Earl Krueger on sun 4 jan 04
On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 09:58 US/Pacific, Kathy Forer wrote:
> Is time any different in the studio? Would you like to be paid "by the
> hour" for everything you do? (I sure would!!...) "Time is money"
Why do you feel this way?
Perhaps my attitudes are a result of growing up on a farm where there
was a time for plowing and a time for planting and a time to sell the
hogs, but the passage of an hour of time was not, in itself, of much
consequence. The concept of being paid by the hour was invented by
industry and has been mostly applied to manual labor jobs in which
creative thinking was not the primary concern and many times frowned
upon.
Artists, whether they be potters or painters, are paid for their
creative thoughts materialized in the products they produce; the pot or
the painting. The number of hours they spend producing that product is
generally of little import to the buyer.
I know of a couple of very successful potters who didn't worry about
how much time it took to make a pot; Lucy Lewis and Maria Martinez.
Earl...
Bothell, WA, USA
I've never understood the concept of "Time is money". If I put a
dollar on the table and sit and watch for an hour, it doesn't multiply
into two. So, what does "Time is money" mean? If I were to equate
time to something I might pick;
Time is watching the clouds through a tree.
Time is getting to know someone.
Time is playing with a child.
Time is the acquisition of experiences.
Lee Love on sun 4 jan 04
On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 09:58 US/Pacific, Kathy Forer wrote:
> Is time any different in the studio? Would you like to be paid "by the
> hour" for everything you do? (I sure would!!...) "Time is money"
A British potter in Kasama told me: "You can always get more money, but
you can never get more time." and added, "I'd rather have the time than
the money."
I agree.
--
Lee In Mashiko, Japan
http://Mashiko.us
Web Log (click on recent date):
http://www.livejournal.com/users/togeika/calendar
Krista Peterson on sun 4 jan 04
-----Original Message-----
From: Earl Krueger
Sent: Jan 4, 2004 12:26 AM
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG
Subject: Being paid by the hour
On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 09:58 US/Pacific, Kathy Forer wrote:
> Is time any different in the studio? Would you like to be paid "by the
> hour" for everything you do? (I sure would!!...) "Time is money"
Sometimes I use an hourly wage for myself when I don't know what price to put on something.
Everytime someone asks me how much a piece is I draw a blank..."I dunno". So that helps me
to at least have a ball park figure.
Krista Peterson
Kathy Forer on sun 4 jan 04
I have to run off as this is a big Macintosh install "time is money"
weekend, but need to correct my earlier lack of punctuation and
incompletely facetious phrasing.
My whole phrase was
> Would you like to be paid "by the
> hour" for everything you do? (I sure would!!...) "Time is money" was a
> counter-mantra of my teacher/mentor, my greatest fear, a shibboleth for
> the world of mammon.
I was being flip, can't help it sometimes, it's like a NYC subway
sometimes on this placid little creek, when I wrote "I sure would!"
which is why I gave it the extra exclamation mark. But maybe it needed
some odd kind of smiley or entirely different wording as that is
exactly the opposite of what I was trying to say. My flip conceit was
that were I to be paid by the studio hour, financial life would be much
simpler. Whoa, my rent would plummet from 50% of my income to I dunno
10%, 1%.... But what would that payment be? How about more time?
On her deathbed, Queen Elizabeth was reputed to have said "All my
jewels for a moment of time!"
I've struggled more than many with a very elastic sense of time,
actually having to learn to value time as a commodity, as a finite
resource. Balancing the sacred, time, with the profane, money, has
meant less time to sit undisturbed, trying to stop the world, still the
moment.
An ideal day of ten hours: four in the studio and six at museum,
reading, looking, drawing.
A more typical day: six-eight doing someone else's work.
What I was trying to get at though was how much time we do spend at
things we love doing and how do we trade the physical stuff of that
evanescent time.
I did a Filemaker database for a non-profit theater group. Because it
was computer, I was able to go back and estimate my time. 375 hours and
I ended up being paid about 20% of my normal rate because I was still
learning and they weren't doing so well. But I was okay with that as it
was learning and I enjoyed the challenge. But amazed at the quantity
and how an intern would have made out better than I did.
Clay: I did try to estimate how long I worked on the most recent piece
and it's long time, time where hours are days, weeks and months. Though
I need to speed that up as it's getting moribund, labored, but had to
go through a very slow crawl to get out to a freer place.
Maybe, wild estimate, it was 375 hours. But if I sell the piece, I'll
make out even worse than with my struggling Filemaker skills. So, I say
how nice it would be to be paid for that time. Maybe that's why I
haven't sold these pieces. It's not as though I want to get paid by the
hour, but is it right to sell something that took months for $1000 or
less? To make less than $1/hour. Maybe I can't multiply dollars and
hours right, but it doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps that's what's
needed to "get started" but I've given them away instead, relying on an
alternate universe friendlier to mammon, computers and graphic design
instead. Maybe that's not playing nice, maybe it's hoarding. But
they're not playing nice either, if some few others have been willing
to play and pay fairly.
It's not fair to compare the hours of a piece that took ten weeks with
those of another piece that happened quickly and was maybe a day's
work. But how should work be priced? That's something I'm facing now,
never having really studied it before. So far I'm going by how much I
like a piece and whether I think it successful says what was intended,
doing it comparatively with my other pieces, but not in terms of time
which disappears. But I do consider labor when it's not otherwise
clear, though my estimates are in weeks or months, not days. Not much
of a difference, still time.
You put it so well:
> I've never understood the concept of "Time is money". If I put a
> dollar on the table and sit and watch for an hour, it doesn't multiply
> into two. So, what does "Time is money" mean? If I were to equate
> time to something I might pick;
> Time is watching the clouds through a tree.
> Time is getting to know someone.
> Time is playing with a child.
> Time is the acquisition of experiences.
Time is money is a shibboleth.
Off to work now to earn my daily bread.....
Kathy there's no time like the present Forer
On Jan 4, 2004, at 3:26 AM, Earl Krueger wrote:
> On Saturday, Jan 3, 2004, at 09:58 US/Pacific, Kathy Forer wrote:
>
>> Is time any different in the studio? Would you like to be paid "by the
>> hour" for everything you do? (I sure would!!...) "Time is money"
>
> Why do you feel this way?
Stephani Stephenson on sun 4 jan 04
Most of my work is sold or 'paid for' by the project, rather than by
the hour.
The price structure of the actual items purchased (hopefully) covers
the time involved making items, fire the items,etc.(, though I am the
first to admit, there's always room for improvement in determining the
true costs )... let's just say I do my best to figure it out. What I
know is that I need at least so much per month. Some months are made up
of lots of little projects and sales, sometimes there are bigger
project 'blocks' involved.
In addition to materials charges, I often charge extra for design,
layout and packing , on projects. This charge is usually a charge 'per
project' rather than 'per hour' , though it is loosely based on a rate
of $50 per hour on layout and design and $15 per hour on packing, plus
packing materials and shipping.
Sometimes I charge by the hour, rather than by the project, for things
like sculpting.Especially when the project is open ended or very
difficult to assess. For example I have a customer who comes to me a
couple of times per year. I do some fairly straightforward relief
sculpting for him, for products which have nothing to do with ceramics,
Nothing which is part of 'my' line, yet something which I can still
apply my skill at design and sculpting.
I have free rein , he is a delightful customer who is flexible, gives
me lots of leeway in scheduling the deadline, pays quickly and is
delighted with the results. I charge $50 an hour, which is probably
absurdly low for prototype development, but it's a nice gig when it
comes around. And it seems to come around during months like January,
when it is much appreciated.
Just because I am being paid by the hour doesn't mean my sense of time
changes while I am working.
Today in fact, I worked on the project, sat at the table out front
where the sun was providing some warmth, enjoyed the hummingbirds, the
cat, the sound of kids playing on a new trampoline next door, sipped
tea, a nice day.
Started working in the morning, stopped for a bit in the middle, put
everything away when the temperature started dropping as the sun went
down. Pretty much like any other day.
Stephani Stephenson
steph@alchemiestudio.com
John K Dellow on mon 5 jan 04
>
>
>> Is time any different in the studio? Would you like to be paid "by the
>> hour" for everything you do? (I sure would!!...) "Time is money"
>
>
I think its depends on wether one is makeing down to price or up to a
standard . The former I have observed is pice work paid . The later
a wage.
I was lucky to first work for a David Leach trained potter and
was set with a high standard. I was never a top money maker as a production thrower because I never sucumbed to the down to a price
philosphy but to " The means justifies the end ".
John
John Dellow "the flower pot man"
From the land down under
Home Page http://www.welcome.to/jkdellow
http://digitalfire.com/education/people/dellow/
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