The Curmudgeonly Professor

Special Moments in Mid-October Along the Wasatch From My Back Door

 

 

 
   

The Curmudgeonly Professor enters his Entrepreneurial Phase

The reason why the Curmudgeonly Professor remained in the professor profession for so long is that he failed at every entrepreneurial enterprise he ever started, each of which was expected to make him rich.  Among the notable business failures were: 40 student apartments at the University of Wyoming, two book and gift stores in Fort Collins, a business newsletter, a couple of MLMs, and  probably others that I have forgotten.  Being an economics professor is great because all one has to do is to assume stuff, draw curves on the blackboard, solve equations, and pontificate.  Other than humiliation, no costs attach to being wrong, except perhaps not getting tenure if you make too many dumb mistakes.

So now I am entering upon my next entrepreneurial phase.  I have already launched my photo print business on Zenfolio galleries at dmblood.zenfolio.com.  So far, I have sold zero prints, but I have had several dozen photos  printed so at least my walls will be gorgeous.  If people could actually see the prints, I think they would sell.  The metallic prints from MPix, Zenfolio's photo printer, are absolutely stunning.  And the prints I have converted to photo art and then digitally matted come ready to frame without the complications of finding your own mats or having them made for you at additional expense.

The next phase of my entrepreneural forays is starting the sales of photo note cards and photo calendars.  I haven't quite decided how to do this yet, but will probably start out on Etsy, and then see if I can figure out how to start my own web site for card and calendar sales, the word sales being used optimistically.  I have spent considerable time looking through other web sites for photo note cards.  Some are better, perhaps, but I think my photos are at least as good, if not better, than many I have looked at, especially the photo art conversions and the double matted images. 

If you have a $1 friend, you can go to the Dollar Store and buy a $1 card for them.  My cards will cost $4 each, which will provide a frameable keepsake card that your $4 friends will love you for.  And you can compare my $4 cards with other cards costing at least that much and see what you think.  I've studied a lot of photo card websites, and most of the better cards are in the $4 range.  Some are in the $2 range, but I have no idea how people can manage that, since it costs about $2 for the blank card stock, a professionally printed photo, and other supplies. 

I have several dozen categories for groups of cards, or they can be mixed or matched.  These categories include wild roses, white roses, red roses, tulips, Oriental poppies, wild poppies, flowering spring trees, spring blossoms, flower gardens, petunias, white cactus, yellow cactus, orange cactus, and on and on.  If anyone wants a particular flower or photo, just ask me and I'll see if I have it.

Calendars with 13 original photos attached usually sell for $25.  Again, each photo is a frameable keepsake and is worthy of a frame to be hung permanently on a wall.  If anyone is interested, let me know soon.

So here goes another entrepreneurial venture.  I've already spent the thousands of dollars necessary on computers, cameras, software, supplies, and such, so I can't lose any money on this adventure, as I did on other serious get-rich adventures.  At best, I might make enough to replenish supplies or update some software, and that will be fine.  Working with these photos is so much fun, and the photos are so gorgeous, I at least have a wonderful hobby that keeps me occupied.  So watch for further announcements here.

Grant Speed's Sculpture Titled "Runnin' Wild Horses" in Downtown St. George

This sculpture by Grant Speed is titled "Runnin' Wild Horses" and is part of the St. George Art Around the Corner where artists display their work for short periods of time.  This sculpture has a price tag of $4,500.

 

Sculpture Titled "The Family" on the Dixie State College Campus St. George

 These photos are of part of the set of sculptures titled "The Family" on the Dixie State College Campus, . artist unknown.  For the remaining pieces of the sculpture, see the next post below.

    

Sculpture of Jacob Hamblin and Indian Child by Angelo Carivagla: Photos of the Day March 6 2009

These photos are of a sculpture by Angelo Carivagla completed in 1986 and installed on the Dixie State College campus in St. George as a private donation.  The title is "Jacob Hamblin and Indian Child:  Peacemaker in the Camp of the Lamanites."  Jacob Hamblin was sent by Brigham Young to southern Utah as a missionary where he became a famous Indian agent, colonizer, mediator, and peacemaker.  Hamblin was born in 1819 and died in 1886.  He had an enormous influence on Indian relations and on the colonizing of southern Utah.

 

  The Jacob Hamblin home is located on the west side of Santa Clara, which is west of St. George.  Guided tours are available to visit this historic home and recapture some of the flavor of early Utah history. 

Another view of the historic Relief Society House in Santa Clara where the women of the Mormon Church gathered to meet and participate in various activities.

David H. Turner's Sculpture Titled "Swan" in St. George Art Around the Corner Project

This sculpture, titled "Swan" is by David H. Turner and is part of the current "Art Around the Corner 2008" project which provides local and regional sculptors with an opportunity to display their work through the St. George main downtown area.  This sculpture is located behind the St. George Art Museum.

 

We Meet Renowned Artist Piero Resta on the Road to Hana: Photo of the Day January 6 2009

As we were waiting for the cattle to move and clear the road, we all got out of our vehicles.  The man in the jeep behind our tour van was most friendly and allowed me to take his photo.  We began visiting and I discovered that he is a native of Italy and is a renowned sculptor and painter, among other artistic accomplishments.  I was amazed to learn that such an accomplished artist would choose to live in one of the most isolated places on earth in the Maui back country where the only way to get to civilization is either to proceed on to Hana or return along the treacherous bumpy road to get to Kahului or on to Kaanapali.  Please take a moment and go to his website which is linked here and look at his amazing artistic creations and read his biographical sketch.  You never know who you will run into while waiting for a cattle drive on the road to Hana, but meeting this man was a memorable encounter.

Check out Steve Blood's Penrose Design Blog

My brother Steve, who was a tad bothersome when sharing my bedroom as a youngster, has turned out to be a rather formidable creator of rustic lighting, furniture, and other crafts. Check out his work on this newly posted blog.

Sistine Chapel Ceiling and Michelangelo Art

One of our study group members provided us with the following link to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling and other Michelangelo works:

if you want to see the Sistine ceiling, and a lot of other Michelangelo stuff in great detail, go to the following wonderful website:
www.humanitiesweb.org
Then click on the tab marked Art
Then in the search box at the left type Michelangelo,
Then you will come to various options, but just click on the first one.
On the next page click on "selected works" and you will see a lot of things you can look at in detail. It does not have everything, but what it does have is great.

Try it -- you'll like it

Crafting is No Trivial Matter

Crafting, according to an article by Carma Wadley in the Deseret Morning News on Friday, March 7 2008, is a $31.5 billion industry, according to data from the Craft and Hobby Association. From paper crafting to fashion crafting to the "indie crafts", or crafts that recycle and reuse all kinds of things, crafters are reinventing creativity in new and ingenious ways. Wadley also lists a number of new fun craft products shown at the recent trade show of the Craft and Hobby Association in Anaheim. Read the entire article here.

How Many Do Crafts and How Much We Spend on Them

Just to prove that the Curmudgeonly Professor has joined the happy throngs of arts and crafts types, here is a summary of a survey by Craftrends Magazine conducted by Penn and Associates about who does what and how much they spend reported in the Deseret Morning News March 7 2008. Read the entire DNews article here.

The only alarming thing I discovered from the survey was that 92 percent of all artsy-craftsy folks are female! Only 8 percent of men do arts and crafts? Men, what are you doing with your spare time? Playing poker? Watching golf on TV? Playing golf? This statistic is an alarming one, but also one with great potential for arts and crafts marketers. The survey reported that 56 percent of crafters consider themselves only average, while 21 percent claim to be experts at what they do. This statistic isn't quite as good as the one in Lake Woebegone, Garrison Keillor's magic village, where nearly everyone is above average. Further, the survey reports that 50 percent of the stuff they make stays at home, 34 percent is given as gifts, and 16 percent is sold.

The survey reports the percentage of crafters engaging in each craft, with 73 percent reporting that they scrapbook, which is borne out by the fact that spending on scrapbooking and memory crafts leads the spending column at $2.59 million. About 71 percent sew or quilt, and an amazing 46 percent do stickers. And here I was ignorantly making fun of the acres of stickers in Michael's Arts and Crafts. Why didn't I go into the sticker business when I was 18 and not waste nine years of college learning why marginal costs are supposed to equal marginal revenues? Probably would have been more fun. But then there is the female dominance of the activity. Only a paltry $1.15 million is allegedly spent on quilting each year, a chunk of which is spent by my four sisters.

The figures on arts and crafts participation and expenditures are quite impressive. Read the linked story to get the rest of the details.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Goes Artsy-Craftsy

Generally and historically speaking, the Curmudgeonly Professor only has about one kind of store he hates going to worse than Wal*Mart, and that is an arts and crafts store. Arts and Crafts stores have acres of little dots and stickers and dozens of varieties of scissors that make cuts for every sign of the Zodiac and thousands of pages of colored paper and gallons of special glue and who knows what else is in there. I get a headache just walking in the door.

I have never been what might be called an arts-and-crafts aficionado. How's that for an impressive word? I told you I was a professor, after all. My siblings have all spent a major fraction of their lives in arts and crafts stores. When my sisters weren't in the arts and crafts stores, they were in the fabric stores. How they ever got around to making quilts is beyond me. When I made my last scrapbook in 1948, I just pasted all my blue ribbons from the county fair and even a purple grand champion ribbon for having the best boar hog in the Wyoming State Fair and a few other doodads on some pages of paper in a scrapbook. I thought that's how it was done.

Now I pause in amazement at the creative work that is required to paste two or three small photos and a tress of someone's hair and a prom dance card on a page of paper. The prom dance card is probably best forgotten anyway if your date was actually a dork and you didn't want to go with him or her in the first place, but, never mind, time causes the memory to erase all unpleasantries. By adding several doilies, three colors of paper, turning the photos in all directions, adding a half dozen stickers, applying five kinds of specialty scissors for special effects, one comes up with a scrapbook page. Mercy. But I fear I will be descended on by the thousands and thousands of scrapbook bloggers in righteous indignation who each come up with a thousand new ideas for scrapbook pages. Let alone the stampers. Did you know that there is a five story building in Riverton, UT, the place where I spend the summers, that is the headquarters for a stamping company? I am amazed. Who know that creative rubber stamps would set the world on fire and keep millions of people around the world looking for the best and new stamp to go through and stamp millions of pages of scrapbooks. I don't even know what else you would stamp.

I run the risk of raising the ire of the cults of quilters, stampers, scrapbookers, and related arts and craftsy types. Please don't clog my emails with letters of protestation. Perhaps I am in the early phases of repentance. Several years ago I started taking thousands of photos with digital cameras, and editing and scanning thousands more family photos on all of our extended families. Then the question was, what to do with them? I made CDs and sent them around thinking everyone would be jubilant and spend hours running them on their computers and TV screens. Several years later I would hear, "You know that CD you sent me? Well, I never got around to running it and now I've lost it. Could you please make me another?" Sure. Be glad to. Then I bought a large format color photo printer. And then I started printing large prints of roses, mountains, birds, and anything else that looked worth printing. I was totally astonished at how these prints looked.

I had a couple of my photos framed and learned to my dismay that it cost about $100 or more per photo to frame them, and about $25 just to cut a mat for one photo. My sister Ann, who quilts, hoards fabric, and buys kitchen gadgets, bought a mat cutter several years ago but never took it out of the box. She likes to be first at having stuff. And she usually knows how to do about everything. When I need to know anything, I call her, and she always graciously responds with, "Now, here's whatcha do." She thought I should use it so she gave it to me, which I still owe her for and may get around to paying her for it some day. It is still in the box. Being a School of Management and Seven Habits type of analytical person, it takes me a while to plan, prioritize, analyze, and become proactive. My neighbor here in St. George has been trying to get me to let him show me how to cut mats for two years, and the event finally happened this week. Wow, as the newscaster on Channel 5 says as a reaction to every startling event. Is cutting mats really that easy? The photo we matted looked so stunning that I was hooked.

So, yes, I was off to Michael's Arts and Crafts in my new suspenders to buy photo frames where they are at least 40-50% off more than half the time, but still a bit costly. Now I am actually ready to get Ann's mat cutter out of the box and try a few myself. The savings are at least $75 per framed photo. My main problem is that I will have to buy a bigger house to hang all of the dozens of color photos I have printed, spending hundreds of dollars on ink which drains out at a rate of a gallon a minute on my printer. There may really be something to this arts and crafts stuff. But if I get hooked on matting and framing photos, when will I get time to read books and write trivial nonsense on this blog? And then, would I ever seriously entertain becoming a scrapbooker, stamper, or quilter? I became a suspenders-wearer, at least for a few days, so anything is possible.