On making cost-benefit choices

My first title for this post was, On making cost-benefit decisions. But I realized that the word “decisions” was not exactly what I want to talk about. It’s choices, rather than decisions. Choices that involve that part of the process that we often forget about and sometimes forget to budget for, too: the stuff we need to make the work. 

Some of those things might include: paper, ink cartridges (a full set of eleven for my Canon Pro-Graf 1000 runs $699 at B&H, for example), printing (maybe you’re not doing your own or maybe your printer cannot handle the size you have in mind), postage or delivery, adhesive, framing, matting, on and on and on. 

There is no right or wrong answer, once you get past the obvious: if it’s a choice between feeding your hungry child or going for a larger print, you know what to do. (You chose the former, right?) Or if something is simply out of your league in terms of the costs, skip it. Find another way. No need to plunge (further) into debt to figure this out. 

But here is where choice comes in. When it is something expensive and you’re going to feel it in the household budget and you know there’s a less expensive option and you want it. 

I’ll give you a real life example. It’s happening as we speak. Or as I type and then you read. For the body of work I will be presenting at the upcoming MFA retreat in November, I would l-o-v-e to have three or four silk (even silk-ish) prints, hanging from the ceiling and fluttering in the gallery in front of my work, circling in a horseshoe shape around the prints on the wall. 

The prints are $300 each. So that’s $900 for a small part of a project that has already required me to buy several boxes of my thoroughly dreamy and creamy Moab Entrada 300 gsm paper, a new box of cartridges, and a bunch of other stuff before I’ve loaded up the conestoga and driven 150 miles to Rockport, Maine for the winter retreat. 

There’s a company I’ve found on the internet that can something similar for literally one-third of the price of the silk prints. I haven’t ordered anything yet, but I am guessing that the $300 versions are going to be more fantastic looking and feeling. 

This is where choice comes in. 

Maybe if money were no object, I wouldn’t feel so strongly about this. But that is not the case for me. I need to be careful about how much I spend and for what. 

So, rather than make a rule that says I will always go cheap or a rule that says I will always go big, I have come up with some questions for myself. To help me make the choice. 

1. How will this choice affect the clarity and effectiveness of the body of work? A lot? A little? Not much at all?
2. What might I learn from going the more expensive route? For example, on several occasions I have worked with Singer Editions, a fine art printer in Boston. And oh boy are they fine. The work is beautiful. I lack the ability to print at the sizes I wanted (big). I learned so much about file prep and about paper choices. I went on press the day the prints were made and I asked questions. 
3. What might I learn from going the less expensive route? Part of the work in doing an MFA is learning to resolve problems. Rather than outsourcing all of the elements of the work, what skills might I pick up by finding a less expensive way?

Some instructors will say, This isn’t an exhibition; don’t spend so much money. Others will say: I want you to “go big” (meaning print large). In so doing, they are asking a student to spend more (in most cases). And still others will suggest both. Yikes!

As I said at the beginning, there is no right or wrong answer. In building a practice, I have to be pragmatic. I cannot afford to waste expensive paper. I shouldn’t be doing that, anyway, given the sustainability and resource issues. 

What I have decided is that I will be both pragmatic and judicious. There will come a time when I spend more than I necessarily “need to” because I want to see the print made in a certain way on a certain paper or fabric or surface. And there will be times when I decide that bagsoflove.com will do just fine for the silk — er, make mine polyester, please, Mr. Bartender — for what I need.

In the AI-generated image at the top of this post, I have a print I love. I find it both ominous and nostalgic at the same time. It’s the old country and memory and fantasy colliding in an image I made with my good pal, DALL’E2. I want to see it printed large (maybe 30×40 inches) and that means spending money. Or buying a commercial printer that costs $12,000 and would require me to first remove my kitchen to open the space! To me, it is worth it spend the money because I know I will learn a great deal in the process. I have two other images in the series that I will reduce in size and do myself. 

I believe two things are important. First and foremost, for a practice to work on a sustained level, we have to work within our means. And secondly, we need to make choices. The decision isn’t a choice between which will be more impressive to look at. Oh, hell no. The decision is, Which way enriches me as an artist because it fundamentally enriches the work?