Hey there, sports fans, Al here with the latest:
Was the year 2025 a good year for Black Box Visual Arts?
In all honesty, I can equivocally say yes. The beginning of the year 2025, this last year has been nothing but a success, going from strength to strength, towards the end of the year. Selling artwork is kind of like in a way selling a car. It looks pretty on the outside, or maybe I should use the idea of a piece of candy like a M&M peanut or something like that's great on the outside, smooth and slick, and crunchy on the inside, but does selling artwork make it any less? Every single sale is a high point in my mind. The candy analogy was a bad one. I apologize.
“Escape Art Show at the Flattop and Salamander Cafe.
At the beginning of the I love started with a new show at the Goodfoot making in January this last year and ended up selling the w I'd have to take a look now but probably about nine different pieces all coming up to a ork I total of take-home for about $1600 or so and take-home was actually 1200 which worked out really well for me from the very love hav I could actually afford getting framing and all that other stuff done and still have money left over to spend to be able to enjoy literally one month later I had a turnaround with another show with one single piece selling for $1200 (at the Multnomath Athletic Club) so that was a huge jump then there was a little bit of a ing shows which gave me a time to reevaluate where I was at with artwork and almost the entire collection of work that I've been working on including the 10 20”x 24”. With those, along with a bunch of an a number of other pieces in that particular The Flattop and Salamader Art show, I came home with about $600 in my pocket last year, which has been the best of all, at least for me anyway. I can't speak to anybody else. Unfortunately, I know 2025 has been traumatic with so many things in the world, but I can only focus on a few things is the biggest one of
But by the end of the year, things started to slow down. Was there another win for the kid? I had two more shows lined up. The only difference were these shows were, to a lesser degree, not advertised. They were both attached to a couple of places that are now going to be defunct. The first of those was during Halloween, when I had a short turnaround time to be able to get several pieces up for Halloween, and then by the time that show ended, I was able to turn around and put them up for another show that started in late November and is still currently at a place called the Misdemeanor Meadows.
I have been talking to a couple of different curators over the period of time, and because of the price point that I keep asking for for original pieces of scratchboard, they like what they see, but don’t want to pay the price for an original.
This is clearly not true from what already sold at the beginning of the year. They like the artwork, but they don't want to pay for the original. Well, that's kind of tough. I'm not gonna go and lower the price on my original pieces of work. HOWEVER, let's be clear that doesn't mean I can't sell prints for a lesser price. Just means that I'll be sitting on more original ideas, which I didn’t want to do.
I look over in the corner of my apartment, and I see Richard Parker still sitting over there just waiting to be printed. For whatever reason, I keep sitting on it and not doing anything with it. There has been a possibility of actually picking up one of these AIs, like ChatGPT or something like that, to help animate the pieces that I already have for telling a wordless graphic novel. I don't know if that will even be attached, but I still need to deal with that, and then I've had my own share of real-life situations that had me come a couple with my mortality, or at least it felt like it did at the time. I won’t go into great detail, but there was a situation in which I had to be rushed to the hospital, which really made me stop and think about stuff. But now I'm back up, so I've got about seven pieces of work right in front of me that need to be completed for any given show. I've got to head down to BLICK and pick up some backing boards, and hopefully I'll be able to get these knocked out within a couple of days. I'm also going to end that time, I'm going to be taking a thumb drive down to Pearl Press and get Brian to print me off a couple of prints, each is a small print run, and mount those to a wood backing like my friend Mike does for his work. I might even try to see if I can actually get the paper to work on my own printer and try. Regardless of the sales, all in all, the shows have been good. Response has been great. Artwork is evolving, and hopefully, 2026 will be an even better year for me.
The Seven.
Thanks, and this kid is out of here, and I hope you enjoy your New Year's.