Wednesday, May 16, 2012

"Shitloads of Money" - an essay on the value of art and artists. Do not read if you are in #occupy

If you devote a large part of your life to making writing, art, or any other creative work that doesn’t have as its end result a clearly commercially viable product (i.e., I’m not talking artisanal pickles or ombre tights or short stories about middle-aged couples who go to a party and leave vaguely dissatisfied + maybe there’s a Holocaust reference in there) (jk about that last one, kind of), you are going to either need to figure out how to get paid for that work by somebody — the government, your audience, some kind of patron — or you’re going to have to figure out something to do with the remaining portion of your time that doesn’t make it impossible to have enough hours or mental real estate remaining to do that work. I’ve read many variations on the theme of “everyone makes it work in her own way,” but though that’s kind of true, there are still underlying themes of every artist’s super-unique story that we ignore at our peril.  

I like this article.

You should read the whole thing.

via APhotoEditor

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