered a half ton of that and will have plenty on hand.

Still trying to come up with some ideas for a model or some models this month to use up the 1,000# or so of moist clay I have stored in the studio, over the next couple of weeks I will be thinking about some possible designs I want to do to use that up as it has a definite shelf life!