Fund Raising
Peace message casting
We are hatching an idea for enabling people to raise funds for peace poles by having artists create works of art for sale out of these 5 by 7 inch castings of the peace prayer.
The piece on the left is a photo of one of the plaster casts. The piece on the right is how I Photoshopped it to see what it might look like if an artist sanded the edges and applied colors.
Click to Enlarge
I got the idea from a non-profit arts group in Cincinnati
that had artists create 1200 works of art that were 5 by 7 inches, mostly on
paper, to donate to sell to raise funds. They sold them for $75 each. I created
a few variations that contained the peace prayer. They had a preview sale for
their highest donors and among the first things to get snapped up were the peace
prayer pieces. Many of the pieces in their display never sold, but these sold
immediately. So I thought I might be onto something.
A couple of the pieces that I made were plaster casts like the one in the photo
above left. They were the unadorned, unsealed plaster seen above, although
without the imperfections of this particular piece.
So I have been wondering if these couldn't be used to raise funds for peace
poles. If a group had a stack of these to give to artists to decorate as they
see fit, then there could be a fundraiser displaying and selling works of art
that speak specifically about the message that is on peace poles.
The nice thing about creating those works of art on this plaster cast is that it
does not require that all of the artists be geniuses. There is a diversity of
craft skills that could be brought to it, like:
Applying scraps of wallpaper in an aesthetic way.
Colored pencil decorating.
Felt tip pen sketching.
Hot gluing beads to it.
Gluing sheets of colored gel like stained glass.
Breaking it and reassembling it like mosaic.
Pouring paint on it and then squeegeeing it off to fill in the letters
Hand painting a variety of colors into the individual letters
Pouring a few colors of house paint in the center of it and then spinning it on
a lazy susan, and then perhaps squeegeeing it off. And maybe then lightly
sanding it after the paint dries to remove even more paint from around the
letters.
This is off the top of my head. Artists would think of better ideas.
The suggestions above are crafts ideas. Artists will be more creative. If
artists with some renown work on these, it will pull up interest in all the rest
of them. They did that with the 1200 pieces here and kept the names of the
artists hidden until after the works were purchased. Purchasers were not focused
on names that way and instead bought what they liked, while potentially getting
a name. That worked well for this sale. And it was not an auction. It was a sale
with everything in the gallery selling for the same price.
Frankly, I never would have thought to charge as much as $75 for something like
this. But this group presented them as special, one-of-a-kind works of art
lovingly created by artists to support a high-minded cause. So people raced to
beat others to the pieces they liked the best and paid $75 each for my
unadorned, plaster casts. Actually, when you think of how much time went into
each of these, it wouldn’t have been worth it to the artists to do it for the
money if they got only $75 for their work. For me personally, that would not
have begun to cover the expenses of making the mold let alone the time spent.
For individual works of art signed by artists, I don’t think they were priced
too high.
The mold I am using right now makes a piece that is half an inch thick and
weighs slightly more than a pound. It might be fragile. That has not adequately
been tested yet. It could be that putting shellac or an acrylic clear coat on it
would fix that. Or it might not turn out to be an issue. I put some fiber inside
of this one to help strengthen it. But that is one of the things we would figure
out as we went along. Do they break in shipping? Do they break when artists work
on them? I don’t know yet. If I make them both perfect and extra strong, they’d
be more expensive. That might be overkill. Overkill might be okay if they sell
for $75. But if that turns out not to be a realistic price, then perhaps we
cannot afford overkill. This still is in the figuring-out stage.
Additional thoughts on what could be done with the casts:
The plaster cast is not water-soluble. One of the things someone could try would
be applying a water-soluble plaster to it, perhaps drywall mud with a putty
knife to fill in the letters, then using a wet sponge to level it off so that
the rest of the piece is not coated with it. Then there would be a flat surface
on which a number of things could be done.
One thing to try would be to see if the new plaster absorbs dyes differently than the original plaster, which by itself would bring out the text for a point of departure for what additional things might be done to it.
Another thing to try could be to do a pencil sketch on the flat surface, then soak the piece to dissolve away the plaster in the letters returning the casting to its original condition but with a pencil sketch on it.
Another experiment would be to die the piece and then dissolve away the plaster in the letters so that they will have a contrasting color under whatever else the artist does.
The casts could be coated and then used like wood blocks for making prints.
There is a process for projecting black and white photographs onto surfaces like this. One could be a "before" shot of the site of the future peace pole. One could be a shot of the peace pole being carried to the site by the organizers. One could be a shot of the box being opened to see the peace pole for the first time. Sketches of the these things might be better. I don't know.
What if a page were lacquered to it? It could be a page in handwriting from a diary by a notable person. Or a letter, perhaps purchased from a purveyor of rare documents. Or a letter from the governor about the current project. It could be a printed page of quotes from Gandhi or Einstein. It could be a page from the ledger from the peace pole project. It could be a page from the minutes of the meeting in which the decision was made to plant a peace pole.
I'll add more as I think of them, just for brainstorming, but probably better than any of these ideas is handing a cast to an artist to see what he or she thinks to do with it.