Borrego Sun - Since 1949

Recently it was shared with all art venues here in Borrego Springs that a certain local for profit resort was potentially soliciting local art for its club house, restaurant and private rental resort houses. Thoughtful recommendations were made to the resort owner advising him to establish a budget to pay artists for selected and acquired artworks.

Unfortunately, these recommendations were cast aside with a counter proposal to simple use and show local and regional artists work without any compensation what so ever. The proposal prefers to benefit the resort by using artists without the legal responsibility of compensating them for any of their artwork and proposing that exposing the art at the resort might bring some interest from resort guests.

Artists, craftspeople, designers and other creatives need to be respected and compensated for any works that are installed in a private for profit resort setting, indoors and outdoors. Its extraordinary that a premier resort expects that local artists will agree to such an unfair practice. While the resort benefits with decorating their public spaces and the artists receive nothing in return is frankly robbing our local talent from due compensation and disrespecting their efforts, skills, craft and creative hard work.

Another observation substantiates that resort companies feel they can convince small town artists to agree to such unfair practices because they can convince uninformed provincial small minds. This pilferer perception has got to cease. All artists must be monetarily compensation or their artwork should not be shown in the halls of for profit resorts. Artists throughout history have been ripped-off by looters and distasteful business practices. We will not allow this to happen to artists in our community.

Its time that local Borrego Springs and regional artists unite and stand together and insist they be fairly paid for their artwork by for profit resorts.