Today I scored an excellent framed piece of art from a thrift shop for $5. All I thought I would need to do was take the ‘fake’ art out and replace it with some of my own. But first came the daunting task of taking apart something that was built in a factory or sweatshop made by machines or by people not making any kind of living wage. First I ripped off the brown paper on the back, carefully trying to preserve what might lie beneath.
the original piece
paper backing
the back of the frame
what is this hook thing supposed to be for???
Now I have the inside of the piece (which couldn’t come apart because it was spray glued to cardboard) taped off in order to make some art inside. The pressures is on!
here is where I need to make the magic happen
I guess mass produced art has been around for a long time. What did people hang in their homes before they could go out to Home Goods, Bed Bath & Beyond or Target and find ‘art’? We’ve all seen the TV commercials for ‘sofa sized art at INCREDIBLE prices!!!’. My husband used to work in a cheap furniture store back in the 90′s and still laughs at the ‘art’ they sold at the store, silhouette mirror anyone?? Or how about a nicely framed Monet painting?
I’m sure these pieces of art are produced in sweat shops and factories somewhere very far away from here exploiting laborers and cutting costs wherever they can in order to create a product that can be made for the bottom line and sold for a huge markup. This then begs the question….what value does art have? I guess not much to regular folks who can’t afford to drop into a gallery and shell out thousands of dollars for a piece of art. The point here, obviously, is that fake art undermines the real art that living artists create from their hearts every day while the art establishment poo poo’s us because we aren’t following their rules. I have pinned my hopes and dreams on being a working artist, one who sells original art for reasonable prices hoping that a culture that is used to buying things that are mass produced will reconsider and choose something totally original in this case.
Posted by Deborah Morbeto 
