Making a living at what you love ...

[whimsicaldeb]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... G8ML01.DTL

Making a living at what you love
Artists find that business strategies can help them succeed
Ilana DeBare, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, December 18, 2005

excerpt:

"The stereotype is that artists are flaky, artists can't function in the business world, and money corrupts creativity," said Martha Zlatar, a San Francisco consultant who helps artists develop their work as a business. "The first thing I do with my clients is make them aware that those myths are not reality."

--end excerpt

[Doreen Peri]

Thanks for the article. I am one of those people who decided to go the entrepreneurial route and support myself with my artwork. I've been doing graphics for print for many years and have now designed something like 10 websites as part of my work. There will always be work in my field. I'll never be without projects which pay. The problem is, it's not art much of the time. It's almost like having a technical job. I ran my own business for 8 years prior to taking a job with a client of mine. Now I do my graphic artwork for multiple companies which she owns. When you operate your own business, there's also a lot of work which is not art – Invoicing, bookkeeping, marketing yourself, etc. I find being entrepreneurial is second nature to me.

But I'd really love to paint all day or write or play music and to perform regularly. If I could figure out how to get paid for all of the arts I really enjoy (what I call my real work - music, poetry, visual arts), I'd be elated.

Unfortunately, society is not set up to foster and support the work of artists. There are some communities which have arts programs which do have financial backing, but not many. There are some communities that offer grants but even if you got one grant after the next to do one artistic project after another, it would be difficult to support yourself on the money.

The cliche term "starving artist" lives on and I don't suspect it will go away any time soon.

I'm not a fan of big government, but in this case, in my opinion, what we need is local governments having funding for the arts set aside in their budget. What I'd like to see is artists getting paid to do what they love to do every day of the week. If they had programs where artists could get housing and meals so that they could do their work, that would be wonderful.

I can envision artist colonies, paid for by tax dollars, where artists can live in the same community together and do their work.

Then, they could add a part-time job to supplement it if they want. This isn't going to happen, though, unfortunately. So, we work our day jobs and we are lucky if we can create for ourselves a day job which has some artistic value to it. I know I'm lucky in that respect.