Reason #372 why it's so great to be in a shared studio: inspiration from your fellow artists. Like in the candy-store story shared by one studio-mate.
In the old days I would research and cite the original source of the story but pfffffft! I'm an artist now. The important gist of it is, in the race-for-the-bottom economy vortex we are just starting to climb out of (dangling preposition - pfffff!) there's this candy store... somewhere... that doesn't carry bulk candy and sell it in quantity at a profit, in the usual way. Instead, the owners stubbornly make their own candies and only enough for their store. As a result of this archaic, illogical thinking there are lineups outside the store of folks willing to pay North American hand-making costs for these little num-nums.
There's a moral in all this, mostly something about staying true to one's hunches or heart and embracing the uniquely local over generically (not a word! Don't care!) global.
Easier said than done, especially when it comes to following your dream to be a self-supporting visual artist. Clearly, the cash has been in quick turnarounds of crowd-pleasing wall art. But as the video below reveals, that area of the art economy has become big. Very, very big. This is no time to be cranking out fast and cheap work; this is the time to innovate.
So the candy-store story was timely, coming in just as I wondering what on earth possessed me to hunch over my sewing machine for six weeks, wrestling material into a 40-pound (no metric! Don't care!) rippling bullseye... thing. Not very sensible, but then either is making expensive candies by hand when you could order it in at the push of a button and by the container-load.
So. In conclusion: stay the course; stay true; try very hard not to notice that at least expensive little candies have an eager consumer.
In the old days I would research and cite the original source of the story but pfffffft! I'm an artist now. The important gist of it is, in the race-for-the-bottom economy vortex we are just starting to climb out of (dangling preposition - pfffff!) there's this candy store... somewhere... that doesn't carry bulk candy and sell it in quantity at a profit, in the usual way. Instead, the owners stubbornly make their own candies and only enough for their store. As a result of this archaic, illogical thinking there are lineups outside the store of folks willing to pay North American hand-making costs for these little num-nums.
There's a moral in all this, mostly something about staying true to one's hunches or heart and embracing the uniquely local over generically (not a word! Don't care!) global.
Easier said than done, especially when it comes to following your dream to be a self-supporting visual artist. Clearly, the cash has been in quick turnarounds of crowd-pleasing wall art. But as the video below reveals, that area of the art economy has become big. Very, very big. This is no time to be cranking out fast and cheap work; this is the time to innovate.
So the candy-store story was timely, coming in just as I wondering what on earth possessed me to hunch over my sewing machine for six weeks, wrestling material into a 40-pound (no metric! Don't care!) rippling bullseye... thing. Not very sensible, but then either is making expensive candies by hand when you could order it in at the push of a button and by the container-load.
So. In conclusion: stay the course; stay true; try very hard not to notice that at least expensive little candies have an eager consumer.
