nothing like it did the day of the auction. The only

recourse for those stuck with a frame they don't like is to

buy a new frame from a frame shop.

More importantly, through these auctions the overall

value of an artist is reduced to almost nothing. When an

artist who sells their work at $1,200 for a limited

edition, suddenly has a very large body of their work

on cruise ships auctioning for three or four hundred

dollars, the market value for their art is now three or

four hundred dollars.

People who are purchasing these works are not

informed that what they're buying are close-out items which

didn't sell well to begin with and will resell for less than they

paid when they go to sell them. What they really don't

understand is buying this art contributes to support a

system that profits from the devouring of artists' careers.

Once an artist has had their values stripped in

theses auctions the galleries who have been dealing

with the artist will stop buying his or her work. The

artist's values are now split between the gallery values and

cruise auction value, and both cannot be sustained. Since

people can now get the lower value they will not look kindly

on galleries maintaining the higher value.

Having

experienced this in the past, art galleries will quickly close

out the artist and never deal with them again, leaving what

was a still growing career in the dust.

All of this is outside the artist's control and that's truly

the saddest part. The 1 billion dollar industry of cruise ship

and hotel art auctions is generating the demise of artists

who had nothing to do with their own demise. Untold

n u m b e r s  of  artists  have  lost  their  gallery

representation and their livelihood because of this