Tag Archive - Money

The Art of Taking Risks : 13 Years, 3500 Artists, 7 Memorable Lessons

May 6, 2012 in Found, Images, News, Process with 16 Comments

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

When I was a girl, I was fearless. I was always falling out of trees, off of speeding bicycles, into muddy creeks. Once, I was bitten by an angry goose. I was knocked on the head accidentally with a baseball. A rock. And a basketball. On one hot summer evening, the rope of the tire swing broke and sent me and my best friend, Michael, hurling through the yard like a hockey puck. And then there was the morning I tumbled into my neighbor’s cactus garden. (Who knew that cacti spines came in so many size and color variations? Ouch.)

But somewhere on the way to adulthood, the youthful spirit of risk took its leave. Like so many other “responsible” adults, I succumbed to the tyranny of the regular paycheck. Although I never lived extravagantly, I traded my time for money, and money for things. Once on that spinning wheel, it’s hard to get off. Often we forget that it’s even possible to stop, reevaluate, and make radical changes to our lives. It feels too scary. Too hard and overwhelming.

This past year has forced me to stop and reconsider my options. Ten months ago, when I launched Gwarlingo, I never could have anticipated how quickly the site would grow and how enthusiastically it would be received. Some incredible opportunities have come my way as a result–I’ve made new friends, had fabulous conversations with readers (in person and online), traveled, flexed my writing, tech, and photography skills, been on the radio, been hired for new, challenging projects, and more. And every minute has been pure pleasure for me. For the first time in ages, I have no idea what surprises the day will bring when I get out of bed, and that excites me.
 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

After thirteen remarkable years working at The MacDowell Colony, I’ve decided it’s time to take the leap into full-time self employment. The decision wasn’t easy, but I know it’s the right thing to do. Letting go of my 9-5 job (with a regular paycheck and benefits) will allow me to expand Gwarlingo and tackle some new creative projects. Is it a risk? Of course. But it’s a risk that takes me back to those free-wheeling, tree-climbing days.

While I’ll miss all of my friends at the Colony terribly, I can still be part of a creative community through Gwarlingo and through some new collaborative projects that are on the horizon.

Over 3500 artists have passed through the doors of MacDowell during my tenure there. That’s a lot of creative energy in one place. In the past few days a number of people have asked me about the experience of working at the Colony for over a decade. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned in my thirteen years at the nation’s oldest artist retreat…

  • If you are open, receptive, and generous with others, the majority of people will be open, receptive, and generous in return.

    •  

  • Reserve judgment. Forget rumors. Listen and be patient. Most people will surprise you.

    •  

  • The most successful artists don’t have some mysterious gift that allows them to excel in their field. They simply work hard, work consistently, take creative risks, and don’t worry about what other people think. This is the real formula for creative success.

    •  

  • It is artists who have the best bird’s eye view of our culture today–they can tell us where we’ve been and where we’re going. They have the special ability to imagine alternatives to the present.

    •  

  • Artists can also view the world from a micro level. They can help us appreciate the unseen.

    •  

  • Solitude is an art. Unplugging and learning to be alone with yourself is essential if you want to do your best creative work. Technology is a tool. We should control it, not the other way around. Turn off your phone, Twitter, email, etc. Do it. The withdrawal symptoms will subside, eventually.

    •  

  • Being an artist is challenging in our society. It’s hard mentally, physically, and financially. It takes a village–a community of friends, fellow artists, and supporters who understand why you do the work you do and believe that it’s valuable. If you have the means, support artists and organizations, like MacDowell, who are helping artists realize their full potential. And if you’re an artist, don’t forget to leave your apartment or studio every now and then. Find a residency program, go to a reading, concert, or opening, or have fun with friends. Play and connection are just as important as hard work.

These are just a few of the lessons I’ll take with me when I go.

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

I have a lot of exciting ideas for growing Gwarlingo. I’m looking forward to organizing live events, providing more resources for artists on the site, and digging into much-discussed topics like money, fear, and technology and how these dovetail with the creative life.
 
And then there is my own creative work that’s been languishing–I have a novel to sell, stories to finish, and photographs to print.

Of course, I will also need to piece together the funding to make all of this happen. Traffic on the site continues to grow. Last month I had over 25,000 unique visitors to Gwarlingo. I expect this number to climb as I have more time to devote to the project. This opens up some new opportunities for sponsorships, which I’ll be exploring.

I’ll also be available for freelance and consulting projects. I have a large project with a nonprofit that will take part of the year, but I also look forward to working with artists who need help with grant writing, project proposals, social media, and artist statements. I have a few artists penciled into my calendar already.

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

My last day at The MacDowell Colony will be April 27th. Life is going to be very full until then, so please forgive me if I’m not able to post as regularly in the coming weeks. You will have more of my time and attention very soon.
 
Thanks to all of the staff, friends, and artists who have made my job at the Colony so memorable through the years. I also want to thank the friends, old and new, who have participated in the evolution of Gwarlingo.

We’re just getting started.
 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky


Don’t miss the next Gwarlingo feature. Click here to subscribe to Gwarlingo. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.
 
Support Gwarlingo by making a donation of any size. Gwarlingo takes countless hours of labor each month, and your help keeps the site going!




A special thank you to Mark Glovsky for sharing these beautiful images from his found photography collection. Thanks Mark!

 
 

Writer Lewis Hyde : All Creative and Inventive Minds Are Not Simply Solitary

April 24, 2012 in Images, Process, Words with 5 Comments

 

"The Grey Album," a 2004 mash-up by Danger Mouse, is a prime example of the type of copyright dispute Lewis Hyde discusses in his most recent book, "Common as Air." "The Grey Album" combines an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z's "The Black Album" with instrumentals created from unauthorized samples from The Beatles' LP "The White Album." "The Grey Album" gained notoriety when EMI attempted to halt its distribution, despite the fact that both Jay-Z and Paul McCartney reportedly were fine with the project.

 

Lewis Hyde is a rare breed of writer—a contemporary poet, philosopher, and essayist in the tradition of Thoreau, Emerson, and Czeslaw Milosz.

Hyde’s first book, The Gift, which attempts to reconcile the value of creative work with the demands of the market economy, is a revered text in the art world and has never been out of print since its publication in 1983. Artists like Michael Chabon, Bill Viola, Margaret Atwood, Jonthan Lethem, and Zadie Smith are fans of Hyde’s work, and David Foster Wallace called Hyde “a national treasure, one of our true superstars of nonfiction.”

Although Hyde received the MacArthur “genius grant” in 1991 and is highly esteemed in literary circles, his name is not as well-known as it should be. But even if you haven’t heard of Hyde before, you have likely encountered his ideas, many of which have been embraced and adapted by mainstream writers like Seth Godin. When Godin says, “Art is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording… but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art,” he is popularizing the philosophical arguments made in Hyde’s work.

 

"Part of the project of my book," says Hyde, "is to make it clear the degree to which any created thing has roots in the commons. Even a genius like Shakespeare relied on books and myths that were available to him from the past...All creative and inventive minds are not simply solitary." (Lewis Hyde photo courtesy the author)

In the late 1990s, Hyde turned his attention to the subject of intellectual property. The resulting book, Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, took almost a decade to complete. His timing was fortuitous, for disputes and lawsuits over image appropriation, music remixes, file sharing, and copyright infringement were on the rise and emerging as the central debate of the digital era.

We now live in an age when agri-giant Monsanto can sue farmers for patent infringement, even if those farmers are desperate to keep Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds out of their fields. One only need to listen to This American Life‘s program on patent trolls or read about Facebook’s recent attempts to trademark the words “book,” “face,” and “wall” to realize that it’s time to reevaluate our country’s intellectual property laws. Corporations may pretend that their litigious actions are motivated by protecting the work of artists, but let’s not kid ourselves. Money is the real bottom line. We have entered a period of “market triumphalism,” a term Hyde uses to describe a pure free-market, private-property ideology.

Clashes over copyright have given rise to the Copy Left or “free culture movement,” a diverse group of artists, intellectuals, lawyers, and activists, who argue that excessive legal restrictions are detrimental to innovation and creativity. In Daniel Smith’s 2008 profile of Lewis Hyde in The New York Times Magazine, Smith cites the case of Emily Dickinson as a prime case of the “corporate ‘land grab’ of information” that has “put a stranglehold on creativity, in increasingly bizarre ways”:

“Dickinson died in 1886, but it was not until 1955 that an ‘official’ volume of her collected works was published, by Harvard University Press. The length of copyright terms has expanded substantially in the last century, and Harvard holds the exclusive right to Dickinson’s poems until 2050 — more than 160 years after they were first written. When the poet Robert Pinsky asked Harvard for permission to include a Dickinson poem in an article that he was writing for Slate about poetic insults, it refused, even for a fee. ‘Their feeling was that once the poem was online, they’d lose control of it,’ Hyde told me…”

 

"For Hyde, as for many legal and political scholars, the C.T.E.A. (the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act' to its detractors) represents a blatant abrogation of the purpose of intellectual-property law." (Andy Warhol, "Mickey Mouse," 38 x 38 inches. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo courtesy of IKON ltd.)

As Smith’s piece explains, Hyde’s frustrations with such incidents motivated him to become more politically active. In 1994 Hyde supported a unique bill introduced by Democratic senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

“The ‘Arts Endowing the Arts Act’ was an unusual piece of legislation. It proposed auctioning off 20 additional years of copyright protection for creative works and using the proceeds to build a permanent endowment for the arts and humanities. In essence, Dodd wanted to create a gift economy.

The bill failed to gain any traction. The entertainment industry, led by Disney, which faced the imminent expiration of its massively lucrative copyrights on Mickey Mouse, Pluto and Donald Duck, lobbied for the expansion of copyright terms without restriction. In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act passed, adding 20 years to the length of copyright, both pro- and retroactively, and ensuring that thousands of creative works poised to enter the public domain remained in private hands…

For Hyde, as for many legal and political scholars, the C.T.E.A. (the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” to its detractors) represents a blatant abrogation of the purpose of intellectual-property law…By extending copyright retroactively, Hyde told me, the C.T.E.A. negated the logic of incentive: Mickey Mouse can’t be invented twice…

The C.T.E.A. spurred Hyde to action. He wrote letters to every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He published an op-ed, the first of his career. In 1999, with the writer Brendan Gill and Archibald Gillies, then the director of the Andy Warhol Foundation, he started the Creative Capital Foundation, a nonprofit that offers financial support to artists in return for a small percentage of any net profits generated by their work, which the foundation uses to finance other projects. He helped organize a low-fee writers’ room in Boston. And in 2004, he became a fellow at Berkman.

Although Hyde is focused on a new book project now, he remains an essential voice on the subject of intellectual property, art, and the marketplace. I’ve heard Hyde speak on multiple occasions over the years–at the Peterborough Lyceum, at a small gathering at NYU, and also during multiple residencies at The MacDowell Colony. He is sharp, humorous, and erudite–far from a starry-eyed idealist.

It was during Hyde’s most recent residency at MacDowell that the author met Ana Pečar, a video and intermedia artist from Slovenia. Over the course of their stay at the Colony, a series of conversations ensued. The following interview is the serendipitous result of their face-to-face discussions, and a fine example of the types of spontaneous collaborations that can happen when artists of different disciplines have the opportunity to mingle and consider big ideas. As Hyde himself has said, genius needs to “tinker in a collective shop.”

 

Ana Pecar performing at "Live Performers Meeting" in Rome, Italy, 2011 (Photo courtesy Ana Pecar)

 

 

Artist Ana Pecar (Photo courtesy the artist)

There is much here to ponder about free speech, the ownership of ideas, and the corrupting influence of money in politics. Hyde’s interview makes one fact clear: the system as it exists today—one that treats corporations as individuals and forces our congressmen to spend two-thirds of their time raising money—isn’t working.

Hyde suggests that we are asking the wrong questions about intellectual property, the free market, and art. Perhaps it’s time we reframe the debate? After all, aren’t all artists borrowing from their predecessors to a certain extent? Art isn’t created in a vacuum–it’s a dialogue with the larger culture, with the art, music, films, and books that are already in existence. ”Creativity is subtraction,” as Austin Kleon has said.

It is original thinkers like Lewis Hyde—visionary artists with the ability to imagine a different paradigm—who can help us reinvent our broken system.

A special thanks to Lewis and Ana for sharing this interview with Gwarlingo.

 

Copyrights and Copyduties: Ana Pečar Interviews Writer Lewis Hyde

 

Ana Pečar: Can you tell us about the area of friction between private property and the scope of things best held in common?


Lewis Hyde: To talk about the tension between private property and common property it might help to think about what we mean by property. One old definition of property is the right to exclude other people, so you know you own your house, because you can exclude people from it, you can keep them out. Or you know you own your car because you can loan it to a friend but you don’t let other people use it.

And in fact in the USA one of our Supreme Court justices said that the hallmark of the constitutionally protected property right is the right to exclude. But this then raises a puzzle, particularly about cultural things, because things like songs and inventions are famously thought of as non-excludable. Once you’ve invented the idea of making bifocal eyeglasses or once you’ve come up with a Pythagorean Theorem, it’s hard to keep people from not knowing it.

Ideas are not only unexcludable but also unrivalrous, which is to say we can share them without anybody loosing them. If I share a bicycle with you, then I don’t have that bicycle, but if I share an idea with you I have an idea and you do too. So ancient people thought that the fruits of human intelligence and imagination were by nature common property.

 

In the early 1980s, David Byrne & Brian Eno recorded "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts," which was influenced by African-style percussion and Afro-American funk rhythms. It is also notable as one of the first rock albums to make extensive use of the then novel technology of sampling.

 

Ana: When and in what context did the law start to regulate the public and the private?

 

Lewis: Particularly with the rise of printing…you begin to have methods of making ideas excludable and rivalrous, even though they aren’t by nature so. The first copyright law came out in the context of publishers enjoying a state-sanctioned monopoly over what appeared in print. It was enacted by the British Parliament in 1710 and named the Statute of Anne.

Things we call “copyright” and “patent” are ways in which the state comes in and takes something which is by nature common and makes it possible to privatize it. A copyright gives you a state-sanctioned monopoly to exclude other people from reproducing your books. I should say that I’m not against this–it is a useful tool of public policy to have these devices– but you really have to think about why you have them and what the ends are to which you dedicate them. And right now we are having serious arguments internationally about this because the balance between private property and common property is out of line.

 

"I think a lot of American artists struggle with this problem of making ephemeral work versus work that can be commodified. A lot of my friends don’t make sellable work and some of the artists that we’ve been having dinner with here, at MacDowell, do not create work that is clearly one or the other. But you may be right that if you did a study of how the weight falls, maybe Americans are more focused on art they can buy and sell." ("200 One Dollar Bills" by Andy Warhol. Photo by Sang Tan courtesy the AP)

 

Ana: Why did it fall out of balance?

Continue Reading…

How To Feel Miserable As An Artist

February 9, 2012 in Process with 2 Comments

 

Edward Hopper, "Automat," 1927. Oil on canvas, 28 in × 36, Des Moines Art Center.


This week a reader sent me a copy of “How to Feel Miserable As An Artist.” This marvelous list was created by illustrator Keri Smith and is part of The Artist’s Survival Kit, which Keri wrote and designed.
 
I like Keri’s list because it emphasizes the ways in which we tend to stay in our safe zones as artists. As I’ve discussed previously, pushing ourselves takes courage and risk, which is inevitably uncomfortable.
 
Sometimes we need a reminder that it’s okay to fail. It’s alright to disappoint people if it means we are working deeply and stretching the boundaries of our comfort zone.

Regardless of your artistic discipline, I suspect you’ll find a few things on this list that resonate…

 

 

Did you like Keri’s list? If so, please share it with others. Subscribe to Gwarlingo for free. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

 

On Money, Fear, and the Artist

January 11, 2012 in Images, Process, Words with 14 Comments

 

A currency collage by artist Mark Wagner (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

A visual artist I know once told me about an audit she endured with the IRS. My friend is a professional artist in New York City with her own studio. Her work is shown at galleries and museums. She has received grants, been accepted to artist residencies around the world, and every now and then, she even manages to sell a few pieces of artwork.

During the audit, one of the IRS employees explained to my friend that she couldn’t keep declaring a loss for her business year after year. “This looks more like a hobby than a profession,” the auditor said.

My friend attempted to explain the financial ups and downs of being a working artist. Yes. There had been a dry spell in the “income department” in recent years, but her expenses were legitimate. Art was her business, her life, her passion–not a mere hobby. The auditor was completely puzzled. “But if you aren’t making any money creating art,” he asked, “why do you keep doing this year after year?”

 

"The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America," says artist Mark Wagner. "Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else?" (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

A detail of the above currency collage by artist Mark Wagner (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

I love this story because it says so much about the profit-oriented culture we inhabit as artists (and when I say “artists,” I define that term broadly to include writers, performers, designers, filmmakers, composers, visual artists, etc.).

For most artists I know, money is a constant source of anxiety because most creative projects don’t make economic sense. As artists, we have chosen an alternative paradigm to the profit-oriented one. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be smart about the business-side of art making, only that money isn’t our primary motivator.

The concept of creating for its own sake remains a radical concept in our culture. This is one of the central rifts we’ve seen playing out between Wall Street bankers and supporters of the Occupy movement. One camp places a higher value on profits, while the other a higher value on more elusive qualities like imagination, empathy, and justice.

Of course, if you have your money invested in the stock market, then you want your broker to be greedy with your money–you want to earn 6%, not 4% like everyone else. But when it comes to art, greed turns the best ideas sour. It isn’t hard to sniff-out the difference between work that was created from a free, deep place, and a blatant commercial commodity.

You may be able sell the end product of art–the concert ticket, the photograph, the book–but the idea itself is free. Art is a gift, and like all gifts, it must be shared in order to make an impact.

 

(Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

"For most artists I know, money is a constant source of anxiety because most creative projects don’t make economic sense. As artists, we have chosen an alternative paradigm to the profit-oriented one." (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

 

"Fear is normal for an artist--it's the reason we get trapped in the cycle of self-doubt and anxiety, the reason we hesitate to declare a project finished." (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

Being an artist is so hard because we’re operating in a parallel universe from the larger culture–one that values imagination, creativity, and ideas more than money or status. But a true creative exchange–one in which art is given and accepted without obligation is a way of side-stepping the soul-crushing grimness of consumerism. I would go so far as to say that it’s an alternate way of being. It’s this free exchange between artist and audience that creates movement, provides pleasure, provokes change, and offers meaningful connection.

As writer and MacArthur fellow Lewis Hyde says in his classic book The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, “The gift moves toward the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is great it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us.”

“Motion” is a key word here, for an artist needs this movement to thrive. “Make the work,” said Walt Whitman. “Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping,…Stop it and just DO!” wrote artist Sol LeWitt to his friend Eva Hesse. “All that is important is this one moment in movement,” Martha Graham once said. “Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”

Art that languishes for too long on the hard drive, on the studio wall, or in the murky recesses of the imagination becomes stagnant. At worst, it becomes insular and self-absorbed. “No art is sunk in the self,” observed Flannery O’Connor, “but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.”

Fear is normal for an artist–it’s the reason we get trapped in the cycle of self-doubt and anxiety, the reason we hesitate to declare a project “finished.” Our bodies are wired for self-protection. The moment we sense artistic risk or criticism, our “fight or flight” response kicks in. This is perfectly natural, but if we aren’t careful, we can get stuck in this place, unconsciously filling our time with research, editing, re-evaluating, re-writing, re-working (the artist’s version of “flight”).

 

"A true creative exchange--one in which art is given and accepted without obligation is a way of side-stepping the soul-crushing grimness of consumerism." (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

 

A detail of the above currency collage by Mark Wagner (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

In Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton writes: “There is only one real deprivation,…and that is not to be able to give one’s gift to those one loves most…The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.”

This doesn’t mean that stillness isn’t important–it’s key to the creative process–but at some point we have to let go and allow our work to be subjected to the marketplace. “The artist who hopes to market work that is the realization of his gifts cannot begin with the market,” Hyde explains in his book. “He must create for himself that gift-sphere in which the work is made, and only when he knows the work to be the faithful realization of his gift should he turn to see if it has currency in that other economy. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Continue Reading…