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About the Project
What is an Artist-Entrepreneur?
An artist-entrepreneur is someone who makes his or her living from their own self-expression.
Whether it is visual, plastic or performing art; writing, music or multimedia;
storytelling, flower arranging or...whatever they do to express themselves.
Artist-entrepreneurs may diversify their revenue streams, which simply means
getting money for doing lots of creative things instead of only one, such as teaching
or applying for grants. An artist-entrepreneur is not a musician with a day job,
(although he may have started that way) or an artist who thinks of his painting
as a hobby. An artist-entrepreneur discovers ways to make his self-expression
pay for her lifestyle, takes the business side of her art seriously, self-promotes
and does her homework. Which reminds me, I gotta get business cards already...
What is the Artist-Entrepreneur Project?
A series of inteviews and profiles with emerging and established artists of all
genres. These interviews will be published here on the website, and reprinted
in other publications. Eventually they will form a book.
Why did I start this project?
"You can't make a living as an artist!" As a backlash to this statement,
I decided to interview people who are making their living with their creative
self-expression.
Like many people, I'd always been creative but never did believe I could make
a living at it. My grandparents were hardworking immigrants who begat a long line
of professionals -- doctors, lawyers, scientists. The corporate or professional
world seemed to be the one that counted.
Like most Gen-Xers after college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Job hunting
literally made me cry. "Career Fear" stopped me in my tracks.
Who would pay me to do what I loved? Whatever it was I wanted to "do",
I just knew nobody would pay me for it. But I also knew I wouldn't be happy
in a corporate job. I ran off and became a flamenco guitarist. (Really.) But the
question of making a living remained.
The Starving Artist revisited
The concept of an artist as someone who starves and struggles dominated my thinking.
But what about those people who spend all day working at a job that doesn't fulfill
them creatively? Don't those people suffer as much -- or much more -- than the
so-called "starving artist"? More questions emerged. Do I want to work
hard at some boring, safe job, making someone else get rich, or do I want to turn
my work into a reflection of myself in the world?
Life-Art-Work
Okay, I have to confess to you something. I've been writing in my journal for
11 years. I have 47 volumes so far. My art is this collection of stories from
my life. I recently discovered it's a lot of fun to tell those stories, up in
front of brilliant, forgiving audiences. At the ripe old age of 30 I discovered
what I want to "do": I want my life to be about my art and I want that
to be my work. An interconnected sphere of life feeding art feeding work feeding
life...!
OK, now what?
Role Models!? I need role models!
One reason for my Career Fear was lack of personal experience with successful
artists, especially extroverted, verbal artist-types like me. Role models? I didn't
have any role models! So, I was determined to go out and get me some. I am seeking
artists in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond who are making a living with
their own creative self-expression. In career-search parlance we call this "informational
interviews."
Informational interviews
How did you find yourself in this career? What obstacles did you have to overcome?
What do you love about your job and what do you hate about it? As a chronic career
searcher ever since I left U.C. Berkeley, I have asked these questions of a lot
of different people in a lot of different careers. But it never occurred to
me to ask real artists and creative people like myself. Duh.
Writer Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist's Way, talks about
"shadow artists" -- people who are too intimidated, too low in self-worth
or too fearful to pursue their dreams. "Shadow artists often choose shadow
careers -- those close to the art, even parallel to it, but not the art itself."
I spent a year doing informational interviews in the field of corporate training.
Hello?! I also investigated grantwriting for the arts. Hello?! Shadow
artist!
Here we go
Well, it's time to step into the light. I figure there are a lot of people out
there like me who could use some good role models of happy, well-fed artists.
I call them artist-entrepreneurs because these are people who are successful --
although none of them have been "discovered" by a Hollywood agent while
driving a taxi (as in Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth). These are people
whose self-expression, like mine, is a little quirky. Not necessarily destined
for instant commercial success with the masses. (Not everyone can be J-Lo.) But
they succeed at making a living from their art.
To be true to my life's work, I'm going to take these interview experiences
(life), write them up as true as I can for you (art) and publish them (work).
Let's go!
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