Becoming an Audience

This is an admittedly extremely self-indulgent blog post.

I have a memory of being a kid at the Renaissance festival. Maybe my first. There were knights and wenches, kings and queens, fairies and dragons.

And jesters on stage.

I was fascinated with the stage jesters and musicians, completely captivated. After the show, tipping them whatever cash I had saved up, I asked a million questions about their performance, their lives, and was treated with the inspiration:

"You, too, can do this someday!"

I have been watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on repeat for several days as a meditation exercise. Long paralleled with countless life situations by many bloggers, it feels like a useful bit of architecture to figure out a question ringing my bells.

"So, self, my love: Do you want to be the production artist or the creative manager?"

The speed in which this is answered ought be countered with the fullness of one's fridge, and a history of how long it has been that full or empty.

It is a deceptive question. It deserves thought and consideration. The quick answer is "You can be both!" and there is a lot of necessity:

• If you are an artist without a process, you risk dissolving into a mess or soulless interpretation of ideas.
• If you are an art manager without yourself creating, you may doom yourself into frustration and stagnation.

About a year and a half before writing this post, I began the final stages of re-orienting my life around a more nocturnal schedule.

I was seeking the peace and quiet of the long night, the cooler temperatures, the softer hours, the ease of accessing liminal spaces. I needed to find distance between myself and the loudness of much of modern life.

I have begun taking my To Read and To Watch piles seriously. How common is it to have years, literal decades, of movie and show recommendations from friends? "You have got to watch... you should read..."

It is a beautiful, subtle way of saying, "I am thinking of you, I love you" and when we do complete these offered side quests, it is an equally lovely "I am thinking of you, too, I love you, too."

It is also a useful measuring tool of how much art one is consuming versus making.

Supporting the arts starts in one's own heart.

In my case, I can see, immediately, the balance has been off for a very long time.

I love movies, which I have only an audience-level understanding of. The production of every movie ever made feels something akin to a miracle. I feel like a common refrain to a behind-the-scenes feature falls into the line of:

"This script existed in development hell for 200,000 years. It took another 50,000 years to secure the funding, and by the time we got to filming, everyone initially cast had gone on to become literal stars in the sky, they no longer had time for our project."

This slightly mild exaggeration makes me feel better about the series of paintings I have had in mind for awhile, at least.

• I have no idea how a movie is made.
• I love not having any idea of how a movie is made.
• This is why I turn to movies when I find myself at a crossroads in my artistic career.
• The mystery is necessary and welcome.

Not for the first time, a back office client offered to bring me into their management program. This is the heart of the purpose of this blog post: production versus management.

If I ask my friends with generational wealth supporting their artistic career, the answer is direct and simple (and because they are friends, without malice, though with a notable lack of relatability): "Oh, stay the artist path, obviously."

If I ask my past self, who has chewed the tablecloth out of hunger in lean years, the answer is very different.

There is no wrong, nor correct, answer, aside from "What has the greatest chance of building a satisfying life?"

I made my choice (art: drawing, painting, writing) and hope I will not regret it.

There is a more chilling, underlying, often undiscussed repercussion.

The life of the creative manager, or any sort of main-focus-that-pays-the-bills however it manifests, offers the very pertinent: Have an idea, immediately begin executing, minimal (if any) consideration to the supply cost. I have been in this position a few times and it is arguably magnificent on some level.

As I tackle my television shows to watch list, my movies to watch list, as I consume books at a rate not seen since cheap bookstores ruled physical malls, I find myself at an old crossroads:

• Infinite desire to make everything
• Exploding inspiration
• Constrained resources
• The necessity to pick and choose projects.

At first, the answer seemed simple.

Go back to art school! Yes, of course!

That hallowed workshop of new tools and machinery! The meeting hall of like-minds, where techniques are shared! Experiments exalted!

I asked my producer to look into it for me:

And immediately realized another path is in order.

I am calling it "diner academia" because a few times a month, I grab all of my notebooks and shove them into a bag. I walk down the street to the local all-night diner, lay out my studies, order up coffee and potatoes, and Think and Dream.

The effects have been immediate.

By constraining myself to narrow production, the river of inspiration is plunging deeper. I do not want to make more complex work -- I explicitly enjoy the cheesy, lighthearted, silly things I have done in the past -- but the number of characters I want to write about is steadily growing. Backstories are coming easier. Connections between them are less opaque.

I am quickly realizing I had biases against certain types of art, certain mediums and genres. I've been a snob without realizing it, and breaking this down, I have come to enjoy movies I would have turned my nose up to prior.

I have long feared I would eventually have to choose between mail or stories and comics.

(Quick note: This was drawn about 2 years ago or so)

This no longer feels the case. I do not, in fact, love newspapers more than mail. What I love is newspapers and mail as a singular, connected focus.

The Netherworld of my stories is the pin that binds everything together. The monsters, ghosts, witches, mermaids and more communicate with each other directly with mail and broadly with newspapers -- this is the heart of my artistic focus, the exploration of all three, together.

Halloween creatures + newspapers + mail.

The cost is accepting the boundaries of the three and how they play together. I am a creature of free will, if I want to build a special widget or offer a one-time whatevers, that is always possible, but as an acknowledged "this is a limited time, probably one-run item."

The (immense) benefit is becoming an audience.

If I want a thing to exist, rather than run off and figure out the production details, spend a few weeks at my desk sketching it out, spend a few months learning how it is produced, calculating the costs... I go look to see if another artist is building in this realm already.

Notebooks and planners are a prime example.

I used to make and sell them, and had tremendous fun doing so. However, unless your production scale is significant and unless you are binding in-house (preferably printing as well), it is exceptionally difficult for these to be a product. And even when you hit these two (or three) levels, production issues similarly creep up.

• I would love to make and sell notebooks.
• When I was producing and selling them years ago, my studio was literally 4x the size it is now.
• Conversely, my studio costs are significantly less now, given I have scaled operations down to stories, newspapers, and mail ephemera. This freedom is allowing me to become far, far more experimental.
  

This is not sponsored. The only connection I have with Field Notes is as a customer. In addition, nearly 20 years ago, Jim Coudal gave me a private portfolio review. His kindness and generosity were matched singularly with the wisdom he offered.

And because I no longer make notebooks, I have gone out to explore the world made by others. I (like so many others) love Field Notes!

This is not sponsored. The only connection I have with Atlas Stationers is as a customer.

I bought my first Field Notes notebooks at Atlas Stationers!

This final segment is going to sound... off-kilter a bit, because it is. I accept that (laugh)

• Atlas Stationers is a legendary stationery shop in Chicago.
• The first time I went was not long after moving to the city, when I began experimenting with stationery as an art studio project.
• I had "go back to Atlas, browse and experiment" on my to-do list for fifteen years.
• I either shuffled it forward "remind me next week" or frustratedly "remind me in three months" for fifteen literal years. Not an exaggeration. 1-5-years.
• The train ride to get there, from my studio, takes less time than writing, finding images from my photo/illustration library, proofing, and posting this blog post. (Okay, admittedly, this line is an exaggeration, but not a significant one.)
• This experience is directly connected to the new direction I am headed in.

Even the above heavily photoshopped image is part of this. One of the foundational experiences to a graphic design career is "grab Photoshop and mess around with filters and layers until you make something that you like."

I have historically taken photo edits for blog posts and similar seriously. Find best photo / adjust for lighting / tinker tinker tinker tinker / okay now it is ready.

Now? Find image in b-roll, spend 30 seconds to 3 minutes making look neat with additional visual texture, "ah ha I like this, it reminds me of [genre / era] design that I am currently interesting in. Move on."

I always found artistic constraint repugnant. Now I am seeing it as a mechanism somewhere between safety valve and salvation.

By letting go of an incessant need to be in charge, to be the main event, be the spotlight focus -- by becoming more of an audience, by embracing narrow paths to focus -- I am finding myself experiencing far more, digging far deeper, meeting fresh faces, finding love for new things and finding new love for existing things.

I do not regret the path that got me to where I am now. I will forever hunger for the ability to do everything always everywhere, in the same way I hunger for a metabolism that would thrive exclusively on coffee, potatoes and jalapeños for meals, and lemons and limes for dessert.

And.

I am finding this new path to be exactly what I need.

I am growing more, faster, broader as an artist.

I am having more fun than I thought possible.

May we all support the arts, in our hearts for our own work, and with our coins and attention in the work of others.

In the spirit of it, please send me YOUR blog posts about YOUR journeys in art of any kind.

Please invite me into your overtly self indulgant wonders and experiments and mistakes and learnings and findings and rambles.

What are you making?

What are you failing at?

Where are you succeeding?

What are you dreaming about?

What are you getting back into, after a pause?

What are you plunging into with artistic recklessness? (But with proper physical protection... I love and support personal protective equipment! Ventilation, stretching, gloves, aprons! More more more!)