Art All Night – 26

It’s the last weekend in April, so it’s Art All Night weekend again here in Pittsburgh! Participants this year had the choice of entering for the in-person show only (you have to be able to drop off and pick up at very specific times), or online only (then you needed to submit a photo with your entry), or both. I am doing both!

And here’s the story behind my entry this year: While we didn’t have severe winter weather the past few months, the wild temperature swings (high temps could be 40°F higher or lower from one day to the next!) seem to have confused so many living things. I’ve no idea how my garden will do, nor whether we’ll continue to set high temperature records all summer too (30° above normal on a winter day is one thing; 30° over on an already-hot day is quite something else!).

So, amidst the confusion, what better style of piece to enter in Art All Night this year but another creation from my Urban Flowers series (that I first introduced back in 2016)! My entry for this year is the flower pendant I’ve titled Kiss Me Twice.

I have never promised my Urban Flowers to be botanically accurate… I say they come from just “a city-girl’s dreams”! So this pendant is not in any way an accurate representation of the Nigella damascena flower that is sometimes called Kiss Me Twice Before I Rise (or Love in a Mist or Devil in a Bush or any of a dozen or more other common names), but the connection here is the similarity I see in the position of the petals, and the way the blue glass in the center here, while not at all like the feathery bits in the real plant, does remind me of the blue in the real flower’s petals. Which seems like good enough reasons to use as a title something so interesting as Kiss Me Twice.

For those of you familiar with my interest in edible flowers, I will note that, while the seeds of Nigella damascena are, apparently, edible (perhaps reminiscent of nutmeg? I’ve never tried them), they are also reported to be far less flavorful than Nigella sativa, aka black cumin, black caraway, kalonji, charnushka, … Those little, black N. sativa seeds are among my favorites to add to my home-made breads, both loaf-style ones and flatbreads. I should get off my computer and get baking!

But not from 4 pm this Saturday, April 29, through 2 pm on Sunday, April 30! My plan is to do a volunteer shift on Saturday (then go to at least one of several other conflicting art shows and a music concert), try to sleep a little, and then get back over to actually see the show on Sunday morning. If you can’t get there in person during that timeframe, you can still see some of the entries at Art All Night’s virtual show. (I’m assuming it’ll show up there, on the event’s website. If not, you might try the Facebook page of Art All Night: Pittsburgh. There are lots of little, informative posts there too.)

If you sell your own work…

Several artists I very much admire (I’m not naming them because I haven’t asked their permission) got into a recent discussion about the difference in some fees charged by the Square credit card processing system. A comment was made about this being higher than that … but the formulas were different. There had to be a “break even” point where they matched! So I immediately calculated those values for my own benefit.

And then this evening I just had to go back to some good old graphing software and produce this plot. This applies specifically to the Square system as of April 6, 2023. Other credit card processors calculate their fees differently, both in their formulas and any various categories. But Square is one of the more common ones you’ll see used at art fairs, so I thought some of you might share an interest in this..

Always the lowest fee (purple line): charged in-person, using their card reader.

Next lowest (red and green lines swap at the green circle): 

• Under $25, when you manually enter the information or a card stored in Square’s system is used;
• Over $25, a purchase processed online through Square.

Highest (red and blue lines swap at the blue star):

• Under $75, when you invoice the buyer through Square;
• Over $75, when you manually enter the information or a card stored in Square’s system is used.

I can understand the logic of a higher fee for an invoice: Square is providing an extra service that involves more steps through their system.

But I agree with the folks who started this discussion: I can’t think why the fee for using a card stored in their system creeps higher, relative to their other categories, as the total amount processed at that time goes up.

Can you? If so please leave me a comment!

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p.s., There are yet more fee structures, but I thought that graph had enough lines already! For instance, if you offer the Afterpay service, the vendor’s fee for that (at least through Square) is higher-still, 6% + $0.30. [Editorial comment: The pitch is that the vendor will get more sales and be paid in full. Since Afterpay has to both cover the float and deal with any problems with the later payments, the higher fee compensates them for all that. I don’t rely on an online shop for the bulk of my income but, as a shopper, I know that vendors are now factoring the possibility that “you” will use that service into the price that “I” will be paying even if I simply hand over cash, contributing its own little factor to increasing inflation…]