{"id":480,"date":"2013-11-03T20:05:32","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T01:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/?p=480"},"modified":"2013-11-03T20:18:57","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T01:18:57","slug":"artists-u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"Artists U"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou empower someone to your level of trust in them<\/em>.\u201d \u00a0— Craig Rogers in a management workshop. \u00a0<\/i>Eskin Corollary:\u00a0 this applies to trust in your self as well; empower yourself.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last weekend I attended Artists U<\/a>\u00a0in Baltimore.\u00a0 Part of our session related to strategic planning and part of the planning was to revisit what you wrote a week later.\u00a0 So here I am — revisiting.<\/p>\n

Andrew Simonet was our workshop leader and\u00a0is the Founder and Director of Artists U in Philadelphia.\u00a0The free, Friday evening and all day Saturday class was about building a balanced, productive and sustainable life as an artist.\u00a0 It is a grassroots, artist-to-artist effort to help artists make a better life for themselves \u2013 to offer skills and tools to help overcome many of the challenges faced by young artists working to establish themselves. In addition to Andrew there were\u00a0three facilitators and 23 artists (including me) from a very broad array of disciplines. \u00a0We discussed strategic planning, finances, time management and developing an Artist Statement.<\/p>\n

Most of the artists were younger than me, but there was one other “mature” artist as well. \u00a0I did not feel at all out of place — the workshop is built on foundation of being inclusive and all of my classmates were friendly and welcoming. However, some topics were more helpful to me than others. \u00a0Being retired, the financial issues facing many young artists were less relevant to me — although being paid for my photography is gratifying and can be considered a source of “feedback” on how successful I was at conveying the ideas I thought I captured.<\/p>\n

The three areas I found most helpful were time management, writing an artist statement, and strategic planning. Taking the last, first, I already had a plan but this class provided great motivation to review, revise and update the plan. \u00a0As a retiree, it is easy to be lax about time management because there is no supervisor setting deadlines, so it is even more critical that I set a consistent work schedule and goals with time lines. \u00a0We talked about goals as being personal, professional and artistic, recognizing that some goals would fit in more than one category. So my first three in the professional category were: \u00a0(1) set a more consistent work schedule, (2) minimum of three blogs per week (starting here and we will see how well I succeed), and (3) have work hung in at least 6 exhibits in 2014.<\/p>\n

We worked on artist statements in a group first, then in pairs. \u00a0I had been nibbling around the edges of starting a new project that recognized the art and design of nature as seen in macro- and microscopic subjects. \u00a0Usually artist statements seem to me to be tortured post-project rationalizations for the body of work — this time I actually liked what I wrote.<\/p>\n

There will be a followup, one-on-one with Andrew or one of the facilitators later this month so another short-term goal is to work on and revise my plan with specifics to discuss at that time. There may be an opportunity for the class to get together again for an evaluation of progress or more advanced topics which I hope happens and that I can attend.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: \u00a0if you are an artist, young or old, who believes that you can improve your life as an artist, you will likely find this to be a helpful opportunity. \u00a0Thanks, Andrew for doing this.<\/p>\n

PS Some additional quotes I thought were relevant to the course:<\/p>\n

I do really good work, but only when I\u2019m working within a structure.\u00a0 Everyone is like that. You just have to practice discipline and routine so that you can create your own structure.\u201d \u2013 Humans of NY<\/p>\n

\u201cFocus is a matter of deciding what things you\u2019re not going to do.\u201d \u2014 John Carmack<\/p>\n

\u201cStriving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.\u201d \u2013 Harriet Braiker<\/p>\n

\u201cTo live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.\u201d \u2014 Joseph Chilton Pierce<\/p>\n

\u201cThe essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.\u201d \u2014 Edwin H. Land<\/p>\n

Fail. Fail often and fail cheaply. This is the very best gift the web has given to people who want to bootstrap their way into a new business. \u2013Seth Godin<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to think about big things while you\u2019re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.\u201d \u2013 Alvin Toffler<\/b><\/p>\n

\u2026be happy wherever you are, with whatever you\u2019ve got, but always hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you are gone, and most of all, doing important work. —\u00a0 Seth Godin<\/p>\n

A big part of doing your work is defending your time and your attention so you can do your work. —\u00a0 Seth Godin<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou empower someone to your level of trust in them.\u201d \u00a0— Craig Rogers in a management workshop. \u00a0Eskin Corollary:\u00a0 this applies to trust in your self as well; empower yourself. Last weekend I attended Artists U\u00a0in Baltimore.\u00a0 Part of our … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[1],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8lcUy-7K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":491,"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richeskinphoto.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}