Am I Worried?

A friend and fellow artist wondered if I worry about the fact that the materials for my Ulysses Glove project, which are utilitarian yellow rubber gloves marked with sharpies, will eventually degrade.
If this question had been posed a decade ago, the answer would have been “yes”. For a while I was selling prints which are part of my Broomstick Series. They are giclee, which basically are laser prints. When this technology first came on the scene it was wonderful for artists like me, who had images many people wanted, but not many thousands of people. It didn’t cost much to have prints made, and you could buy what you needed…five or ten at a time, instead of say, a thousand. So, no storage worries, and no huge investment.
I was selling the prints for around $125.00 each, give or take, sometimes matted, sometimes not. Some stores wanted them and in those cases I provided a frame too.
It’s embarrassing to tell you how much I worried about the possibility that the inks would degrade, the print might become faded, the color might turn from a bright red to a purple-red, to a faded purple-red. I wondered how I could ever make it up to my customers should this tragedy ever occur, how much I could lose, how I could keep track.
While I am deeply appreciative of those people who have, and still do buy my prints, I have stopped worrying about what happens five, ten, twenty years down the road. For one thing, most people know that if you hang any sort of artwork in the sun, colors will fade. But really, for $125.00, some of which goes to presentation, for buying the prints from my printer, for shipping, should I worry for my entire life that this item will have a life beyond mine?
I have read about Eva Hesse, Julian Schnabel, Andy Goldsworthy, all artists who made artworks without spending one second worrying about the consumer of their product. Especially in the case of Schnabel, who was throwing plates onto oil paintings, it was obvious that gravity might do some damage to these paintings. When they did, it wasn’t the artist who was on the hook to repair the work; it was the consumer. In the case of many of the works by Eva Hesse, anytime a museum wants to mount a large exhibit of her work, they have to pay to re-create pieces that have disintegrated long, long ago.
I’m not going to be the judge of what is right or wrong about this, but I am not going to worry any longer about the ramifications of artwork not lasting forever, especially when I am selling it for a pittance.
In the case of the gloves, I am funding this project completely by myself. I am buying all the gloves, retail, and the pens, also retail. I am going to spend approximately three years making it. If some grand institution (MOMA, can you hear me?) wants to buy this work, for say 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars, it becomes their problem.
Also, this project is deeply personal and is partly about life and death. It seems appropriate that someday, the gloves will turn to dust, just as I have, just as everyone does.
Anyway, I am excited about the prospect of creating something that needs a custom made case or a specific air temperature, proper lighting, and maybe a team of people to restore the work should something happen to it. By the time it does, I hope to have spent my big money, and done it without a worry in the world.

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