The Art of Compromise

Does anyone make a living creating art?

When I was a young girl in the 70’s, I dreamed of being a professional artist. Actually, my first dream was to be a clothing designer - an artistic clothing designer.

I remember sketching in my notepad in the back seat of our yellow Plymouth Duster. In the summer, my thighs would stick to the vinyl seats, pulling skin with every sharp turn. Hunched over, pencil clutched, I drew with intent. I drew futuristic pantsuits in bright blues and greens - lots of standing collars, pleats and wide lapels. Unwittingly channeling the 1980’s, obviously - I was all about “the future”.

I imagined my future in great detail. I knew that at age 27, I would have my life completely together. I would attend Parson’s Design school in New York City, blow everyone’s minds with my amazing innovations and be catapulted into the runway spotlight (or at least backstage)… I’m an introvert, remember?

At age 27, I would live in a very cosmopolitan city and my apartment would have floor to ceiling windows, blue carpet and a white sofa. Most importantly, I’d be able to smoke a cigarette anytime I wanted - a long cigarette with one of those “Betty Davis-type” cigarette holders.

I was a very specific child.

To this day, I’ve never cared about smoking but, somehow, at ten years old, smoking was the epitome of independence. Smoking, and a white sofa.

Drawing remained a part of my daily life and, when I was in high school, I interviewed and was accepted into a special School of Fine Arts. There, I trained in sculpture, ceramics, painting, metal working… three years of intensive study and immersion in the Fine Arts. Working alongside my fellow dreamers, encouraged by my professional artist-instructors, I came alive!

Little did I realize at the time, that those adult artist-instructors probably also dreamed of being full-time artists. While they were wonderfully kind and gracious, I’m sure their dreams did not include teaching a bunch of kids about shading, perspective, and color theory on a daily basis.

And that’s what I want to talk about: Reality. Reality and the art of compromise.

Skip ahead many years….

For about a decade, I worked as the curator for Portland International Airport’s (PDX) Art Program. You might not immediately draw the connection between art and airports, but it’s a huge industry. Many airports have permanent collections worth millions, and PDX is no exception.

During that time, I managed the Port’s permanent art collection and designed and installed the rotating exhibitions program at PDX. Over a decade, I grew the program from two small exhibit spaces into a living, breathing art space that drew international attention.

All in all, it was a very cool experience, but it was never my dream.

You already know my dream.

When I actually did turn 27, I didn’t find myself in a cosmopolitan city with blue carpet and a white sofa. Instead, I found myself living in small cabin in a tiny North Carolina town with two young children.

You see, a few years before that photo was taken, I had become a widow. When my late husband, Bobby, committed suicide it took everyone by complete surprise, including me.

The immediate question people ask - after they gasp - is, “Why did he do that?!”

It’s a question that has no answer and a question that forever haunts the minds of survivors. That, and wondering, “What could I have done… Is there something I could have said?” or, worse yet, “Was it because of something I said or did?”.

This topic alone could be its own blog post, but that’s not what this is about. Perhaps another time.

Understandably, my life dramatically changed course, as did his. Everything became heavier and weightier, and time took on a different meaning for me.

My feelings fluctuated between rage and despondency; numbness and sadness. For many years, that sadness was a permanent anchor around my soul.

During that time, I lost an unhealthy amount of weight. I binge drank on nights when the kids weren’t at home. Echoing in an empty house, I sang along at the top of my lungs with all the saddest songs until my throat was raw and my eyes were bloodshot. For those wee hours I was alone, I was a mess. I let it all go. And then, just before the kids came home, I’d pull it all together again and hold it.

I held so much in, I couldn’t breathe.

I’m sure, even then, I wasn’t as together as I’d like to remember. I’m sure my sons saw all the cracks, living alongside my smiling zombie shell. And I’m sure they felt me constrict, as I became more controlling and afraid - always in fear of the next terrible thing that would happen to us.

I lost all spontaneity. I longed to be loose and free, but my muscles held so much tension, I developed chronic migraines.

Back then, I hadn’t picked up a pencil to draw in a very long time. I hadn’t created anything, really - not counting children. I had been working. I had been a waitress, a maid, a production-line worker, a receptionist… I had been doing all the things you do to get by in a world where the bills just keep coming.

I had lost sight of the notion of dreams and was stuck, completely, in the minutia of life… until Bobby’s death. That was a major wake-up call for me. And after a few years of pulling myself back together, I decided to try and live. I decided to try and get back to my true self - the self I had lost so many years ago.

I’ll pick up where I left off during my distant Fine Art School days…

Toward the end of high school, I met and started working for a stained glass artist in my hometown. Lorn was an old hippie from California and he made stained glass windchimes. More specifically, Lorn was a glass-master who made spectacular art, and he invented a product that sold nationwide - Glass Opera Windchimes. He created a streamlined production process and then hired folks like me to create parts and assemble them while he focused on his art.

Lorn’s shop was always full of interesting people. There was the Russian doctor from the old Soviet Union who could only work as a taxi driver in the US; George, the drunk Greek who made jokes and spanakopita while his young son played with the dogs; Larry, the former stockbroker who lost it all when he had a nervous breakdown on Wall Street and, of course, all of us wannabe-hippies cranking out windchimes while Grateful Dead tunes blasted over the speakers.

The house was jamming with music, live parrots, dogs and smoke… It was like a little elvish workshop and Lorn was our Santa Claus.

Although Lorn’s lifestyle was never mine, he taught me a lot about glass and life. Most of all, he let me be me. Years later, stumbling through my dark night of the soul, I remembered that feeling and I visited Lorn. As he hugged me tight, I felt some of my old spirit return to me.

And I began to make a new plan.

Although it wasn’t Bobby’s intention, his death enabled me to claim Social Security widow’s benefits. The benefits weren’t much, but they provided a supplemental safety net - enough for the seed of a dream.

I rented a small two bedroom apartment on Main Street in a renovated office building in NC. One of the front rooms became my glass studio and my sons and I lived in the other rooms.

Meanwhile, I took a part-time job doing graphic design for a local printer in the mornings and, in the afternoons, I made art. I showed my work at regional art festivals and I partnered with a local cabinet shop to make stained glass cabinet doors for their customers.

As my first commissioned jobs began to trickle in, I was elated. After a while, I was able to leave my part-time gig to concentrate on glass. Gradually, though, I found myself making more stained glass Betty-Boops, lamas, and ducks than my own designs. I stayed up later and later into the night to carve out time for my own work.

Like those artist-instructors at my old school, my time was not my own. The thing I had once loved was starting to feel a lot like W-O-R-K.

Commissioned work

As my business grew, I moved into a larger studio and started teaching classes and selling supplies. I was making enough money to keep the doors open, but not enough money to hire anyone - not enough to really grow the business. I felt stuck.

At 30, I didn’t actually know the first thing about running a business - about business plans or loans… It was all I could do to find time to file my taxes.

I started to feel like I was in way over my head, and I was sinking.

A very type-A person, I never missed a deadline. My customers and students were genuinely happy, but I’m not sure I was. I still loved what I was doing, but it didn’t feel like “the dream” anymore.

It never really does.

There are moments when you’re doing what you love and time feels suspended. That’s flow. You forget where you are, who you are… you’re totally in the moment. In bliss. I think we artists live for these moments, but they’re fleeting. The goal is to collect as many of these moments as possible and steal them away deep, deep down in your soul.

These moments sustain our creativity.

In the midst of creating a Betty Boop window, there are moments of flow - brief moments. Focused on each cut, each snap of glass that breaks just right, the feeling of joy can be found there, if your mind is right. But in the wee small hours of the morning, when you’re making pop-tarts for the kids or pouring cereal, it’s hard to find that joy, knowing Betty Boop lies ahead of you.

And that’s compromise.

After several years passed, I made the hard decision to put my dream on the backburner. I was tired of holding things together. I was tired of everything.

I guess part of me finally burned out. The dream was dead sleeping.

So, at age 33, I changed direction and went back to college. I chose the well beaten path. My goal was simply to get a stable job that offered health insurance and a retirement plan, and I did. Honestly, it was a huge relief.

As I started to earn more money, my widow’s benefits fell off. If you don’t know how it works, for every dollar you make above a certain amount, you lose a percentage of benefits. But if you don’t let go of that safety net, you limit your earning potential. That’s how some people get “stuck” relying on government benefits.

It’s frightening to let go of that safety net, but it’s sort of like learning to swim. You have to let go of the floatation device if you really want to go somewhere. You have to have some confidence in yourself and just go for it.

“Trust” encaustic collage, 2018 (me)

Courage is not the absence of fear, but doing the hard thing despite being scared.

The truth is, my fear of the next terrible thing happening never left me, no matter how much art I created or how many degrees I earned. I won’t go into all the ways I tried to satiate that fear, but that fear was probably a factor in most of my decisions, frankly, for a very long time.

With a stable job with benefits, for the first time, I felt very adult and responsible. Very solid. And that’s exactly what I needed back then - solid ground.

Being able to “take care of myself” meant finally not being dependent on anyone else for my survival. It meant no longer being vulnerable, which equated, in my mind, to being safe…

I can laugh at that now because I know there is no such thing as “safe”. But perhaps that’s another blog post…

At the time, it did, however, give me some security and some breathing room - a space to forgive myself for my many failings, both real and imagined. And also to witness that I wasn’t the only artist who was struggling.

When I was curating at PDX, I worked with hundreds of artists who were all too familiar with compromise. Some taught at universities; some struggled with the best way to market their niche art online. Others were rushing between various art and craft fairs across the country, hustling to make ends meet. Very few - I mean very few - actually made a living exclusively creating their artwork.

But I met those, too - they were professional public artists.

As an art administrator, I wrote requests for proposals (RFP) to purchase permanent artwork for the Port. I sat on committees of jurors as we ranked art submissions, and it was my pleasure to award a few large projects.

These kinds of projects exist everywhere and, for every project, there are committees that judge proposals.

These fine ladies actually do love art…

As part of those committees, I saw a lot.

More often than not, public art judging committees are comprised of bureaucrats who know nothing about art, and may not even like art. Occasionally, someone from a regional arts organization will be invited to join, but they’re usually window dressing to check all the boxes. The real decisions are made by the managers who hold the purse-strings (and that wasn’t me).

In my experience, the voting process is usually fair when you follow standard industry procedure, but one poor manager can influence the whole table. I’ve seen it multiple times.

During one proposal review, I actually heard one manager say, “I don’t want my name on that!”. To translate, he meant that he didn’t want “his legacy” tied with that specific artwork. As if…

Ridiculous as it was, that was his thought process, and he’s not alone.

Now that judging categories now include “diversity, sustainability, equity”, and other factors that are more about politics than art, the process is more convoluted than ever.

The few “professional artists” who manage to navigate these muddy waters have the potential to make a living creating their art… if they change their design just so. And if they remove this or that. And if they use all the correct terms in their proposal… and so on.

Compromise.

My point? There are always hoops to jump through, no matter your job. Artists are not immune.

Here’s a side note: To enter into the world of public art for a public agency, an artist has to first have had a professional commissioned job from a public agency.

Catch 22, anyone?

There are some very small commissions out there that will serve as qualifiers, but not many. Thus, the pool of professional artists remains small.

Guy Kemper (not at PDX, but should be)

It was this catch that inspired me to create a temporary site-specific exhibit program at PDX for emerging artists who hadn’t yet obtained a public art commission. By commissioning them myself, they could get their foot in the door of the public art world, and then apply for bigger jobs elsewhere.

I felt excited for these folks as they grew their professional potential. I wanted them to get those large-scale commissions (and the $$ that goes with them), so they could be full-time artists, living the dream.

I gently ushered them through the red tape, insurance requirements, vendor paperwork and other bureaucratic hurtles… Maybe for a moment, I was their Santa Claus, like Lorn was for me. I’d like to think so.

It was the best part of my job.

But it wasn’t without a twinge of sadness.

Having seen behind the curtain of bureaucratic committees, I wanted to warn them. I wanted to protect their joy - their purity and flow - from the soul-sucking business-side of any creative “enterprise”.

I wanted them to have it all and I also wanted to tell them, “Walk away”.

As any great cook who goes to work in a restaurant kitchen knows; as any talented writer cranking out copy for a magazine knows; as any inspired musician who gets signed to a record label knows - eventually, at some point, your work becomes “product”. In turn, you go from being “artist” to “producer”. That’s real life.

Real life is all about compromise, and purity is always lost in the compromise.

Life is a dirty business.

At the end of the day, my worst day as a curator was still better than my best day as a maid. Some jobs just suck and I’ve had enough dirty jobs to know the difference. I’m grateful that I got to do what I did for as long as I did, and I hope I did others some good.

I hope that I’m doing someone some good right now as I gently pour cold water all over your dreams of being an uncompromised professional “whatever”…

In my experience, the words “uncompromised” and “professional” rarely go hand in hand.

In case you were wondering, I did keep making art. While I worked full-time helping other artists succeed, at home in the wee hours, I made my own art.

Ironically, the best year I ever had in sales was when I was creating my own art, exactly the way I wanted it, and not relying on it for money.

That work was more authentic than anything I had made up to that point. It was work I wanted to sell, but equally wanted to keep for myself because it was so personal.

That series of work was basically a visual journal of my process as I worked through some deep psychological issues. Those issues were represented using a lot of inscrutable symbolism, of course, because I’m an introvert, remember?

The best ideas came only when I let go of what anyone else would think.

I tell you all of this not to discourage your dreams, but to encourage you to let go of any black and white thinking that might be holding you back. The choice isn’t “professional artist or nothing”. That’s a fallacy.

Taking a job writing boring ad-copy doesn’t take away from you being a real writer. Working on a line in a busy kitchen doesn’t mean you aren’t also a great cook.

No one is one thing and our jobs don’t define us.

If I could go back and tell Bobby anything and have him hear it, I’d say to him, “Everything is temporary. Don’t give up.”

And I’d tell you the same thing.

Stop pushing so hard for the life you imagine you need to have before you begin to live. Our best laid plans always go awry - and thank God for that.

I would have hated living in a cosmopolitan city, and white sofas are always a mistake.