Reflections On Obstacles #2

I recall a regional sculpture exhibition near where I live, where I had submitted a sculpture made from hardened glass.
The sculpture was two meters tall by one meter wide and was twenty millimeters thick toughened and laminated glass with an image of my plastic assemblages in the centre of it. It was a particularly sturdy robust piece, even though it was made from glass. As it happened, it was shattered one afternoon towards the end of the exhibition, by what looked like a stone, which was spat out of the ride-on mower which must have come too close to the work when it was mowing the grass.

I was contacted by the organizers of the show who said their regrets and mentioned that they would be happy to contribute to the costs of my getting it taken to the local tip, which was a sum of two hundred and fifty dollars. I was shocked, the artwork itself had a price tag of fifteen thousand dollars and the actual replacement costs amounted to close to four thousand dollars. I felt it was another case of the artist being unjustly treated and promptly got in contact with both a national arts representative organization as well as the regional one. I received two letters of support from them, stating that the sculpture show had a responsibility to the artist as a duty of care component of the sculpture show to at the very least pay for the replacement costs.
So I stood up for myself and ended up receiving the cheque for the replacement costs, but at the same time this incident seemed to unfortunately cause irreparable damage for myself with certain individuals in the regional sculpture fraternity who were involved with this.
As a result of standing up for myself I set a precedent for other local artists but at some cost to my relationships. I am pleased to report that these relationships healed with time. Although it was uncomfortable during the process, it was worth the trouble and as I said previously this too did pass…