Vocation or Profession
We had an interesting conversation on Tuesday about if being an artist is a vocation or a profession. I said for me it was a profession and it was suggested ‘was I only in it for the money?’ If someone is a professional are they really only in it for the money? Lets cross disciplines again to for example a surgeon, they love what they do but also want to paid appropriately for their investment in learning and developing a high level of knowledge and skills and their contribution to the subject.
See Emily Speed’s highly illuminating blog – Getting Paid
Emily offers insight into the investment and returns shifting equilibrium.
So yes we were discussing the professional and the vocational, and the conversation went all over the place including ‘passion’ and that it is passion that drives artists and engineers (deduced from our small sample group) the drive to explore, learn, progress ideas and approaches within the discipline. Wonder if I should call the exhibition (at Hethel) at the end of this residency work ‘passion’ would perhaps be intriguing to potential audiences.
I was trying to explain the differences between the hobby artist (the fun & enjoyment model – vocation?) and the professional artist (the advancement of the subject – profession). I was saying that being a professional artist doesn’t reduce my passion for the subject it’s just I have (as many others artists have) invested both time and money to get my work to where it is today and it is about an exchange and not doing things for free. I wonder if the expectation to work for free extends to the engineering sector, I am thinking probably not but will ask next week. The performance artist Joshua Sofaer said in AN years back (and I have remembered it several times) ‘ I decided I would no longer work for free’ and it doesn’t seem to have done him any harm. When I worked with my mentor Richard Layzell we discussed ‘earning a living’ quite extensively.
I was intrigued to look at vocation and profession in the online dictionary – see image.
In terms of vocation I never felt a ‘calling’ to be an artist, but I have always been interested in ideas and thinking about things thoroughly and extensively beyond normal definitions and i found early on that art practice allowed me to do that. In terms of profession I have always loved learning and specialised learning, developing new knowledge (hence this residency project), I have been thinking about PhD study for a while now but as for a topic I can’t decide.
Oh and then the conversation moved into selling mugs (or not) and integrity – more about that some other time i think.
