|
"We are a venue for independent artists to sell their own handmade goods" Do you philosophically consider yourself an artist? Much like yourself, I build/assemble electronic things mostly of other peoples designs using purchased mass produced parts with my own (sometimes substantial) customizations, sometimes wood is involved. The primary differences I see at this time between us, are I appear to tend more toward RF applications and you tend toward analog applications, and I don't sell anything I make. I try to make my work look good as per my own engineering aesthetic and pride in craftsmanship, but I don't consider myself an artist and I do not consider my activity as an art. For some difficult comparison examples, is "Seeed Studios" doing art and staffed by artists, or just a small short run assembly line service? How about hand wired radio amplifiers from the "MFJ Enterprises" factory floor? A guy who hand assembles multiple plain looking beige box generic PCs using components from multiple sources, is he an "artist"? I believe you can make art using electronic parts WRT jewelry for example or perhaps wall hanging "sculptures", or truly wild/exotic case designs, or ground breaking UI design, but making a conventional appearing tool for an artist to use does not transition the art-i-ness to the dude who runs the factory machinery that makes millions of painters brushes per day, for example. We seem to disagree, and that's OK. The problem seems to be Etsy and I agree, which is not so OK for your shop. I think thats being missed in the discussion of small details of legal documents on both sides, it is probably the big (undiscussed) issue they have with you. Probably because they're unwilling to have a public "what is art" debate, so instead lets argue about if you PCB or panel mount your potentiometers. Don't miss the forest looking at the individual trees. BTW your blog does not contain much text, but if you made that PDP-1 panel as pictured, I find that both artistically and technically impressive. Its artistically cool looking as a visual display such that etsy might tolerate something like that "as art" In the 60s DEC always had better aesthetic sense than IBM, although both pale in comparison to 80s-ish era Crays and Connection Machines. |