If I learned anything in graduate school it’s that good art takes time, commitment, and patience. There is a process to it. And while that process can differ from artist to artist, it is never like waving a magic wand. The problem occurs when an artist does not have the resources, either time or monetary, to make the work that they want to make or any work for that matter. How does one deal with this dilemma? So often people treat their art as “fame or bust.” Or, I either devote all of my time to art making and I’m given the time to do so, or I quit. It doesn’t have to be so. There is a way to be in the world, even the 9-5 world, and to make your art. It requires that you be creative about being creative.
Undergraduate and Graduate school is essentially a time when all you do is make your work. Of course there is still the matter of existence to attend to, while simultaneously taking courses in history and theory and perhaps working a job. But in the grand scheme of things, school is a privileged time carved out in the course of one’s life to develop creatively and to do so within a community of mostly caring individuals. But what do you do after school? Quite frankly there are not enough gallery and museum opportunities, grants, funding, and teaching jobs to accommodate everyone coming out of art school. So many of us find ourselves working jobs either loosely related or completely unrelated to our fields of study. In other instances, we work multiple part-time jobs in order to string together an income.
The solution is to be creative about being creative. There is just no escaping the challenges and necessities of existence. There are trips to the grocery store, rent/mortgage, utility bills, and student loans. And god forbid if you should want a little spending money. As an adult, our first responsibility is to figure out how to take care of these things, with it being even more pressing if there are children in the picture. Let me say this very clearly: take care of these things by any means necessary. Lucky enough to get a teaching job or sell your art? Great. If not, then you need to swallow your pride and work any job(s) that you can get your hands on. Resist the temptation to feel bitter about these endeavors and resist complaining about it to other people. You never know someone else’s situation.
Then you need to give yourself some time to get used to your schedule. The pressure and anxiety to make art will be there. Especially if you went to art school,as you were probably trained to approach art making with rigor and commitment. Hopefully you intend to make art your way of life. With that thought, art making is more of a long-distance race than a sprint. Once you get used to your situation, try to find the gaps in your day and week. Can you make art at work? I’m not advocating for skipping out on your duties and risking being fired. Instead, for example, can you compose poems or short stories during lunch. Or draw in a sketch book? Is there something about your job that you can use for your work? A particular feeling or insight gained by your daily experiences? Use that. If you are a photographer, can you make pictures before work or after work? Remember, you might not be able to do exactly what you want. You might only be able to work for an hour here or there. You can’t let that hold you back. The most important thing is to do something and to keep moving forward. You can still make good work. It’s just going to take longer than when you were in school. Resist the urge to move in the same pace as when you were in school. Let it develop organically. I would rather spend my entire life making one good piece of art than turning out mediocrity on a yearly basis. And remember to resist those feelings of bitterness.
Which leads me to remind you that no one cares about your art as much as you do. The desire to not have to work a day job is actually a desire to have one’s work validated to the point where that is all you have to do. It is the ultimate form of adoration for an artist. And that is just not going to happen for most of us. Feeling bitter? This is a reality, not something to feel upset about. The only one who can validate what you do is you. Art making requires faith. Validation from the outside is transient and forgotten in time. If you are waiting for others to immortalize your work, then you will be waiting for eternity.
Franz Kafka teaches us this lesson in his short story “Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse People.” In this story, Kafka tells us about a race of hardworking mice.These mice spend the majority of their lives working and taking care of the basic matters of existence. Their childhood is short, lives are difficult, and they don’t have time for art. On a daily basis, however, you can hear any number of these hardworking mice “piping” as they work, which is a form of singing. One of these mice, Josephine, loves to pipe so much that this is all that she wants to do. It becomes an art form for her, and a way of life. She wants people to listen, and they do. She wants to stop working and only focus on singing. Kafka tells us about her desire to do so:
“For a long time back, perhaps since the very beginning of her artistic career, Josephine has been fighting for exemption from all daily work on account of her singing; she should be relieved of all responsibility for earning her daily bread and being involved in the general struggle of existence, which—apparently should be transferred on her behalf to the people as a whole. […] Josephine argues, for instance, that the strain of working is bad for her voice, that the strain of working is of course nothing to the strain of singing, but it prevents her from being able to rest sufficiently after singing and to recuperate for more singing, she has to exhaust herstrength completely and yet, in these circumstances, can never rise to the peak of her abilities.”
Her people don’t comply and she has to go on working. They genuinely enjoy her singing, but simply don’t see it the same as Josephine. She even resorts to feigning injury in order to avoid work. She threatens to stop singing at one point. In both instances the mouse people continue on with their daily duties. At the end of the story, Josephine disappears. It is the end of singing and art among the mouse people. And though they are sad, again, their lives go on.
As I wrote, you cannot wait for external sources to validate your creativity. And you should not stop being creative if that validity never comes. In the end, all works of art crumble into dust. All artists are forgotten. Art is a way of dealing with the difficulties of existent, of communicating with each other. Your creativity, your “piping” is vital. Kafka worked full-time in an insurance firm and part-time in his father’s factory. At night he would write. He always said that he would go on creating in spite of everything. I hope that you will, too.
-Bill Guy, 2010.
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