A Passion For Creativity

This image sums up my initial impressions of virtual networking. It’s a digital work I created for Valentine’s Day and sent out. The art is based on two scanned collages, edited, combined, and reworked– layer within layer within layer. Let’s call it digital collage. I love the possibilities and discoveries when manipulating computer imagery. 

Remember the brown lunch bag taped on the back of your desk chair in elementary school on Valentine’s Day? Then on the teacher’s signal we’d all walk around with our fistfuls of heart and cuddly bear cards and play mailman. All the while keeping a watchful sideways eye on that cute kid as he neared your desk to see if he dropped one in your bag. Even then it caused me to ponder what “friend” meant when receiving cards from kids I barely spoke to. “Oh, I didn’t even know they liked me.”  Or not.

Now through artist blogs and virtual social networking sites such as Facebook, I’m connected to close friends and family, but also to people I’ve never met. It’s fascinating. It’s weird. It’s engaging. Once again, it has me pondering what the word friend means. 

The web has redefined “friend”. Plus, I’ve been prompted to brush on my foreign language skills, usually through translation sites such as lexicool.com.  I’m humbled by foreigners’ command of English.

What’s all this rambling have to do with creativity? Back to the image.

mail art stamp created from my collage

The only time I really feel productive is when I’m creating art.

There, I said it!

So much of this art business is…well…business oriented. There is office work: the bookkeeping; record keeping; ordering supplies, printing brochures and such; mailing out info to individuals and shows; shipping or transporting work to individuals and shows; keeping up my resume and artist’s statement; documentation of artwork; photographing works to update my web site with images and info—although I do work with a great web designer; reading art newsletters, not only about new artists’ calls, but also by other artists and what’s happening out there in the art world at large; then there’s the daily maintenance in other areas of my life.

I’ve read different estimates of how much time a working artist should put toward art business in order to “make it”, with some numbers as high as 60% of an artist’s time.

This greatly depends on how much an artist is willing to outsource. Because of costs, and a general pickiness, I also tend to stretch many of the canvasses, and do the matting /framing.  With the current uncertain economy many artists may have to re-evaluate what can be done “in house”.

Much of what I’ve included in the list above is enjoyable to me. Yet there is usually a nagging sense that I’m missing something. Even as I’m typing this, there’s the shouldn’t you be drawing something instead? feeling. This is how it is, a balancing act between the making of art and the rest of my life. And yes, I will go draw and then I’ll do the dishes.