ArtistSupportPledgeUSA

I've been posting work for sale as part of the ArtistSupportPledge. The #ArtistSupportPledge is a movement to help artists support one another. Begun by a UK artist, Matthew Burrows, it is now active in the U.S. To participate, artists post pictures of their art for sale, costing $200, or £200 or less, with the hashtag #artistsupportpledge. For every five sales an artist makes, or for every $1000 or  £1000, they then pledge to purchase a work from a fellow artist.

I think it's a great idea, and it is excellent timing for many of us. I am posting on Facebook, but also including the art for sale here. They are priced at $140 to $180, plus shipping and handling. I will charge the buyer for shipping and handling, but count it towards the $1000 goal. All are ready to hang without framing. Email me at metamer@protonmail.com if interested.

I have been moving between a pc and a mac, and some of the photos are slightly darker than the actual paintings.

Gerber daisies

16x16", oil on board, $180

Butterfly

24x24", acrylic on board, $150

Snapdragons

16x16", oil on board, $180

Summer flowers

16x16", oil on board, $180

Summer flowers, II

16x16", oil on board, $180

SOLD

Falling Tulips

10x10", oil on board, $140

for more info on this movement, search on #artistsupportpledge

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artist-support-pledge-instagram-1807881

https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/artists-support-pledge

The Cabin and The Stone House

The full pages of Issue #7, The Cabin and The Stone House. Click on images to see larger, and to read text. Questions? Please email me here:  metamer -at- protonmail.com

a good word from a plutocrat

a plutocrat on how to be a good citizen

how is this related to The Metamer Quarterly? Loosely, I'll admit. When I chose the topics for the eight planned issues of TMQ -- Metamerism, Maps & Diagrams, The Book of Love, The Sea, Time, <no subject>, The Cabin and the Stone House, and Sound -- I left out some of my usual preoccupations. Not because they don't interest me, but because they interest me in a "boots on the ground" way, not in a more reflective, poetic way.

I regularly get on a soapbox about feminism, race, color, and class. Economic inequality and the infuriating distortion in wages, where some of the most necessary jobs are paid the least, while many of the least important to society's orderly functioning are compensated outrageously, is another common rant of mine.

This essay from Nick Hanauer says it well. And it is pragmatic. Because really, one is only philosophical about poverty when one has plenty. Our problem, nationwide, is not supply. It is distribution and will. We don't lack food, or capacity to provide good education, access to decent healthcare, stable and well-maintained housing. The people in power, including those with the most economic power, do not yet have the will to make changes. Hanauer states the obvious -- to avoid actual war, make the changes that will actually lift all boats.

"Once we’ve dismissed with trickle-down nonsense, the way forward becomes clear. I’ll save a detailed policy agenda for another forum, but there’s no getting around the trillion-dollar elephant in the room: the 5 percent of GDP that used to go to wages but now goes to executive pay and record corporate profits. This isn’t money we’re shipping overseas or feeding to robots or burying in holes. The most obvious way to address our crisis of growing inequality is to reverse the policies that undermined the older, more equitable norms. This means raising the minimum wage and the overtime threshold to their inflation-adjusted peaks, and indexing them to the appropriate economic metric. This means restricting the stock buybacks that have propped up executive pay through share price manipulation. This means rethinking our benefits systems and social safety nets to meet the needs of our modern economy. And this means substantially raising taxes on plutocrats like us who continue to capture the bulk of our nation’s economic gains. And yes, by all means let’s increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, even though it effectively socializes the cost of wages onto taxpayers. But keep in mind: the EITC currently costs $60 billion’ish per year. If we want to fill the trillion dollar per year hole in workers’ pockets, we’d need to raise it by about $940 billion per year."