Of course the only way to be an artist is to be an artist. I dislike tautologies but sometimes I need to remind myself of something self evident. On Wednesday afternoon the mentor group for the local arts school got together to talk about our experiences this first term. It was good for me to hear the other mentors reflect on the seemingly two types of student: those that are unquestioningly getting on with developing their practice, and those that are questioning not their practice but their possibility of pursuing it for primarily economic reasons. As Mattias succinctly put it, and now I am further paraphrasing, being an artist means accepting instability. This was really good for me to hear – it is not a surprise … I see and hear the reality of this often at the studio as one or several of my colleagues there are concerned about what do after a project ends, or where they might find some temporary employment. But for some reason sitting together discussing it both one stage removed and in terms of students it brought home just how detrimental and counter productive it is. It begged/begs the questions what to do. Two broad responses came up, one accept that you need security/stability and choose another course/career, and two see it as part of being an artist, realise that the majority of artists share similar concerns and just get on with it.
I find myself currently straddling those two positions – and it’s uncomfortable! I actually feel as though I am standing on ground that has fractured in two and that each foot is on ground either side of a widening chasm. The ground on either side is as (relatively) stable … comfortable … as it can be, the discomfort … pain, tension, anxiety … is generated by the ever increasing stretch. In addition there is the fear … knowledge? … that a likely result is that when the stretch reaches its limit I will fall (either backwards or forwards) in to the chasm. And in doing so I will have a far harder task in dragging myself back and up on to one of the those grounds.
Maybe I should/could find someone to talk this through with – my own mentor! Or perhaps a counsellor … I think that I need ’good counsel’ … someone (objective and even a little distant) who I can speak with. I don’t expect that person to help me make a decision, rather I expect the discussion (with that person) to help me make a decision.
One discussion that I will be having soon (soonish – the second week in January) is with my manager at work. I need to better understand what my job actually is in the current and specific circumstances. I also want to know how flexible they can be in accommodating more artistic ways of being. My former boss appointed two artists, to posts that she created, which I now think that she did as an experiment to see if the council could become more creative. The other artist, Klas, left a couple of years ago when the boss did not (could not?) agree to him working four days rather than five days a week. Bearing this in mind I am not expecting my new boss to be able to be too flexible but I have to ask. It could well be that a local council is simply the wrong place for an artist to be employed, and that I should stop spending time and energy trying to make it a workable fit! Time to stop being a lab rat and realise that the experiment shows that the council can not be creative.
On one of the grounds I see exciting creative opportunities and projects, on the other ground I see security. A question … image? … popped in my as I wrote that sentence: who wants to live in ’(maximum) security unit’?
