y wife and I packed up the kids a couple of weekends ago and made our way to a "starving artist" art sale in Fort Collins. These sales are a great way to find affordable art, especially art hand-painted by individuals lacking a basic understanding of perspective and proportion. (And color. And paint. And canvas. And brushes.) In fact, I'm not ruling out the possibility that the whole "starving artist" thing is a scam and that, somewhere, there's a grade-school art room with plasma TVs on every wall.
That said, we needed art for our walls, and there were plenty of affordable lighthouse paintings to choose from. We came home with eight paintings total, including three rather large ones, one of which we actually liked. (And we liked that one A LOT.)
Then, last week, I learned a valuable lesson: A large picture frame costs roughly as much as a gay albino condor.
If you have a 24"x36" piece of starving art, it's actually cheaper to make a papier-mâché frame using $100 bills than to purchase a custom frame at your local Hobby Lobby.
Why? I have no idea. I mean, we're talking decorative wood, miter cuts, and staples. By comparison, the base molding in your average home would cost $790,000 if Hobby Lobby were involved.
So now I have eight paintings sitting on my kitchen floor, and the sum total I paid for all eight is less than what it would cost to frame a single one. The starving artists have long blown town (looking for food/suckers elsewhere, I assume), so returning the paintings isn't a possibility. To get these things framed, I seem to be left with the following options:
- Garage Sales -- This would involve a lot of driving, parking, talking to people, and the temptation to buy yet another terrycloth shirt. No thanks.
- Flea Markets -- Again, a lot of effort, and no guarantee that I will find the right quantity and style of frames. A quest like this could take me into my retirement years. No thanks.
- Selling One Of The Children -- If we had known about the cost of picture frames before becoming attached to our current crop of children, we might have considered it. Sadly, that ship has sailed. No thanks.
- Theft -- Several problems here. First, these artsy-fartsy stores seem to keep the framing areas in the back. Second, most of the frames we need are too big to pull off the whole "I'm a hunchback! Quit staring!" routine. Third, the cost of frames is such that shoplifting them would classify as a Class A felony. All things considered, I'd rather hang a frame-less painting in my house than have a gorgeous frame to hang in my penitentiary cell. So, no thanks.
- Title Loans, Payday Loans, Credit Cards, Additional Mortgages, Roulette Wheel -- For some reason, I just don't feel like going into debt to someone named "Vince" or "Vinny" (or any other "Vi-" name) for picture frames. Call me crazy, but no thanks.
- Saving Money -- Ha ha, very funny. No thanks.
- Making My Own Frames -- In my profession, a router doesn't shape wood, it routes IP packets. So unless HP introduces a DeskJet printer that shaves 2x4s — and I mean soon — no thanks.
- Painting Abstract Lighthouses -- Now we're talking!!! For every 38 lighthouses I paint, I could buy one frame! And I've always wanted to learn to paint! And there are suckers out there who will buy anything with a crappy lighthouse on it! Bingo!!!
So, dear reader, I beg of you: Support your local starving artist.
We just need some cash for food. (And decorative wood.)