Organization isn’t just about a tool box that travels with me, it is about programs that I enter my inventory into as I work on my pieces, print my editions, gather my art materials, pay my bills. It is also about my storage for my art work and where I put my display materials. People who want to learn and understand what it is like being an artist sometimes come into my garage and are in shock by what I have and how it seems so organized. I must have gotten a bit more anal about it because it always seems a bit of a mess to me but the point is made to them. I have a place for everything and everything is in its place.

The reality is, however; most posthumous art collections don’t retain that much value. It is about who owned it, the notoriety of the artist (you don’t have to be good to be famous), and how long the artist remains pertinent to history. Many fade into history within a few decades especially if those who collected or followed them have all passed away.

I have counseled against looking at the mistakes of your past and dwelling on them.  I consider it a waste of time to keep turning them over and over.  Learn your lesson and move on but when my friend talks about looking behind you, Kelly is talking about the landscape. 

I find more inspiration from love of nature and that means taking time to enjoy it. If I can’t enjoy the time in nature, it is difficult to be inspired by it. I don’t have to feel guilty about playing outside. The thing is, you shouldn’t feel guilty about taking time out to play.

Walt Disney productions did a movie called “Meet the Robinsons” and I suspect it was based on the motto that Walt put up all over, “Keep Moving Forward”. A lot of Disney movies have motivational messages in them. “When you wish upon a star”, “Ohana means family, and nobody gets left behind. or forgotten”, “The only limit is your imagination”, “Sometimes the right path, isn’t always the easiest one.” Disney has lasted long past Walt but they do seem to keep giving us a bit of a compass.

As a visual artist, we don’t have a lot of people who want to step up and represent us. We end up doing everything from inventory, scheduling, accounting, marketing, research, pricing, branding, website design and maintenance, finance and budgeting….. and then there are other things that we don’t think of until they jump up like a skeleton in a corn maze. We make professional circus jugglers look like hacks when we are doing it right, and then our lives resemble a teenagers bedroom when it all falls apart.

Ronald Regan once said, “Trust but verify.” Parents have been doing this with teenagers for years. As an artist, it seems to be a good way to go. We can’t say no to everything and we need to take chances every once in a while. We can; however, take chances based on research and information. It never hurts to reach out to strangers and ask questions. Artists all over the world are facing the same problems we are. Making sales, finding markets, trusting online inquiries, learning new mediums; just because they are on foreign soil doesn’t make their problems any different.

Recently, I was notified that I had been awarded an opportunity. I looked at the future and thought, “there is no way I can make this work.” I also took advantage of a free business seminar and one of the things that it pointed out was that I was “self sabotaging” my own career. It wasn’t just the opportunity, it was other things that I was dropping the ball on. I keep talking about keeping focused on your goals, how can I point to this and not recognize that I am guilty of losing focus myself.

I did a show last weekend and a storm ripped through the first day causing havoc. I looked at the weather as it was brewing on the horizon, people kept saying it looked like it was going to be bad. There was an artist who kept coming over to me asking what we should do. I knew that my booth was pretty secure but there were others who were probably going to be in trouble. I asked the artist why she was asking me and she said the organizer told her that I was the one to ask. At about 3:40, I told the lady in charge she should probably call it.

It is Thursday morning while I write this and I am busy getting ready for the weekend. My summer has been long, busy but fairly relaxed this year as I haven’t done as many shows this season. Tomorrow, I find myself in Sandpoint celebrating a one year anniversary of someone I am in friendly competition with. She is putting on a small art event and painting competition and I believe in supporting each other. I will be home Sunday night, only to turn around and leave again a few days later for Boise ID.

Does it matter how you pay your bills? If you are still creating, you are still an artist. There are galleries out there who won’t carry your work if you are still working for a check to pay your bills. Given the current state of affairs, I’m wondering if that is really being realistic. It isn’t like one gallery can carry you and keep you in business for the rest of your life.

Perfect, pretty art can be fairly boring.  People who break the rules of composition, do things to shock you, create bold compositions that grab our attention and fascinate us. They win awards because they aren’t afraid to be imperfect and we notice.  People who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to maintain their perfect looks, ruin their bank books and in the end become facebook entertainment while actors with scars end up having amazing careers.

When I did an art business education program, they counselled us to understand our market.  Where they lived and how they spent, and I invested time understanding who purchased my work.  I like my collectors and I am worried for them, I can see why they are holding on to their money right now.

I sometimes fantasize about winning the lottery. I had a boyfriend who would just obsess about what people would do if they won the lottery. I was pretty content when we were dating and it drove him insane that I had no idea what I would do if I did. He just couldn’t fathom being happy with my life at the time but my college tuition was paid, I had a working car, no bills and no aspirations for something bigger. Now of course, things have changed and I would do so much if I did. The thing is, by winning the lottery; I wouldn’t work so hard to get where I want to go.

A friend of mine sent me a Ted Talk video. The speaker was talking about how we are a society of consumption and no longer encouraged to create unless we are children or until we reach the age of retirement, when we are expected to settle down and learn to be crafty. The speaker said that our society considered it an indulgence, a little bit selfish and that giving your attention to art before then was a rebellious act. Think about that, creating something beautiful is a rebellion. Writing a quick bit of poetry, a simple line sketch, playing with color, doing a little dance was taking time out from productivity and optimization. Our society is sideling the creative act and robbing us of our attention. We were giving all of our attention to Zukerberg and other corporations.

If I have said it once, I will say it a thousand times more; communication is key. So many times in life we run into problems because we assume that the other person knows what we are talking about. Take my husband as an example; he will be telling me about his day and instead of using proper nouns, he jumps to pronouns. For some reason he expects me to be able to read his mind because we have been married for 30 years. He will be talking away about someone but never use a name, or state what that person was doing with the “it”. All I know is someone was doing something with an undescribed item of interest. It could have been a wild herd of elephants running amok in a daycare for all I know.

I’m a bit long in the tooth. I am not old but I am certainly a bit of a distance from young, so I have seen the world pivot from a local network to international social media networking in my lifetime. It has opened new avenues of information exchange and introduced me to a broader field of opinion about the industry. What am I talking about? The concept of exchanging ideas and information sharing with others as creatives. One of the facebook groups I follow recently opened a discussion about whether someone was out of bounds to ask about a technique or if an artist was wrong for telling the questioner that they wouldn’t share.

My students are always looking for subject matter to work with and well let’s be honest, so am I. Facebook has several pages where people post images were you can use other peoples’ photos for free and they are not copyright protected. You should cite the photographer when you use them, it is polite but, what are the pitfalls of using these free photos?

I was reading a post by a friend of mine today, “I am stronger than I look” she posted. Those of you who know her, know who I am talking about. She is a bit of an icon where I live, a person worth looking up to. She talks about persistence as her strength (I think it is a superpower). I can be persistent as well, I think to be an artist you need to have that power.

There are times in every facet of our lives where we look around at where we work, live, what we drive, who we spend time with and we ask ourselves the same thing.  I am putting before you the counter proposal; if you are alive, you have the opportunity to change anything you want.