Up front, let me say that I do not like commission work. I have rarely come out well financially from a commissioned work.

BUT, and you'll notice that the but is capitalized; what commissioned work has done for me is to lead me into areas that I would not otherwise have gone. This has greatly expanded my skill level.

Here is a perfect example: back in the 70's a farmer came to me and wanted a piece for the president of Farm Bureau of Indiana.

He wanted the piece to represent every phase of Farm Bureau that the president had been involved with. The retiring president had first started out delivering fuel to farmers. I did a fuel oil truck much like one that would have been in service in the 1930's.

I had never done a truck before, or for that matter, not even a car so this was something totally new for me.  He had then moved into inside sales in their hardware and feed sales. I built a building that had all the implements and the bags of grain that one would have found in a feed and grain store. There were shovels, pitch forks, rakes, single wheeled tillers, sowing implements and on and on. He then had moved into the grain elevator part of the business and I had grain silos, a bulk railroad car on a siding.

When I put this all together it was very special. The total length from the fuel oil truck to the railroad siding was about five feet with height in proportion. I only wish I had a photo of this piece, because it was one of my best.

This was a piece that I didn't make much money on for the hours spent, but I developed skills that I still use today. These skills translated into many different pieces that have generated significant income.

One thing that helped on this piece was that he gave me some biographical information on the retiring president. This help immensely, as I felt in touch with this man and his progression through his years with Farm Bureau of Indiana.

Prices: Before I buy something I want to know how much it will cost. Well, customers are the same way and it's hard to know how much time it will take to do the piece they want. Unfortunately, I usually under estimate how long it will take me to do a commission work.

One of the reasons for this is that I become so involved with a piece that time is not an issue. If feel that something should be added, then time is not a factor. Fortunately it all ends up well, because of the learning process.

There are people who cannot be satisfied. I have become fairly adept at spotting them and I will politely explain for one reason or another I can't do their piece. I may say that I don't have the time or it is in not in the line with the type of work that I do. If they are unhappy with that, better they be unhappy in the beginning rather than at the end of the transaction.

I have taken on some commission work that was definitely not in my line and been sorry for it. At least I learned and never did that again.

A problem that often arises with commission work is that the person doesn't really know what they want. They give some abstract idea with hand motions and end by say, "you're the artist, you can figure it out". Then you are left with trying to figure out what they want and all the while you're building the piece wondering, "is this what they really want"?

Another interesting piece that I did was for a 28 foot wall in a home. They wanted a large barn, a covered bridge, a mill scene with a water wheel, a house and a church. The barn in itself was nine foot long. It had detail everywhere. I mean I really got into that piece.

The man who was commissioning this piece had been a life long farmer. He told me that when he was a boy that he and his brother were too young and not strong enough to work the horse drawn cultivator. Their father had put two seats on the cultivator so that the boys could each handle one part of the cultivator.  I built a cultivator with two seats to go on a fence in front of the barn. When the man saw the cultivator with the two seats, he had tears in his eyes, remembering he and his brother working the machine together.

Another interesting story about that commission was a house that I built. I wasn't satisfied with the house and had laid it aside. One time the man was down to my shop to see how well I was doing he spotted that house, and said, "that's exactly like the house I grew up in". So I went back and re-worked that house although keeping the basic structure. This was another commission where I learned a lot.

Since I like what I do, it's important for me to please my customers. I don't want anyone to have something that they don't like. For this reason I probably have far more anxiety about commission work than I should.

As a business person, I have never got it into my conscious thought pattern that I am building a piece of sculpture that they can not find anywhere else.

When people look at your other work, the work that you turn out on a more or less regular basis, they think that if I want a piece like that, only twice as big with a little more detail, it can't be much more work than the piece I see for $250.00 that you have on the wall.

They don't realize that when you worked out the design that you have on the wall that you spent days working out that design, knowing that you would be making many of the same piece. To double the size means working out all new proportions. I could make six of the $250.00 pieces in the time that it would take me to work out all the details of the piece they want.

I am not the best at selling my own work. My approach is to do the best job possible, price it reasonably and here it is. If you like it buy it, if not then don't buy it. Fortunately my work sells itself.

I have met few artists or craftspeople who are good at selling their own work. Most artists or craftspeople are not good at blowing their own horn. Back in the mid 60's I was one of the top salesmen for a company I worked for, but that was selling someone else’s goods, not something that came out of my creativity.

If you are doing higher end pieces, that's higher end in dollars, you might want to think about becoming established with a gallery or several galleries who will sell your work. In other words they'll blow your horn and you won't have to.

Back to commission work, I remembered a commission work where I did very well. Krispy Kreme of Southern California purchased 95 of my small Magic Wands for a conference they were giving. They wanted the KK of Krispy Kreme worked into the design. The total was about $1500.00 for doing pieces that I thoroughly enjoyed doing.

Another consideration with commission work is who are you going to be working with. A commission I turned down was for a bank: This was a large piece that was going to go in the bank president’s office. The first person to contact me about this piece was the decorator. She had a contract to decorate a set of offices. Later she introduced me to the bank president and in another meeting the wife of the president shows up. All three people had different ideas of size, scale and type of sculpture. This was one of those cases where I could see trouble coming before it happened. I bowed out and saved myself a lot of grief.

I can work with a husband and wife if they basically have the same idea. But when you include a third person or a group of people, it become chaos looking for a place to happen. There is no sense in ruining a perfectly good day when there are plenty of other things you could be doing.

In my early years I was married with two small children and my work was the total family income.  At that time I was happy for any work that came my way. The need for income does make a difference. I did quite a few pieces that I would rather not have done but they helped pay the bills. When income is necessary, by all means take the commissions and do the best you can.

Along with these commissions came new skills that I developed and have used ever since, so all was not in vain.

While it is definitely true that I have added to my skills, I've also developed the skill of saying "no".  There are pieces people want done that I don't have the skills nor the equipment.  I like to please and one of the best ways to please people is by being honest and saying that "this isn't in the line of the type of work that I do".

I'll mention this elsewhere, but my income as a craftsman, has always been strung together from at least three or four sources. Retail, wholesale, shows, commission work, wherever I could get the work to generate an income. So there was a time when commission work came in was important. .

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