Karan wrote a post about jobs she has had.
I'm not sure I know how to do the same - it seems like I've had a lot of paid and unpaid part-time and/or short-term jobs in art, including running workshops for children and adults (animation, relief-printing, masks, furniture painting, etc.), inventing the gifted students' art program at Wa He Lut and making it happen for 16 years, doing graphics jobs for people who twist my arm. None of those were full-time and only the Lut was long-term.
My real job has always been to make my own art and ignore things like: poverty, no insurance, no respect from society, etc., etc. It's not possible to be an artist and be concerned with money. I've had shows in many places including NYC, and at some point the gross-out qualities of the "art world" overwhelmed anything else (as almost every artist realises at some point). I started doing things on purpose to make my artwork *gasp* not fit in. There's this entire art-as-religion thing that the people who make money from art try their damndest to spread, as it makes their commodity worth more. Like p.r. and advertising, no? To their own ends they encourage competition between artists. Anyway, it's best to do one's own creative work and blow a raspberry at the corrupt art world as it has developed in this society.
OK - so... ONE: artist.
I've had a lot of horse-related jobs including working for a timber horse trainer.
OK - TWO: horsewoman
I worked for my friend A$ as she begged me - doing part-time waitressing in her entirely eccentric tearoom. It was far more like theatre than waitressing. I used to have to cajole the grumpy cook to do things like put a slice of cheese on a sandwich, and would drop to my knees mid-restaurant and approach her (visible kitchen) as a supplicant, to the great amusement of the diners. A$ always had something weird she'd want me to do, like taking orders with a 5-foot long pencil, or wearing gigantic plastic buttocks.
OK - THREE: waitress
After high school I had two jobs for short times. One was in a large shop where the bosses would periodically go nutzoid at the sheer cheeziness of it all and throw boxed goods in the trash compacter. The other was in an electronics factory. First I was etching resistors with acid. Then they transferred me to another area where I had to chip resistors off a plate with a single-edged razor, and shortly thereafter required many stitches in my thumb.
OK - FOUR: feckless teenager
posted by 
- 11:55 AM
- 11:55 AM
Comments:
I am picturing you making art from computer chips while kneeling on a horse's back and throwing snacks to your adoring audience.
Being a waitress was very much like being a nurse. Hungry people (and these were almost all regular customers who enjoyed the total eccentricity of the placre) stomped in all grumpy and after I fed them they'd be wreathed in smiles. It made me laugh.
I have been giving some careful thought to your art-as-religion complaint, Osprey. I agree there is much less mystery to making art than those who haven't yet taken up a paint brush might think. And money is a poor measure of artistic success, I am the first to admit. But so far as the "art world" is mostly made up of individuals and tiny businesses each with about as many workers as I can count on one hand, it is far less corrupt, or corrupting, or even corruptible, than nearly every other business I can think of. Charlatans abound in all profession and in every age. There was no escaping them in Eighteenth Century and no avoiding them today. Raphael was a smooth talker to the chagrin of grumpy old Michelangelo Buonarotti, and he ashamelessly advertised his talents (both on the canvas and in the salon). But both of them created divine work. They certainly competed for Julius II's favour, but the unpleasantness was on Buonarotti's side. I have known many commercially successful artists and they are no more or less human, delightful and imaginative as the poorer ones.
You are fortunate, dear Osprey, to live in a time when art in all its forms, from high-fashion NYC art-critic's precious find of the moment, to tatoos, to graphic novels (they are still all penny dreadfuls to me), to textile art, to performance and installation art, to calligraphic, photographic, collage, conceptual 3D, motion graphic 2D, handicraft, retrospective, socialist realism and even classicism - all forms and styles of art are esteemed, nay celebrated, find audiences, are published in books and sold at auction, and make money. You are more entirely surrounded by art in the Twenty-first Century than the aristocracy was in the Nineteenth. Not fitting in, as you are pleased to describe it, is just what most artists struggle to achieve. Count it a blessing that it comes so easily to you! It is not the fault of the art world if you feel the worth of the art that you do (and I have been enjoying it for more than a year) is not reflected by the money you earn in doing it. I don't wish to read more into your comments than you meant to say, but I would think your lovely lake view and open-minded students make you a far wealthier artist than most.
You are fortunate, dear Osprey, to live in a time when art in all its forms, from high-fashion NYC art-critic's precious find of the moment, to tatoos, to graphic novels (they are still all penny dreadfuls to me), to textile art, to performance and installation art, to calligraphic, photographic, collage, conceptual 3D, motion graphic 2D, handicraft, retrospective, socialist realism and even classicism - all forms and styles of art are esteemed, nay celebrated, find audiences, are published in books and sold at auction, and make money. You are more entirely surrounded by art in the Twenty-first Century than the aristocracy was in the Nineteenth. Not fitting in, as you are pleased to describe it, is just what most artists struggle to achieve. Count it a blessing that it comes so easily to you! It is not the fault of the art world if you feel the worth of the art that you do (and I have been enjoying it for more than a year) is not reflected by the money you earn in doing it. I don't wish to read more into your comments than you meant to say, but I would think your lovely lake view and open-minded students make you a far wealthier artist than most.
It's obvious to me that art is magic - that our idea of magic was born in a cave somewhere as someone looked at a sinuous crack and pointed out to another that it formed an animal. The second person couldn't see it. The first took charcoal and outlined the animal, adding details. The second person was astounded - that is magic, art. It comes from the artist's eye, not any outside business. The tawdry trappings of religion that include hushed tones and the secret path to the deity that only a few know - these to me get in the way. Both young artists and those who are interested in looking at art are bamboozled into thinking them part of art itself when they aren't. I'm sorry if I came accross as bitter - that wasn't my intent nor is it how I feel. I consciously decided back at the dawn of time that even though it didn't fit with the way things were, that it should be possible to live anywhere. I'm not time-based and I'm also not space-based, although hardly anyone knows what I'm talking about. I dislike that the art world fosters competition and disharmony in artists. Partly it is this society we live in where no one trusts their own judgement but seeks experts to guide him in making choices and things must be ranked. The other part is that it's in the interest of the art business to create an aura, and to use such tools as they can invent to control and subdue artists.
# posted by 
: 15 June, 2007 10:40
: 15 June, 2007 10:40
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