It is with great joy – and I mean that sincerely – I begin this blog, the written part of it. I have been blogging for many years as far as putting pictures of my art into this blog – basically pictures of frogs, you can see them doing all different sorts of things and different sorts of sizes that I’ve made over the years. But now what I’m going to do is a bit different than that, and even more special.

I have been resistant to doing this for a while now, mainly because I haven’t had the time. But, as with many things, you figure that a certain point you don’t have time not to do it.

Now, I have done blogs before, and I did podcasting stuff and all sorts of YouTube and all sorts of…all that stuff digitally when all of that came out, and I was excited about it like – I don’t know, a young squirrel or something. But I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was just trying things out. The main thing that I got out of that was beautiful frog.com the website, which has gone through many iterations, and I’m sure will continue to. I tried blogging this. I tried blogging that. Blah blah blah blah. And then I quit doing all of that stuff cuz I didn’t have time because I was working too hard on my art and the basics of selling my art and blogging simply was a pastime that I could not indulge myself in. To my dismay.

But now I’m very excited because it’s time to return to this idea because I have a new perspective on it.  Well, you see, the basic thing – that is, the basic way I make money, is by making frogs and selling frogs. That’s the basic task of my life. Make frogs and sell frogs, one way or another. (Now this can be seen as a metaphor as well because making frogs it’s – yes it is a frog – but it’s also art. At least, I hope it’s art. That’s what I’m hoping to sell. That’s what I’m hoping to make. )

I wanted to be a writer, once upon a time. But life got in the way. I mean, I wrote a lot of things and I wrote a lot of books that never got published and I wrote a lot of articles that are on the web and one thing led to another and I ended up just making frogs and selling them. If you stick with me, I guess I’ll describe that in much more detail. Probably more detail than you ever want.  But, for now, all you need to know is that I make frogs and sell them,  one way or another.  But I do love to write, I must say. And so it is with great joy that I return to this endeavor and actually produce writing.

This is never going to be a book. And if someone ever wants to publish it as a book, no. I will say no, I’ll just skip to the movie. If you want to make a movie okay go ahead. (And pay me a lot of money, of course.) I won’t watch the movie. However, that’s another matter.

I will be candid with you:  I’m doing this blog thing to sell frogs. Yeah, I get to write, and I’m very happy about that. In fact, I’m overjoyed and ecstatic about it. Believe me. But the fact is, I’m here to sell frogs. That’s why I want you to read this. That’s one of my goals in blogging here. The main goal. But the fact is, I will tell you I love to write. So I don’t mind doing this at all. It’s just that I haven’t figured out how to make money from doing this. But now I understand things that I didn’t understand before because of working on my art and selling my art and just putting my nose to the grindstone in ways that I have never done before.

Because I have blogged before and because I have written so much in the past, I can do it. No problemo. Even though most of what I have written hasn’t been published…

Should I be proud or ashamed or a little or lot of both? There’s some guy that said only a blockhead didn’t write for money. (I am not going to credit him because I think the statement is pretty arrogant.) And I was that blockhead for sure. And I’m sure there’s a lot of us blockheads out there. (Me and Charlie Brown.) But, the truth is, I am writing for money now. I really am. And it’s not just for me. It’s for you, too.

Sell, sell, sell. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? When it comes to your art. You have to do something to sell. Don’t you? Before, I didn’t realize how to make money blogging about my art. I just didn’t put it all together. I was just all over the place and for one reason or another, it didn’t work. No money from blogging. Are you kidding? Jeeze. Tell me an artist that makes money from that? Well, several, I’m sure. I was not one of them. I’ll talk about that later. I’m not going to talk about that right now. I had to get my nose to the grindstone, for God sakes. I had to put the pedal to the metal and work hard. Not play. Work. Play? No. Hard work.

But having done a lot of that hard work, now I turn to this endeavor and understand exactly what I’m doing and how to go about it. And that is truly exciting for me. Very exciting. I’m very excited. I’m not being facetious at all. And sometimes I will be facetious in this blog. But I’m not being facetious about that at all. I’m very excited, overjoyed, and I do know, not just guess, think, wonder, hope, I know that this act of blogging will increase the value of my work. I’ll show you exactly how. I’m going to explain it right now.

 See, I’m going to blog about my art. Yes. I’m going to talk some about the process itself. Sure. But I’m going to do so with the caveat that I’m also going to be documenting the work. That means that when somebody buys something, they buy something that’s been documented by a guy who knows… Well, I suppose I may be rich and famous at some point or maybe I’ll die and I won’t be rich and famous because most artists are not. To my credit, actually, I would say I’m actually a very successful artist, somewhat established. Yes, I think I can say that, at age going to be sixty in a week or so. I make enough money from my art to take care of myself and my son.  I make pretty good money.  Though, admittedly, I do work hard for it. To be expected. Right? So I know that what I am doing has a purpose. I know that the work is valuable. So that is what I am sharing.

Got to mention here that I’m not interested in having lots of wealth myself. I’m interested in money for what it can do for others. What it can do for my son, yes. What it can do for me in some ways. But I believe that life is about being selfless, not selfish. And I believe that the hoarding of wealth is wrong.  I have many dreams and aspirations…dreams to help others, dreams to help the world, dreams to help homeless people, dreams to help Ananda Marga… Regarding Ananda Marga (important subject for me), I will talk about at more depth in some other blog entry. Not yet time to do that here. 

I could not do this, what I’m doing now, before because I just wasn’t available to myself. I just wasn’t able to be successful. I would try. God knows, I tried. But now things are very different. My perspective is very changed. My approach is very much different. In particular, I am very  much encouraged by my relationship with God. 

So to tell you about why this blog is going to make me money… Oh, it’s not going to make me money like I wanted to make money from the net when it first came out. I got entranced in internet marketing, bullshit like that, and it was really crazy, really insane, and I’m not interested in that at all. That was like an alcoholic or a gambling addict. No more of that. Long gone. Lo-o-o-o-ng gone. Finally getting a breath of fresh air and not being an addict anymore of whatever. We’re all addicts of something, I’m sure. More on that in the future blogging. 

This blog is going to make money for you and me because it is documenting the work and it is going to do so in a very productive and qualitative way. I am very devoted to creating beautiful art. It is not my main devotion. My main devotion is to God. Really that’s all I am devoted to, but that plays out in different ways in life. The part of my life of creating art, it plays out there by wanting to produce something beautiful that gives people joy and makes them happy and also produces value in the way of money so that I can help others, not just myself. That’s what I want to do and that’s what this blog is about. It’s about making my art more valuable. 

There are all sorts of things one can do to make one’s art more valuable – like signing it or getting it in a gallery or having a lot of people follow you on Instagram or whatever it be. You have to do something. Right? But this is a way of documenting the work. I’m talking about its value. And that’s going to be very exciting, I think, for the people who buy my work. They’re going to be very excited about the fact that it’s documented.

***

I started making frogs because my father made frog sculptures, and I learned how to make frog sculptures from my father. And this was thirty years ago now. And now it is 2021, almost 2022 to now.

Anyway, recently a potential customer – somebody came to me with a frog that they owned from like, almost 30 years ago, 25 years ago or something, They wanted, or they thought they wanted, to have a new patina put on it. They saw my pictures of my frogs, and the patina on them was so beautiful and all – blue green on most of them. They thought they wanted that. That’s what I thought they wanted.

I have actually re-patinated frog sculptures before for others. So this was not a strange request to me.

But when when I saw the frog that they showed me, I thought, wow, okay, this is a frog that my father actually painted white. He usually didn’t do that. I usually don’t do that. Usually we treat them to a blue green patina. This was a white frog. It was painted, and some of the white was coming off. Some of the paint was cracking, and they were wondering what to do with it. I think they inherited it from a mother or aunt or something like that. Anyway, they didn’t know what to do. The paint was cracking in places. Maybe it needed a makeover.

I told them, you should not do anything to it, and if you did do anything to it, you should paint it white again. Of course, because that’s what my father originally did, and he doesn’t do that with most of his frogs. So it makes this one kind of special.

And now I have just blogged about it folks, so, you guys, it’s now history. It’s now a part of history. Because this blog is not going to disappear. If I can help it, anyway. So for some time into the future we’re going to know that frog was painted white, made by my father. His signature is on the frog. You can see when he made it. He even had named it, Toad I, or something to that effect. It’s a human-sized frog sitting on a bench, but I found it very interesting this frog that he had made because it was 25 years ago that he had made this frog and painted it white. I even I think I know where he sold it, through Nancy’s Gallery, now defunct, in downtown Charleston. So I might even get some pictures of this frog and I think I might even have some old snapshots of it. If not that one, I think I have pictures of another one he painted, that other one, bright orange. Yeah, he just pulled out the old Rustoleum and sprayed the thing down.

They asked me what this frog was worth. I told them what it would cost to get me to make something like this. I told them also that is not really what the frog is worth. It’s worth a lot more money than that because it was made by my father 25 years ago, and he’s not going to do that again because it was 25 years ago that frog was made. So I think they’re holding on to something very special. I told them if I had the money I would have bought it from them. They asked me how much I would pay them for it and I said not what you’d want for it because I would try to get you to sell it to me for less. I mean, I’m rather a poor artist. I don’t have barrels of cash lying about to spend. I told them I can’t afford to buy that frog. If I did have some money, I guess I would have, but I certainly would have dickered with them. I don’t think they should sell it to me. 

Point is, the frog is worth money and it ain’t the same frog that I make today because the frog I make today is original art just as that frog was original art, made by hand. So if you’re going to make it by hand, original art, it’s going to be worth something.  I daresay even original art that is made by an outsider artist or someone who is not well known or someone who is not even an artist for that matter, it will someday be worth something.  It just stands to reason because it becomes a part of history because it can’t be recreated. 

Moreover, these days I am even more highly valuing my time than I ever had before. For good reason: I treat every moment as a precious gift. I take nothing for granted. I do this in a way I haven’t done before in my life. So that means that when I think about making something and decide to make something and I create something, there’s a lot that goes into that. 

35 or so years ago, I remember that a Vincent van Gogh sold for so much money, more than any other painting had sold for that kind of money, millions and millions of dollars – I don’t remember how much. It was Dan Rather, I believe, who was getting a commentary from Peter Max, the painter, the artist, who said – and I remember this very well – that all art, what you buying, what you buying when you buy a painting, is the experience the artist had painting it.

I think that’s very true in many instances, that the art that you buy is the experience. It’s the performance of the experience that you buy. You get that experience, on some level.  So the valuable experience that I have, I share with you and now I’m sharing it not just through the art. I’m going to do the blog thing about it. A blogging we will go.

It’s going to make both of us richer.  It’s going to put more money in my customers pockets as well. That’s what I think. That’s what I know, as I think about that white painted frog that my customers showed me that was made by my dad so many years ago, two and a half decades ago.

When they, those folks who own my dad’s white bench frog, asked me what it was worth, I said, you can’t get the money that it’s worth right now, so don’t sell it. That’s what I told them. Don’t sell it right now, because you can’t get the money for it. It’s worth a lot more than you can get for it.

 I found one of my frogs at a consignment shop, one time. I had put some money down on it. I told the white bench frog owners about that because it was one of my father’s frogs from many years ago and it was selling for not much money at all at a friggin’ consignment shop. I put a down payment on it, but I forgot where the consignment shop was. It wasn’t near me. So I still don’t have that frog.  The consignment place has the money. But I don’t have the frog because, well, I’ve had a lot of things going on in my life, a lot of ups and downs, a lot of crazy times, and I’ve been of recent working very, very hard, so I just didn’t have the time. And I had put, like, $800 down on the damned thing. But now I do have some time because I’m making a conscious choice to slow down and make the decisions I need to make to allow my work to be as valuable and beautiful as it can be.