Don't give away your work!

[Jesse C. Draper]

I think this is a very important subject. We all go through years where we are learning our craft. I used to save everything, even paintings that were failures. I recently destroyed all the failures. I think this opened a new door for me. I learned something from each of the failures, but I don't want them coming back to bite me in 20 years. I went to the Chihuly exhibit during the Olympics where I learned a really good lesson. There was a documentary of Chihuly at work at the exibit. In the documentary it showed him destroying much of his work, he threw beautiful pieces of blown glass against a giant cement wall. It almost hurt to watch him do this. He called this quality control. After visiting the gift shop, I came to realize why he destroyed all those pieces. Have you ever seen how much a Chihuly piece costs?