The size of the audience for this type of art-form is microscopically small. When you start talking about your tessellation passion, someone inevitably says, “Ah ya you do that stuff”. From decades ago, “oh ya, I remember your drawings”. Other than family and friends putting up with your gushing obsession, you’re lucky to have a handful of patrons. Math teachers, grade school kids, and a few geometry nerds don’t constitute a large client base, lol.
Even if you happen to get one person within a 100 Km range to want to purchase a print, let’s do the math.
- $50.00 cost of the print, ink, process, a decent size paper, 50 x 40 cm, or 20 x 16″
- $20.00 for the mat if printed on paper, or the stretcher frame if printed on canvas
- $120.00 for a proper (yet quite cheap) frame
- $76.00 markup for the gallery, if it’s 40%
- $266.00 total price
- $297.92 then add PST and GST
- $.00 where’s my cut? Should I make more or less than the gallery?
- $454.72 if I insert at the start of the calculation, a 100 dollar profit for me
- Yikes. Hey, I can’t even afford to buy my own artwork! I certainly can’t afford to get 30 framed for a show! That would be close to $6,000.00. It’s not going to happen on my end.
I’m seriously thinking of doing a PowerPoint series (I’m very good at that!), put it up on the wall in a digital picture frame and offer small prints, matted and wrapped in a celluloid envelope. At least I know I could afford to buy one, and a few other aficionados as well. Might even put up three or four framed samples, in case a tessellation lover comes along. I wish.