This is from an email letter from Sari Grove to CARCC, Canadian Artist Copyright Collective, about a gallery distress in January 2010, & how we got her on consignment paintings back...

   About recording agreements...

  What we have been doing is ordering fine art registry security tags from fineartregistry.com ...Each tag goes on the back of a painting & the serial number then links up to the fineartregistry website ...Each artist has their own place...On the website, we upload front & back views of the work, full description, size, medium, etc. & we have been recording exact details of any agreements with any galleries, consignment details or whatever, with dates, commission split, names of people...

  There are options to keep it all private, or online portfolio, or a sales gallery with links to buy directly- even more powerful is the ability to list a work as stolen, which sends it to a list which can be easily viewed by anyone skeptical about a new work they want to purchase...

  Teri Franks, the inventor of the security tags & owner of the company, used this online record as proof to the lawyer landlord about the veracity of our statements- & mentioned that when I was not able to get my works back immediately I had listed them as stolen, meaning the works would have no title if sold...The listing as stolen was a very powerful deterrent, & forced this man into an agreement to return the works...

  (Ernestine Tahedl of John B. Aird gallery had told me about a similar situation, 20 years ago with Kwan Scheider gallery-all got their works back, but it took forever- so I knew I would win, but the time lag was awful)...

  I have since spoken & written to the Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing about the Commercial tenancy laws in Ontario which still allow distraining & seizing & selling of goods. Quebec abolished this. Ebgland abolished this in 2007. Ontario abolished it for residential tenants, but has yet to abolish it commercially. 

  It is a disgusting violation of the Act of Privacy to seize & sell someone's property for rent money- especially in this case where the building has been slated anyway for destruction...(& huge signs to the new condo development are already marring the aesthetic)...

  In the end we had to get the Provincial tax manager to email a letter of exemption to the landlord, because they also had a claim & tax precedes rent in this case. They don't issue these letters provincially actually, only federally, but the tax man learned how cruel this landlord lawyer was being & was willing to bend his own rules to help.

  We also got advice from a kind bailiff- because the landlord had not used a bailiff the whole thing was not done well...(took us a long time to find out what had happened-since no signs were posted.) 

  To this day, this happened January 4th, the lockout, the location is still sitting, locked out & no goods have been sold or disposed of! Nothing has changed except for my painting, 4, are no longer there...

  We paid a Notary Public for a solemn declaration that the paintings were mine...We conversated with Aaron Milrad, the big art lawyer here at Fraser Milner Casgrain, who told us to threaten to "disavow" the works if they were not returned.

  I had promised the works for a Haiti earthquake survivor benefit at Glendon College, & at the very end, the rush for time, pushed the landlord's people to expedite the return of the works...

  The main defender on my side was Teri Franks in Arizona, who emailed the lawyer daily to push...

  Kristian Clarke helped early on, but Tory's the lawfirm, proved disappointing since their deal with Carfac was only if your income was low enough to qualify for pro bono...The form they gave carfac asked for your financial income- I had not realised Tory's help was conditional on being very poor...I had thought Tory was for all Carfac artists- proved not to be the case...

  Kristian was great...

  For the record, I have been with 6 different galleries who have closed on me in the past decade...I have had contracts with some & no contracts with others...The contract did not make a difference either way if they closed or didn't...Sales since 9/11 have been ridiculous...

  If a gallery doesn't sell anything for me, the entire process of writing the contract out beforehand became a bit of a farce...

  Of course, I had never heard of this distraining law- so, I had thought the trust & proof from the gallery owner was enough...The owner by the way in this case was very adamant to the landlord that the paintings were mine on consignment- which didn't matter much...

  I am shocked that everyone was aware that the works were mine, on consignment, but that the law was allowed to let this lawyer still persist in skewing the process of the return of my property...

  I feel the law is at fault here, not me...Hundres or maybe thousands of artists don't always have contracts- that does not give people the right to steal their property...Oral agreements are legally binding worldwide...As everyone in Hollywood knows.

  The burden of ethic should be on the person trying to screw the artist- not the artist saying "what did I do wrong?"...

  The answer is not more contracts. The answer is greater penalties imposed on those who try to exploit artists.

  Everyone knows artists hate red tape. This should not be a way to exploit them..

 You know what I mean.

  Re; the internet...This is my new modus operandi...(regarding the fact that the current Canadian law does NOT recognize the internet as a place that artists work gets copied & as such, no reprography royalty fees are paid if your work appears online...)

  I hand out business cards to collectors or potentials with a website address...Or people can find me from online networks or Google...

  They can see works which are new & possibly available online...There is a paypal button-but that is mostly for show.

  I indicate an email address or phone number to call to make an appoinment with me to view a painting in person.

 I have a deal set up with Don, the owner of National Mailbox, whose office is in the old Sable Castelli gallery office at 33 Hazelton avenue in Toronto...

  The deal is I can meet a collector, bring a painting, show the work in one of his private viewing rooms there- & if it sells because of the meeting, I give national mailbox one third of the sale...(I refuse to give more than one third commission to a gallery...unless they purchase the work outright at a wholesale price directly-but not more than one third if the work is consigned at all...)

  Best regards, Sari

p.s. if you visit the fineartregistry.com website it is worth your while...Teri just won a huge court case against Park West Gallery who was selling common Dali prints on cruise ships with faked signatures- Teri published that on her site, they sued her for defamation, she won by proving the faking was true...Half a million dollars was how much one collector was bilked on fake Dali prints- a class action suit against Park West Gallery is next...Fascinating stuff & all documented in videos on the website.

  Makes for great summer watching...Everyone in the art world should watch- Teri is like the Mother Theresa for artists- truly a remarkable person- if it wasn't for her, our outcome with that landlord may have been quite different...

P.S. the best thing about the whole fiasco is that I sent a painting to

Teri Franks of Fine Art registry as a thank you- & it is now part of the

collection of the FAR museum in Phoenix , Arizona...The museum has not

been built yet, but the work (titled "Pigeon & baker" a 60cm by 90cm

oil) is part of the collection of artworks already, for when the museum

is built...Yay!

  p.p.s. one other work, called Pussywillows went to the young girl who

  organised the Glendon College Haiti earthquake benefit...I felt so

  guilty about not honouring my commitment to them if I couldn't that I

  forced everybody to move ten times as fast to get my works back...I

  cannot disappoint a young person...not a charity neither. & the

  earthquake was so awful...(soon after the one in Chile hit...)

 Sari