Having just finished Show Your Work by Austin Kleon (thanks to my fellow artist sister in law Danielle for giving it to me), I feel newly motivated to continue the work of making art my work. Why am I sharing it? Well, beside "showing my work" (including thought processes), I find that ordering my thoughts is the first step to making a plan. And a plan is the first step to achieving a goal. As I read Show Your Work, I had the urge to scribble some things that I've been learning about the way I make creative work and why I care about it. Here they are.
1. My work is worth money. I like to share things and give them away, but that's something that I get to decide. If you ask for my work, I will ask you to pay for it. Creative work is hard work. My work contains part of me, and that's not free.
2. I make new work in response to stimulus. I often feel like I should wait for epiphanies or come up with completely original ideas from thin air in order to make things of interest, but what really inspires me to play with ideas is having a prompt. Prompts can come from anywhere, but mainly involve putting myself in a situation where I'm going to find information that doesn't originate from something I already know. Read, look, engage, study, argue, travel, listen.
3. I'm motivated by economics. I see a lot of things that I like and plenty of stuff I want, but I usually can't or won't buy it. Many projects I undertake begin with how to solve the problem of getting something I can't afford to buy. Learning how to make it, and make it my own. On the flip side, I've learned to pay for some things that I'll never care to do well on my own (like making or altering clothing).
4. I am my own category. I worry that I need to focus my work more in able to market it. I have seemingly endless and diverse interests. But I also realized that that nebulous, sometimes unwieldy approach is something I value in myself and my work. I like it. I find it very interesting in others as well, so I am trusting that the fact that my work is not easily categorized is of intrinsic worth.
5. I am a quitter. I need momentum to create, and some ideas will die because I couldn't execute them before my interest faded. It is okay to stop working on one thing because something else is now more deserving of that time. I do not want to finish projects I do not care about.
6. I am afraid to fail because... money. A broken heart.
To expound, I am currently afraid to give my biggest ambitions all of my energy because I can not afford not to be hustling for a stable paycheck right now. I hope that that changes in time. I am also afraid to put my whole heart out there because if my project(s) get a poor response, I will feel crushed that others did not see, love, or even care to check out something I put my whole self into. I also think it's important to periodically answer the question, "what am I afraid of" because that helps me tackle how to overcome or push through those fears.
7. What I make is not made for everyone. You can not please everyone. People have different tastes. It's not a failure if not everyone likes or gets my work. (I apply this heavily, at least in theory, to people who have negative things to say about my work. If you didn't like it, it wasn't for you.)
8. I am an artist. My current main job is a restaurant cook. But I'm not a cook that makes art, I'm an artist that cooks. This mindset helps me see my creative endeavors worthy of serious pursuit.
(artwork by Alma Haser)
1. My work is worth money. I like to share things and give them away, but that's something that I get to decide. If you ask for my work, I will ask you to pay for it. Creative work is hard work. My work contains part of me, and that's not free.
2. I make new work in response to stimulus. I often feel like I should wait for epiphanies or come up with completely original ideas from thin air in order to make things of interest, but what really inspires me to play with ideas is having a prompt. Prompts can come from anywhere, but mainly involve putting myself in a situation where I'm going to find information that doesn't originate from something I already know. Read, look, engage, study, argue, travel, listen.
3. I'm motivated by economics. I see a lot of things that I like and plenty of stuff I want, but I usually can't or won't buy it. Many projects I undertake begin with how to solve the problem of getting something I can't afford to buy. Learning how to make it, and make it my own. On the flip side, I've learned to pay for some things that I'll never care to do well on my own (like making or altering clothing).
4. I am my own category. I worry that I need to focus my work more in able to market it. I have seemingly endless and diverse interests. But I also realized that that nebulous, sometimes unwieldy approach is something I value in myself and my work. I like it. I find it very interesting in others as well, so I am trusting that the fact that my work is not easily categorized is of intrinsic worth.
5. I am a quitter. I need momentum to create, and some ideas will die because I couldn't execute them before my interest faded. It is okay to stop working on one thing because something else is now more deserving of that time. I do not want to finish projects I do not care about.
6. I am afraid to fail because... money. A broken heart.
To expound, I am currently afraid to give my biggest ambitions all of my energy because I can not afford not to be hustling for a stable paycheck right now. I hope that that changes in time. I am also afraid to put my whole heart out there because if my project(s) get a poor response, I will feel crushed that others did not see, love, or even care to check out something I put my whole self into. I also think it's important to periodically answer the question, "what am I afraid of" because that helps me tackle how to overcome or push through those fears.
7. What I make is not made for everyone. You can not please everyone. People have different tastes. It's not a failure if not everyone likes or gets my work. (I apply this heavily, at least in theory, to people who have negative things to say about my work. If you didn't like it, it wasn't for you.)
8. I am an artist. My current main job is a restaurant cook. But I'm not a cook that makes art, I'm an artist that cooks. This mindset helps me see my creative endeavors worthy of serious pursuit.
No comments:
Post a Comment