The sale of the moose was a disaster. The average sale price of the moose was 1/4 of the previous auction. Because of the success of the prior event, the artists worked twice as hard. Acknowledging how awful this event was by those who ran it would have provided some comfort.
The lesson I took away from this. Don't ever do it again!
I can't blame the Chamber of Commerce, the economy was tanking, but someone should have thought, "How many people want a second moose in their yard?"
The artists get 1/4 of the auction proceeds. The whole event depended on the artists. People flock to Bennington and business flourishes. Then they sell the moose and money goes to charity. And in my case the take was less than $600. It cost me far more than that to make it, plus a couple hundred hours of labor. And because so little was paid for it, Mystical Moose is disintegrating in someone's yard right now. There were other moose that had even more work put into them, such as RoboMoose.
The universe was generous with providing many signs along the way that showed that I should not continue, but I didn't heed them. The delivery of the moose was supposed to be in December. It kept getting postponed, time and time again we heard "It will be next week" Finally it was delivered in February. The designer of the moose forgot that it needed to fit inside a door. The previous moose, because the head was tilted at an angle, did. I had to make a hoop greenhouse for it to fit in. The plastic kept blowing off and the entire structure wanted to tip over. Working in the freezing cold trying to get bondo to set up is a trying ordeal.
Still, we artists tried to stay excited about it. And when it was all over, it would have been nice to say, sorry it didn't work out....
Parting advice: If anyone wants to do this in the future, they should stick to painting. People prefer paintings over sculpture. Look at auctions of art. You never see the values of sculpture equal paintings. Painting takes less time and is more appreciated.
Good luck to future projects, follow the adventures of the Bennington Catamount
