vi180621 They sell tiles, don’t they? 

I was at the Pike Place Market and I saw that, in addition to the tiles and little bronze pig-hoof-prints, the organization has added metal charms that hang down in the openings of fencing, each charm stamped with a donor’s name. As this is a long-standing method to raise money for nonprofits, would it not work also for artiscripophily in a B-corp?

I still maintain that for-profit is better in the long run for printmaking organizations because print is in-between the fine arts and commercial printing. It is a hybrid art. After reading David Mendoza’s memoir recently, I understood the economic and political aspect of the fine arts better. I saw how the politics of government policies and wealthy patrons, not to mention the politics of sexual orientation and gender, race and ethics are intermingled in the fine arts.

Where money and political power are concerned, the fine arts of the high-ticket kind—artworks that are bought and sold for huge sums—so many factors enter in which may not be in the best interest of Earth’s human life sustainability.

As an example, mention of David’s friends, “Dressed in furs,” reminds me of the animal rights peoples’ protests about the luxury fur industry, not much different than poaching elephants and rhinos. I doubt that you’d have to dig very deeply into the skin of the wealthy women with David to find their true feelings toward the rights of animals—and human kind, for that matter.

I believe Walter Benjamin was correct in his observation, that when reproduction became cheap and accurate, the image of an iconic work of art conferred more political power to the owners of the art than had existed before. He said the cult of art shifted to the practice, the culture, of politics. Art so reproduced conferred power to the owners, the same as a fur coat makes a person appear wealthier and, hence, more powerful, politically.

Given the generations of this reality to take effect on society, entire populations fall under the mercy of a few. Their power shows, as they buy works of art for soaring prices and then donate them to art museums. Government follows the same route—allocating what appear to be handsome sums of money to arts programs and thus garnering the art and members of the culture groups’ favor.

Therefore, proposing nonprofit status for the International Print Center Incubators is wrong-headed, just as it would be for SURF (the tech startup group) to be a nonprofit. You don’t have an incubator which claims to help its entrants learn profitable businesses while under the umbrella of a tax-deductible organization, exempt from the rules of taxable C-corps, B-corps and S-corps.

I think the supporters of IPCI will be more likely to help me get it established if it is a blend, a hybrid, of for-profit and benefit-corporations, just as printmaking is a hybrid of fine art and printing for profit.

As for tiles, charms and bronze-hoofprints set in stone like the benefits given to supporters of the Pike Place Market, IPCI is not only a tourist destination feature for the City of Seattle, it’s also functional as an educational feature for both the stakeholders and the visitors. It also has a prominent Internet presence, reaching far beyond its geographic place.

A tourist at the PPM doesn’t learn a thing by noticing the mementos, but when the tourist reads a printed brochure or Website about the PPM which explains those mementos, something clicks. The donors are recognized. Fair enough. But what is missed is the fact that money and politics saved the market against the onslaught of the developer’s wrecking ball—the donation are not enough to sustain the PPM over the long term. My experience of working with an arts person at the stalls taught me there is a limit on what it does for its vendors.

The IPCI concept is more complicated than saving the historic flavor of the public market. Printmaking has a different meaning, not at all related to farm and garden, fishing or the meat industry. Arts and crafts come close and are a main attraction at the PPM, but under strong limitations.

Printmaking is the ancestor of the technologies that currently account for the Pacific Northwest’s economic success story, yet its descendants—computer aided image making and reproduction—serve education far more effectively than the PPM. Technologies shape the world and will determine Earth’s human life sustainability. That’s a scientific fact, and art helps—but only in reproductions.

In one area particularly, STREAM-based education, there is much work to be done, and I have begun. If the Pike Place Market Foundation can sell tiles, tracks and charms to augment the PPM, then can art scripophily start up the IPCI? I think so.