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When I was younger, in high school, I actually snuck a piece of "art" into an exhibit. I chewed up a big piece of gum, wadded it up with some notebook paper, and stuck it on a piece of paper where I had scribbled some figures in pencil. I wrote "The Wad Explained" on the bottom of the paper and hung it on the wall next to some other exhibits. For all I know, somebody might have bought it. parsy.

Parsy the subversive - I like it. One of these days I'm going to get me one of those velvet Elvis paintings, or maybe the poker-playing dogs - you know, the ones they sell by the roadside sometimes - and nail that up at the local art gallery, just to see if anyone notices...

I had a painting/silkscreen titled "President Eating A Pinup" with JFK modelled after Salvador Dali's "Baby Eating A Rat" (based on the inner psyche of Freud).

I made it for a girl who never paid me ($25) and left town. As I retained the painting, I loaned it out to a bar where it sat for about a year. An artist had a show there with large splatter paintings and collages priced from $400-800.

I later learned that an artist-musician who's made the big league ($25,000 museum purchases) thought that it was the best piece in the show. None of the offers that were ventured ever made it to me (I don't even know how much, just that some people expressed interest in buying it) and I still have the painting. I later saw an extensive magazine spread on the artist who exhibited at the bar.

The art "game" isn't that hard to understand but it does take connections to get exposed to the right circles. Some of it comes down to can you stand "proudly" by your work? Do you respect the opinions of those who admire your work?

I've bought works directly from artists I admired when I could.