No AI was used in any research, creative decisions, or editing decisions that went into the writting of the following.
A few months ago I ended up talking with a gal who takes public dollars for her art. And I don't know the
whole story but I know she's talked about grants and I don’t know what all else.
After that I wanted to clear this up for anyone who's read my previous article,
and for anyone who is maybe dealing with that philosophical question, of if I need the money they are offering, should I take it?
First of all, if it's public dollars, I don’t care who you
are and how much (or little money you make) you almost certainly paid some of that directly or indirectly. I'm sorry
for anyone who doesn’t understand the math here but if you're paying rent, if you are paying insurance premiums, if you're
buying food at the grocery store, if you're buying/paying money for anything, I promise you that you have felt the tax
burden somehow even if it’s not readily and immediately visible.
So an important part of my answer is they're taking it out of your pocket, you're just getting some of it back.
What I told her is, if they were dumb enough to give it out, she should be smart enough to take it.
Now, there are exceptions to this.
For example, if someone said they would give a grant or a subsidy to
somebody in exchange for like an openly satanic image, or X rated image, my answer (and I have to imagine based on what
I know of here this gals would be) is “absolutely not this is against my beliefs, my faith, my ethics, this is against
everything I stand for now, and ever have stood for!!!!”
Those are perfect examples of a time to say no, absolutely not. I don't care how much money you're offering. It's not worth it.
This isn't by any means the only exception I could cite, but I don't want to go into some of that, because that's off
into the weeds, and there's a lot of those.
So the issue becomes then if not taking the money isn’t the place to stand up and say now where do you actually
stand up and say No?
My answer to that is you stand up say no if you're the person at the government meeting, where they're deciding
how much to spend on art. You say, no, not one penny, you stand up and
you say it. At the ballot box when something is on the ballot that’s another one. That’s a great time to say
no, stop wasting tax payer dollars and stop asking for more dollars when you are still spending on these things.
Should things or should things not be taxed?
You say something.
There's a lot of other channels (writing/calling/emailing your elected officials, where I live there’s also
the right of petition) but the time to say it is not when you are faced with the question, “hey, so we're
gonna give this money to somebody do you want in?”
Unless there's a different ethical objection, besides the fact they're giving the money away, that's the time to
be looking at what is in your best interests, personally, professionally.
Otherwise, if you're in a situation, maybe you're in my neck of the woods, or you're somewhere with a similar
rule that says, 1%-2% is going for art and they're going to
give it to somebody. If you're going to say, no, they're either going to give it to another artist, or let's
be honest, it's government, they're going to find a some other way to waste it anyway.
So if you actually want them to quit wasting the money, because that's what the real big issue actually is that
they're wasting money all the time. If they can get their hands on the money in the first place they’re going
to find a way to waste it.
That's where doing things like in my neck of the woods, it would be the right of petition, in some states it’s
other processes. You might need to be getting involved with your local your state, your federal government, maybe
you need to be the one to run for office, if you're looking at trying to get this and other irresponsible
government spending stopped.
You may need to be talking to the people who are in office or running for office and telling them “NO!” You don't
want your hard earned dollars to be going to subsidize art that you may
or may not like when you personally might be quite happy to have taken those same dollars.
If you have enough income in the first place and bought a nice piece of art for
your wall or your yard or someplace, guess what it’s understandable you're not going to be doing that with that money now
that it's been taken out of your pocket.
Unfortunately, government doesn't pick winners and losers, government picks losers and sabotages winners, and it's no
different with art.
Unfortunately, what that means is the artist who says “hey, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring for this grant
this subsidy, this whatever for the arts”
That person is if they understand about all this is just saying, “you know, I did get screwed out of a sale. Maybe
I ought to try and recoup the loss.”
I'm not saying that it's a good thing that the arts are subsidized.
I'm just saying as far as the artists perspective goes, when it comes to making those decisions, these are some
things to consider. But when you hit the ballot box when you, get a chance to sign the petitions, when you have
a chance to do anything on the political side of this that's where you need to get them to back off of peoples money.
Think about this how many sales did you get screwed out of to pay for that one grant how many sales are you going
to get screwed out of to pay for the next one if you are the artist. Or if you are thinking about
buying art think about how many
art purchases you got screwed out of, or the
artists got screwed out of be it from you or someone else because of the money taken out of the buyers pockets.
And by the way people an artist who’s making money they aren’t exactly exempt from paying the tax dollars that
go into the funds that are going to the same grants they would be applying for.
�2012-present E. S. Pfahl. All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means - - graphic electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, information storage and retrieval systems - - without written permission of
E. S. Pfahl
