180908 What is artistscrip? 

 Artist + scrip, the joining of an artist’s will to produce scrip. Artistic will initiates making, the same will which initiates a painting, sculpture or pottery-making. Where there is a will, there is a way an artist, crafts person or designer will make something. Where there is a will, there may be an invention, discovery, creation or imagined product or process.

This human propensity to explore and make things is not only artistic, as the science, technology, literature, engineering and mathematics are also initiated by similar will or inspiration. My invention (if that what it is) came when I face two challenges:

One, finance the development of an International Print Center and Incubators - IPCI?

Two, dispose of sixty years’ accumulation of works in arts, crafts and design?

The first – financing – amounts to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. The second amounts to a thousand or two thousand physical pieces.

Artistscrip is preceded by several kinds of artistic creations: artistamps, artist’s cards, and artist’s books. All three are variants of government and commercial enterprise: postage, games, and a blend of literature and craft. All three contribute to the invention of artistscrip.

Artistscrip borrows from those metaphors, but finds its validation in scripophily, the hobby of collecting stock certificates for their intrinsic design and novelty but not of their value as ownership in companies.

Artistscrip borrows its meaning from another financing method: crowd funding. Crowdfunding has become popular in the past twenty years as an alternative to stock offerings and big money backing. Thanks to the Internet, artists can raise money for projects by casting a wide net to get money in small amounts adding up to what he or she needs.

Financing the development of the International Print Center and Incubators can be achieved by crowdfunding. But what about the second challenge – emptying our gallery of thousands of art objects?

By declaring each object to be a certificate like a share in IPCI, each object is given scrip form. By prompting the same responses that make scripophily a popular pursuit, artistscrip becomes more attractive, even, than the work of art itself!

Valuation of works of art is a complicated process, and valuation of my works of art is not possible because I have not striven to make my art collectible in the commercial and collecting community. By choice I did not make art to participate in the conventions of art galleries, showings and collecting.

Those works that sold did so simply on their visual appeal. The most recent sale – a ceramic – sold for $150. The one before that, $90. The one before that, about six months ago, $3,750. Valuation by conventional means, however, is still impossible because the professional valuator charges hundreds per hour for her work, not to mention attorney’s fees associated with dispensation of artists’ family inheritance.

Entering the conventions of the issues arising from over-production of artworks is a swamp of quicksand and in it is usually advisable to destroy the works or give all away (if any depository can be found).

Artistscrip is the happy joining of a purpose – IPCI – and a means to the end. One might call artistscrip a “work of art” in and of itself insofar it results from a creative mind, a solution to a problem. There is no International Print Center & Incubators in Seattle – that is the problem. The solution is to develop it with artistscrip whose basis is my lifetime’s work.

My lifetime’s work has been both in making works of art, craft and design, and in striving for a center printmaking, prints, and printmakers.