Small Victories of Small Bears
Feb. 12th, 2011 03:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marnanightingaleTwo years ago for my birthday, ![[personal profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
random gave me the most glorious dancing bear earrings:
I've wanted the pendant
forever, but was waiting for an excuse to buy it. A couple of weeks ago I decided that the time had come, so I went to Magpie Jewelry in the Rideau Centre, where the earrings came from and where I had seen the pendant, prepared to hand over my cash.
They didn't have one in. I asked them to order it and placed a deposit. They also gave me the artist's name: Jonasie Faber. I kept it, in case I wanted more of his stuff, later, or ever got to where I could afford his sculpture. I mean, okay, his major work is on display in places like Vancouver Airport and the Museum of Civilisation, but I might someday manage a minor piece.
Magpie called back several days later to tell me that they were no longer able to order Mr Faber's work and to ask me to come by for my deposit.
I started googling around looking for other galleries or jewelers who carried his work. I found the excellent-looking Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, and sent an email.
Bob Selley responded promptly and helpfully:
Dear Ms Nightingale:
Many thanks for your inquiry.
Regrettably we do not have any of Joanasie Faber's dancing bear pendants in stock and are unable to purchase anything new from him. To the best of my information he is only selling his work outside the country at this time.
Hope that is of some help.
I emailed him back asking for any possible leads for buying Mr Faber's work in the US or UK and he suggested I try the Ancestral Spirits Gallery in Port Thompson WA.
Annette Huenke and Alex Vinniski were equally helpful and friendly, and they had one. It will be on its way to me Monday.
I would like to note that these galleries handle sculpture and jewelry in the high four digits on a regular basis. This is a $50.00 silver piece, which the Inuit Gallery was not even able to sell me, and everyone was prompt, friendly and generally wonderful about helping me.
I would cheerfully, based on my experience with these two companies, recommend either of them to anyone looking for art by First Nations Artists and who wants to buy from a gallery which, based on their help in getting me the pendant and the familiarity and concern that each of them expressed to me with regards to Mr Faber's situation, treats both their customers and their artists with real respect and concern.
Because of their amazingness and in support of Mr Faber I will be buying the bracelet when it becomes available, which though it is charming I hadn't exactly planned, and Mr Faber's future works will very likely wind up adorning my wife and my bride as occasion serves.
As for Mr Faber's situation, the reason he is no longer selling his work in Canada:
Inuit artist Jonas Faber of Summerland keeps winning his big battles with the Canada Revenue Agency.
But the more he wins, it seems, the more he loses.
Faber won hands down with a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission last year. CRA settled -- a payment in the high five figures, he tells me, although the agreement means he can't say exactly how much -- and the agency apologized for the highly insensitive, if not outright racist, comments in his file. The auditor said, in effect, that because Faber was native he couldn't be relied on to have the same sense of responsibility "as we would have."
A year earlier, Faber won what his lawyer calls "a reasonably good outcome," when a tax court judge dismissed several assumptions by the same auditor who demeaned his race. The nub of the case was that the auditor disallowed many expenses, including a trip to Washington, D.C., where he sold $30,000 worth of art at one big show.
Yet what started out as a $22,000 tax bill when these expenses were disallowed back in 2000-01 has now morphed into a demand for $177,377.56. And Faber says he's being accused of truly criminal activity. CRA never mentioned this when he was in tax court so that a judge could determine the truth, but the agency now says he has been hiding millions in assets.
Among CRA's allegations -- all of which Faber says are nonsense -- are claims that he owns a numbered company, that he has a secret home somewhere in Ontario and that he has cash stashed in several offshore bank accounts.
To Faber, it's a simple case of "they put somebody else's numbered company into my permanent file. ... And they didn't disclose the document, as they were supposed to, when the case went to tax court." (It was not hard for me to find out that this is a holding company owned by two women in Mission. The company, in turn, owned an office services business that, operating under a separate name, once did a minor amount of work for Faber.)
...
It's stressful to be personally hounded, he said. But worse, CRA is also targeting galleries he works with. Several have received letters demanding they pay what CRA claims Faber owes.
This has, predictably, strained relationships with the people he relies on to sell his work.
"They're going to put my business under," he said.
When I went in to pick up my deposit from Magpie I let them know why they were no longer able to get the work of one of their best sellers. The manager said she would do some further research and possibly write the CRA a letter pointing out how much tax revenue is being lost from their store alone because they cannot carry one of their most popular lines of jewelry.
I plan to send a letter as well.
If you feel like letting the knotheads at the CRA know how you feel about them attempting to drive a brillant and renowned artist out of Canada, and succeeding in driving his works out of Canada, on the unsupported word of an auditor whose handling of Mr Faber's case appears to have been either incompetent or malicious or both and whose racist behaviour while handling said case was egregious enough to have lost the CRA a Human Rights Commission case, you can contact the people in charge.
Meanwhile, I shall have my bear, and Mr Faber shall have payment for it. It's a drop in the bucket, but this is how buckets get full.
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth. where there are
comments. Comment here or there as you prefer.
random gave me the most glorious dancing bear earrings: I've wanted the pendant
forever, but was waiting for an excuse to buy it. A couple of weeks ago I decided that the time had come, so I went to Magpie Jewelry in the Rideau Centre, where the earrings came from and where I had seen the pendant, prepared to hand over my cash.
They didn't have one in. I asked them to order it and placed a deposit. They also gave me the artist's name: Jonasie Faber. I kept it, in case I wanted more of his stuff, later, or ever got to where I could afford his sculpture. I mean, okay, his major work is on display in places like Vancouver Airport and the Museum of Civilisation, but I might someday manage a minor piece.
Magpie called back several days later to tell me that they were no longer able to order Mr Faber's work and to ask me to come by for my deposit.
I started googling around looking for other galleries or jewelers who carried his work. I found the excellent-looking Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, and sent an email.
Bob Selley responded promptly and helpfully:
Dear Ms Nightingale:
Many thanks for your inquiry.
Regrettably we do not have any of Joanasie Faber's dancing bear pendants in stock and are unable to purchase anything new from him. To the best of my information he is only selling his work outside the country at this time.
Hope that is of some help.
I emailed him back asking for any possible leads for buying Mr Faber's work in the US or UK and he suggested I try the Ancestral Spirits Gallery in Port Thompson WA.
Annette Huenke and Alex Vinniski were equally helpful and friendly, and they had one. It will be on its way to me Monday.
I would like to note that these galleries handle sculpture and jewelry in the high four digits on a regular basis. This is a $50.00 silver piece, which the Inuit Gallery was not even able to sell me, and everyone was prompt, friendly and generally wonderful about helping me.
I would cheerfully, based on my experience with these two companies, recommend either of them to anyone looking for art by First Nations Artists and who wants to buy from a gallery which, based on their help in getting me the pendant and the familiarity and concern that each of them expressed to me with regards to Mr Faber's situation, treats both their customers and their artists with real respect and concern.
Because of their amazingness and in support of Mr Faber I will be buying the bracelet when it becomes available, which though it is charming I hadn't exactly planned, and Mr Faber's future works will very likely wind up adorning my wife and my bride as occasion serves.
As for Mr Faber's situation, the reason he is no longer selling his work in Canada:
Inuit artist Jonas Faber of Summerland keeps winning his big battles with the Canada Revenue Agency.
But the more he wins, it seems, the more he loses.
Faber won hands down with a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission last year. CRA settled -- a payment in the high five figures, he tells me, although the agreement means he can't say exactly how much -- and the agency apologized for the highly insensitive, if not outright racist, comments in his file. The auditor said, in effect, that because Faber was native he couldn't be relied on to have the same sense of responsibility "as we would have."
A year earlier, Faber won what his lawyer calls "a reasonably good outcome," when a tax court judge dismissed several assumptions by the same auditor who demeaned his race. The nub of the case was that the auditor disallowed many expenses, including a trip to Washington, D.C., where he sold $30,000 worth of art at one big show.
Yet what started out as a $22,000 tax bill when these expenses were disallowed back in 2000-01 has now morphed into a demand for $177,377.56. And Faber says he's being accused of truly criminal activity. CRA never mentioned this when he was in tax court so that a judge could determine the truth, but the agency now says he has been hiding millions in assets.
Among CRA's allegations -- all of which Faber says are nonsense -- are claims that he owns a numbered company, that he has a secret home somewhere in Ontario and that he has cash stashed in several offshore bank accounts.
To Faber, it's a simple case of "they put somebody else's numbered company into my permanent file. ... And they didn't disclose the document, as they were supposed to, when the case went to tax court." (It was not hard for me to find out that this is a holding company owned by two women in Mission. The company, in turn, owned an office services business that, operating under a separate name, once did a minor amount of work for Faber.)
...
It's stressful to be personally hounded, he said. But worse, CRA is also targeting galleries he works with. Several have received letters demanding they pay what CRA claims Faber owes.
This has, predictably, strained relationships with the people he relies on to sell his work.
"They're going to put my business under," he said.
When I went in to pick up my deposit from Magpie I let them know why they were no longer able to get the work of one of their best sellers. The manager said she would do some further research and possibly write the CRA a letter pointing out how much tax revenue is being lost from their store alone because they cannot carry one of their most popular lines of jewelry.
I plan to send a letter as well.
If you feel like letting the knotheads at the CRA know how you feel about them attempting to drive a brillant and renowned artist out of Canada, and succeeding in driving his works out of Canada, on the unsupported word of an auditor whose handling of Mr Faber's case appears to have been either incompetent or malicious or both and whose racist behaviour while handling said case was egregious enough to have lost the CRA a Human Rights Commission case, you can contact the people in charge.
Meanwhile, I shall have my bear, and Mr Faber shall have payment for it. It's a drop in the bucket, but this is how buckets get full.
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth. where there are
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 04:22 pm (UTC)CRA's practice of assuming criminal intent is incredibly offensive, and might be of dubious legality as well. I've run into it before, and I'm really not impressed.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 05:51 pm (UTC)