Against the Grain

I firmly believe that art, especially the independently-minded kind, should be accessible to all no matter location or individual circumstances. One of the things I’ve consciously attempted to do in my creative practice, and the products born of that, has been to keep them affordable.

Small editions for me are a vehicle for personal observation and expression. My goal has never been to produce anything at a scale other than a human one; meaning: can I produce an edition with little or no outside help? And by that same token, I’ve aimed to set pricing not based on what the market might bear, but rather just enough to maintain the ability to continue to experiment and produce new work over time.

The Future Will Blame Us

The recent movements by the American government to impose outrageous Tariffs on its friends, neighbors and allies makes no sense and will do nothing to improve the situation of the majority of people in this country, let alone anywhere else where the cost of living continues to rise out of sync with the income of anyone other than the top 1% of earners.

In my little world, paper mills still haven’t fully recovered from the effects of the pandemic and now these economic policies are inevitably going to push those costs up even more than they already are. My main supplier has already indicated as much. I expect the same with Riso inks which are imported from Japan.

Starting Now

This got me thinking about what I might independently do as a countermeasure. And after about 2 seconds of thought (that’s all it needed), the right thing was clearly the opposite of what what I expect we’ll see a lot of in the coming weeks — to make these editions even more affordable.

And so effective immediately, because I can and not because I’m hoping to encourage purchases¹, I’ve given the prices of editions in the shop a healthy haircut of between $1 and $5 off their original pricing. This is not a sale. This is not temporary. This will extend to future editions and other new products.

Art should be accessible to all. If I can do more, let's talk about it.