Stephanie’s Blog Episode 1: Middle Class Artist Goals
Hello friends. Welcome to episode number one of “Stephanie Writes an Art Blog”. Where you’ll get insight into my most intimate ideas, dreams and desires about being an artist. And what it means to be a visual artist in the twenty-first century. The ups and downs, trials and tribulations, ebbs and flows, and ins and outs. You get the idea. Bear with me, I’m new at this. I’ll feature works in progress, write about what inspires me, take trips down art memory lane, and share my thoughts. I have A LOT of thoughts.
I also have the unique perspective of someone who has been trying her hand in the art world for over 15 years, experiencing moments of success while simultaneously feeling like I’ve made no progress whatsoever.
Hold on a second.
That describes pretty much every artist I know. Whether we’ve been on the scene for 5 years or for 50, most of us experience the never-ending hustle of building/maintaining a reputation and struggling to make a living without compromising our visions. Practically all of us rely on side-gigs to make ends meet as we justify to ourselves that we’re in art for the love not the sustainability.
Can you believe there are so many of us artists who work our buns off for a pittance of ephemeral rewards? Of course you can! I know what you’re thinking, “Artists! They don’t get famous until they die! There’s a reason they’re called *starving* artists! Enjoy working as a barista your entire life*!” WRONG! Well, sort of. I graduated from York University in 2004 with a degree in visual art and zero education or preparation for the professional and practical aspects of being an artist (thoughts on that coming to a future blog entry near you). Since then, on my meandering journey to figure that stuff out on my own, I have come across a multitude of lucrative jobs in which visual art skills are huge assets. I, myself, went down the path of production design and set decoration in the film industry (thoughts on that coming to a future blog entry near you), hoping to balance film work with art work, with varying degrees of success. But that’s not why I’m poo-pooing the old artist stereotypes.
The problem with those stereotypes is they’re so pervasive, in education and in pop-culture, that even us artists accept them as inevitable. We essentially learn that there are two types of artists: the art star (think Andy Warhol or Damien Hirst) and the broke artist. We all dream of being the next art star but, even for the best of us, that is an unlikely dream. Which leaves us with option B. Loathe though we are to admit it, we go into the field knowing the likelihood of our fate. Which is okay since, naturally, we ventured into the art world for the passion. It is our calling. If we didn’t want to doom ourselves to a life of poverty we would have chosen a different field. We scoff at monetary rewards, for they sully the purity of our work. We prefer the romanticized notion of engulfing ourselves in artistic angst and drinking away our sorrows in a sea of destitution and syphilis**, thank you very much.
BALDERDASH, I say! Poppycock! Twaddle! Utter flummery!
Nobody wants that! Not the artists who became famous posthumously and popularized the tropes, and certainly not me! Why do we resign ourselves to this nonsense? My theory is that myself and my contemporaries have been conditioned to believe that failure is our path to success. Success in this case meaning we persevere in the face of misery and poverty and our works become valuable after we die. Making money from our art isn’t such a bad thing but if we make too much we’ve sold out, our art is no longer stemming from a place of suffering, and we are no longer legitimate. Or so goes the belief, whether conscious or not.
It doesn’t help that we aren’t taught anything about the business side of art. Four years of studying art in a reputable university program and I wasn’t even taught how to put together a CV (a resume for artists) or a portfolio! Let alone a smidgen of career or business strategy. Who needs it when my job is to create prolific work? If I starve to death along the way? That’s just being an artist. Maybe I’ll get discovered, maybe I won’t - that’s out of my hands so why worry my pretty little head? In the meantime many of the gate-keepers in the industry are thrilled this is the mindset. They easily get away with compensating us for a fraction of the time and effort we put into our work, paying us in exposure, or even charging us for that exposure. Which we reluctantly oblige, because that’s just being an artist.
I have to say that I have built a lovely life for myself despite (or maybe thanks to) my lack of vast financial gain. And that when I refer to my own poverty I acknowledge that I am coming from a huge place of privilege. And that there are a multitude of ways being an artist is rewarding, that value comes in many forms besides money, and that how an artist determines their idea of success is completely personal and subjective. All that being said, it wasn’t until 2019 when I had the epiphany that, whether I like it or nor, as an artist I am a business person. It’s criminal that took me so long, or even that I consider it an epiphany. I always figured the artists who “made it” were bestowed with a natural aptitude for business (and/or rich and connected parents). Since I don’t have a natural aptitude for business (and/or rich and connected parents) I didn’t even try. But here’s the big secret: Business is a skill that can be learned. Shocking, I know! What’s more, and this was my second epiphany, it is possible for an artist to exist somewhere between starving and art star. To be, dare I say it, a middle class artist.
Here’s a quick breakdown of my business-person timeline:
May 2004 - Graduate with a BFA from York University. Ensuing art strategy = pump out as much art as I can between working 14-hour days on film sets and somehow, somewhere along the way someone would see it, like it and buy it. I made a ton of good art! And showed some of it. And sold even less of it.
July-ish, 2019 - Epiphany #1, realize I’m a business person during my studio residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It only took 15 years.
September, 2019 - start working insane hours doing production design on my second feature film, followed immediately by working insane hours on the TV show American Gods. No time or energy for art/business.
March, 2020 - Oopsie daisies there’s a worldwide pandemic everything gets shut down
April, 2020 - Recover from my burnout. For the first time in a long time I am able to really focus on my art. I begin restructuring my life and practice.
November-ish 2020 - Epiphany #2, hear the term “middle-class artist” casually mentioned on an art podcast. Mind gets blown.
That’s right, I spent the first seven 7 months of the pandemic restructuring my art practice and thinking about bettering my business skills STILL with the notion that I’d remain broke. But, like, less broke? I was listening to the podcast ‘The Thriving Artist’ and they casually mentioned the term “middle-class artist”. Which was a real lightbulb moment for me! In all my wildest dreams it never occurred to me that I could aim for middle class. Art star? Sure, I could dream of that, futile though it likely was. But comfortable? Stable? Secure? Ridiculous! It’s funny how a simple phrase or idea can have such an impact. I don’t think this will change the nature of my art, I’ll always be a delightful weirdo, but it will, nay, HAS changed my perspective on how I value myself and the work I do.
Let’s see what happens next...
*There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a barista.
** A reference to several notable artists from the early-to-mid twentieth century. Most of us don’t have syphilis. Probably.
