Musings on Art and Work

I’ve been drawing all my life.  People have a lot of expectations regarding me because of that.  I’ve drawn ever since I could pick up a pencil, and in that time I’ve heard consistently: are you gonna go to art school? are you gonna be an artist when you grow up? are you gonna be an artist?  Sometimes they don’t even ask, just assume.  But that’s not what I want to do.  I tell them that, oh I don’t wanna do art as a career, but that comes with its own set of notions.  Oh yeah I get you, they say, gotta eat yknow?  So what is the day job--accounting?  No, I say again, it’s not about the money either.

This may be my own conceit, zealotry, but I want to do something that doesn’t exist: linguistic revitalization.  Maybe I’m ignorant, but I’ve never seen “language revitalist” as its own job title; there’s always something tacked on.  Professor, director, museum worker, librarian, archivist--who also does that.  But it’s never on its own.  But, I must live by what is afforded to me, so I’ll carve my dream out of the body of work offered to me.

To bring this back to the art, that’s the core issue here, isn’t it?  Work?  My “dream job,” I guess, doesn’t pay well either.  Who’s heard of a museum worker earning six figures, a librarian with a good wage--who’s even heard of an archivist?  So no, I won’t not Do Art as a career for financial reasons.  I’m fine living a modest lifestyle, so long as I am fulfilled.  So does art not fulfill you?, they ask.

It’s not about that, I answer.  It feels wrong to me--in my personal way of being an artist, unique to me and in no way a statement about any other, (I’ll come back to this later)--to do art as a career.  Maybe my art would lose its “authenticity,” its “genuine” qualities, its passion, its feeling, but it’s not about that either.  I don’t know, maybe I don’t want to center myself--my artistic expression is myself, my candor, my will, my heart, my soul--in the professional sphere.  Maybe art, to be valuable, worth something, worth its work and sweetness and ripeness, does not need to be monetized.

I heard this most ugly of sentences the other day.  It was an artist lamenting how they were giving up their dreams of Doing Art professionally, of it becoming “just a hobby.”  Horrible, horrible!--I felt.  Just a hobby.  Dismissive, improper given the profundity and ecstasy chased by the realm of art.

I am deeply uncomfortable in this society, modern capitalist and Western.  When something is pursued, it is in the workplace.  If I say “I’m pursuing art,” you immediately think I mean professionally.  “I’m pursuing art” automatically assumes the baggage of “I’m going to art school, my occupational title will be artist, it’s what I will eat by.”  Why do you think I’ve been avoiding the word pursue this entire time?  I euphamize with [Do] Art, paired with [work].  Because, for some capitalist reason, we associate pursuit with an endless money-making grind.  That’s not how I want to live!

I want to pursue art, and I do.  When I make my friends laugh and see their smiles curl, I have painted a beautiful picture.  When I hear a beautiful song and think a beautiful thought I have done art in my loving.  When I collect the hair from my dirty hairbrush to wad and throw in the trash, I have done Art meaningful.  When I sketch and I ink and I color I have Done Art.  In writing this now, this is art enough for me.  I am constantly pursuing art, steeped in it, with every book I read, song I listen to, world I experience.  Not every pursuit has to exist in the market framework; it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t!  That’s not how people were born to live!

We were born to live beautiful lives, interconnected, spinning forever.  To toil yet still appreciate.  To die yet still love.  Why is this such a crazy idea?  That I can want something outside the marketplace?  Things without dollar value can still mean something?  Is that not why I breathe?

Returning to my earlier paréntesis, even in my grand declarations, I am shy.  I do not judge the artist who also Does Art as work; I pursue art in my personal life, their art bleeds into their professional.  Different people, different priorities.  Yet, I feel as if I have to defend myself preemptively.  Looking up I say, yes it is perfectly fine to do all that in the way more validated by society.  Because our society hates those who feel uncomfortable with how it works.  If I am not to be judged, I must have a “dream job,” not just a dream; to be an artist, I must occupy “artist,” not “just a hobbyist.”  What’s so bad about hobbies anyway?  What does the word mean besides: activity that fulfills you without making bank.  It still fulfills.

I guess that’s what it leads back to: personal fulfillment.  I would not feel fulfilled as a career artist and art fulfills me.  “And,” and not “yet.”  

I look to you and I guess, in my arrogant way, I want to encourage you.  It’s ok to be uncomfortable, good actually, with the way society works.  Do what is right by your soul.  It is better to be judged but honest than validated but ill fit.  In the incongruity--that’s where a lot of the art happens anyways.