Tip Your Hat 2013
Art For Charity
June 22, from 1-3 pm at
DaDe Art and Design Lab in Inglewood,
1327 ninth avenue SE
Tel 403 454 0243
It’s time for another art for charity project! This Tip Your Hat project involves painting a cowboy hat as part of an art for charity project where we are raising proceeds for TMC Programming.
TMC Programming organizes art-workshops for the Calgary Homeless Shelter System.
Art For Charity Projects
Whenever an art for charity project comes up I have a few rules.
First, I don’t give away my art anymore. As an artist I get asked quite consistently to donate a piece of art to various charities. Some of them are quite well known, others not so much!
The problem with this is I provide a generic piece with no background about it, about me, the process etc. It’s just a random piece of art. That means it’s value drops tremendously.
Randomly donating art simply doesn’t work for me, so I don’t.
Second, if it’s a charity, I either want to be at the event and hand in hand with that I prefer it to be an event I can actually paint at or at least provide a story about the piece or pieces.
This allows people to meet me, which strangely enough typically adds additional value versus a faceless nameless donation. It also allows people to hear the story or get some background about the art piece that is for sale or auction.
In the case of live painting the value gets magnified even more as people not only see me paint the art live and in person, they see how the art gets created. I also often get to discuss and chat with attendees about the art and what and why I created it the way I did. This adds a huge amount of value to any auction or potential sale as people have a slightly more invested into the piece. They now know the artist, they understand the story and they are there for charity.
This can add a few hundred dollars to a typical charities coffers, and it maintains the value and integrity of my work. So it’s win for everyone!
Now, projects like this art for charity event fit just on the fringe of my rules. I’m still giving it away, but they provide the medium (the hat) and the supplies (the paint) and the big draw pulling me in is actually painting unusual items. Like a hat.
So, bottomline,