Living the Creative Life | Rice Freeman-Zachery | Talks at Google

Hello everyone and thank you for coming to the authors at Google Today. It's my pleasure to welcome Bryce Freeman Zachary to Google. She's the author of Living the Creative Ideas, Inspiration from Working Artists. She taught college composition for eight years before becoming a free art freelance writer. She has written a variety of magazines and writes regularly for Art Doll Quarterly, Bel Amore Legacy, Somerset Studio, and Rubber Stamp Madness. She has written two previous books, Stamp Artistry and New Techniques for Wearable Art. In Living the Creative Life, Rice has compiled answers to the questions such as where do your ideas come from? How did you get started? From 15 successful artists in a variety of mediums. Creativity is different for everyone and these artists share their insights with that. Please join me in welcoming Rice Freeman Zachary.

Thank you all for inviting me here to talk about my all time favorite subject, which is creativity. To tell you how I got started, in 1991 I started interviewing artists for these publications that Jimmy mentioned and I was supposed to write about how they got started and what they did, but I always managed to work in what is creativity to you and where do you get ideas and where does inspiration come from and how does it feel once you get an idea and you know that it's going to work out? What is that? Do you feel it right here? Because growing up, the two things that I was interested in were writing and making stuff. And the writing always came easily for me. I could write, I could do well with that, but the making stuff was an entirely different thing. I had a set of Children's Encyclopedia and volume 10 was called Things to Make and Things to Do. And it was how to make these really cool and wonderful contraptions and artwork out of rubber bands and clothespins and empty toilet paper rolls. And they would have pictures of the finished piece and they were just fabulous. They were contraptions and they were gorgeous works of art. And mine always looked like rubber bands and clothespins and empty toilet paper rolls. So I kind of gave up on that whole making things part of it and I followed the writing. And then when I started working in 1991 with all of these artists and asking them questions, I realized that you don't have to be able to draw in order to create, and you don't have to be able to paint in order to make art. And that art is not relegated just to representational art or fine arts or even visual art. Art can cover a wide variety of things and it can indeed cover engineering and music and writing. And so I started thinking about, you know, here's the perfect opportunity to Ask all these people that I interview these questions. And I started nagging my various editors. I wanted to write this book. The thing is that in the world of book publishing, there are niches and there's fiction, and there's nonfiction, and there's how to, and there's inspirational, and there's self help. And in the craft world, they basically have one category, which is how to make it. And all of the books were step by step process. So the first two books I wrote were like that, because that's how you have to get in. And I kept telling you, telling them, there's an audience for this. People want to talk about creativity. They want to hear artists who have made a living at making whatever they make. They want to hear how they've done it and how it feels to do it. So finally, after many rejections of various proposals, we got this in the works. And I picked out 15 of the artists that I'd interviewed previously, well, about a dozen, and then a couple that I hadn't had the chance to, but wanted to. And I sent them a 20 page questionnaire and asked them them all the questions that I'd wanted to know. It was actually 20 questions with sub questions, and it went on forever. And I asked them everything from what's your earliest childhood art making experience? To how does it feel when you finish a piece? Surprisingly, some people said that it was great, they were happy to finish it. And others said it was like having one of your limbs removed. Here's something you've worked on in some cases. One woman is a bead artist and she sews beads on. She makes jewelry and entire sculptures out of individually sewn beads. And she will work eight to 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for six to eight months, sometimes a year and a half on a piece. And she said that when she's finished, it's like there's a huge hole in her life. She has worked with this intimately for so long. So what I did was I thought, if you started out with where creativity comes from and you follow it to its logical conclusion, how can you inspire creativity in others? And the two questions that I wanted to answer is, what is creativity? Because people have different ideas. Some people say, oh, it's being able to draw. It's being able to visualize something in your head and draw it with a pen, on a piece of paper. Paper. And others with a broader idea of it will say that it's anything that makes something new. Okay. And the other thing we wanted to know, is everyone creative? I Asked the artist this and most of them agreed. Well, all of them agreed that everyone has the capacity for creativity, the ability to be creative, but that the way society is structured, it is not nurtured or encouraged. Public schools, there's no funding for art classes, music, even the English classes where you once were exposed to great literature, now just pretty much make sure they know how to read and write well enough to pass whatever test it is that your state has. And so a lot of people, the majority unfortunately, grow up without having any way to tap into that natural creative urge that they have. You start out young, you're playing with clay, you're playing with crayons, you're playing with whatever. And then at some point you realize society doesn't value that. You have to go and get a job that is going to provide a living for you and whatever family you have. And you kind of tuck that away in a lot of cases and eventually forget that it was ever there. The artist that I talked to suggested a variety of ways that you could nurture this. And one of them, surprisingly, people think, well, if you're going to be an artist, you have to give up everything else. You have to figure out a way to make a living at whatever it is that you do. And one of the most brilliant answers was Susan Shea, who's a quilter, an art quilter, one of the very first. And she said, don't give up your day job. Find a job that you can put up with, that you enjoy going to enough so that you don't have to call in sick three days a week and go and do that. But it needs to be a job that only goes from 8 in the morning till 4 o', clock, not teaching or medicine or something that consumes your entire being. And then work on your art, your music, whatever it is in the hours that you have left. In talking about what creativity was, I asked all of the artists and I'm going to read some of their answers to you because they're eye opening in many ways. The artists that we've got here vary from quilters to people making figurative sculptural art, art, dolls, jewelry. There's a guy who's making really cool puppets, a sculptor, a ceramicist who was named the state artist of New Mexico and had a retrospective of her life's work at the Harwood Museum in Taos. Melissa Zink. So we've got a wide variety of artists, and as you would expect, there are a wide variety of ideas about every one of the questions I ask. And in Asking them what creativity is. One of them. She is an illustrator, cartoonist and collage artist. And she said creativity is opening up to the source, spirit, universe and becoming a vessel for inspiration to pour through you in an unadulterated fashion. She has kind of these sort of touchy feely idea of what creativity is. That was shared with several others. Wendy Hale Davis is a bookbinder, musician and journal artist in Austin, Texas. She has the most fascinating life I've ever heard of. And I've gotten to ask her a lot of nosy questions. She spent some time on a Sioux reservation, the Rosebud Sioux, and she worked with the medicine men and listened to them. Wendy also spent part of her time living under a van in someone's driveway for several years during her drug addled 60s, 1960s, not her 60s. She's not that old and has stories about being arrested by the cops during a peace demonstration back in the 60s and just recently has inherited a million dollars and so now doesn't have to worry about ever living under a van again. But her story about creativity. She says, when I lived on the reservation Rosebud Sioux, I took a class in singing. The guys always said the songs just came to them. They didn't write them. It was like they were a channel. I'm not a religious person at all and not even a particularly spiritual person, but this is what creativity feels like to me. I am a channel for something coming to me through the universe. Then there were the more pragmatic explanations of what creativity is. James Michael Starr, He's a collage and assemblage artist, a writer and filmmaker in Dallas, Texas, who quit a job. He was a graphic designer, making six figures and doing well at his job in Texas, and decided that he was going to give it all up to do art. And shortly thereafter, his wife decided she was going to give up everything to do art. So fortunately, I think they paid off the mortgage by then and they're fabulous. He's really a terrific guy. And he says, I believe true creativity is a uniquely human and intellectual activity that resides in every individual. In my opinion, it usually appears and functions in connection with some interest or ability we're born with or develop over time. For instance, I believe that I was born with or developed an affinity for communication. In addition to my visual art. I like to write. And so creativity in me will most often reveal itself through some form of communication, even if it is relatively inscrutable medium of my visual art. Even someone at the other end of the spectrum of rationality, perhaps A scientist can exhibit creativity in a field we don't think of as being creative. So fortunately for all of us, you can go from everything from you're a channel for something that's flowing through the universe to a relatively rational explanation. This is something that's innate and it comes out of you through whatever you're good at. So if you're good at mathematical equations, your creativity will come through there instead of maybe taking the form of painting. My definition of creativity had always been making something that you've never seen before. It doesn't have to be making something that doesn't exist. Let's say you paint. And if you have an idea for a painting and you've never seen that painting, and you paint it and it turns out that someone was painting the almost identical painting in Kansas City at the same time, it still counts as creativity because you had not seen that. So what you were creating was pure from you, not influenced by anything else that you'd seen. In thinking about it that way, anything can be creative and anything can be uncreative. So we could take something like cooking. You could have creative cooking and you could have non creative cooking. If you follow recipes, you get Cooking Magazine, whatever, and you follow the recipes exactly. That's cooking. And it's fine and it's wonderful. But you might not really think of it as a creative endeavor. However, if you take a recipe and you taste it, you try it, and then you decide you're going to do whatever you have to. I don't cook, so I can't even come up with a good analogy here. You leave out stuff and put in other stuff, and maybe you change the temperature of the oven and it comes out and it might be bad and it might be good. It doesn't matter. That was creative cooking. As long as it's palatable, I guess that's acceptable. It doesn't have to get five stars. Costume design. If you have a pattern that you've gotten from somewhere else, or you're copying something that you've seen in a book of 18th century costumes, that would be on the less creative side. If, however, you're taking a picture of some kind of a bird of paradise and you're trying to recreate that in fabric and fibers, you could argue that that was on the creative side. So it's an element of newness and of difference, of looking at things in a different way. And that was key. Amongst the artists that I talked to, they had not bought into what I call the rules, the way you're supposed to do things the way you're supposed to look at life, the way you're supposed to react to various situations. And there are a couple of really good examples in here. One of them is Susan Shay, the art quilter that I mentioned. She was probably one of the first. And if you're not familiar with the term art quilts, you know, traditional quilters, they do things with the patterns and the templates and the squares that all fit together. Art quilters are doing things like painting on whole cloth. They're transferring photographs to cloth. As long as you're stitching layers of fabric together somehow and attaching those, it's considered a quilt. Anything else you do that doesn't fit in the traditional realm of quilting is considered an art quilt. And Susan Shea was one of the first of the those. And in the book, you can see photographs of her fabulous work, huge quilts, and she's painted and she has written text on those, and they're heavily embellished. She started out. She has an art degree, and she started out as a painter. But Susan is legally blind. She can't drive, and she can't see much of anything except shapes and colors. So she worked very large. And instead of trying to do the traditional quilting, which would be impossible for her, the little tiny stitches, she created these huge, gorgeous things she wanted to quilt. Her eyesight wasn't that good. Instead of saying, okay, I'll buy into what it is to be a quilter, she said, no, this is what it is to be a quilter. Another example of someone wanting to do something and not following the rules. Scott Radke. You'll notice his quite amazing puppets in the book. There are photographs of those. Those started purely by chance. He. He was an artist. He was kind of. He drew, he did sand sculptures. He did a lot of different things. And then he fell in love. And he fell in love with this woman. And she had to leave early on in their courtship to go home to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. And he was pretty well besotted by then and wanted to ask her to marry him. Now, the rules for asking a woman to marry you are pretty straightforward. You know, will you marry me? And then if you want to be really traditional, you do the rings and the flowers and stuff. What he did was he decided to make something for her. And he made a likeness of himself, a large figure, and dressed it in the clothes he'd been wearing when they met and wrapped it in leaves that he picked up under the tree where he first kissed her. And then he Attached some of his hair to the top of it. He wrapped it up and he mailed it to her parents home in Atlanta. And she said yes. Apparently she was kind of a no rules kind of woman too because otherwise she might have been worried when this thing wrapped in his clothes with his hair showed up in the mail after Thanksgiving dinner. But it worked well. And their daughter, there's a picture in here of their daughter sitting in the studio surrounded by his puppets. Another example of thinking. And it's so cliche to say thinking outside the box, but that's what it is. Instead of saying, okay, how do I do this and how do I go here? Melissa's Inc. Early on in her career she made ceramic sort of dioramas. They're fabulous things, very detailed and they all contained a story and the storyline moved from piece to piece. They had the same characters in them. And she said her ideas and inspiration and creativity were so prolific that she never went more than a day or two without an idea. But at this point she hadn't had one in a couple of weeks and she was getting worried. She thought maybe it was. And she had been self supporting, making enough money at her art for decades. You know, it wasn't something that she could just decide to give up. They lived in Taos and she tells in the book the story they would walk along the Rio Grande and they crossed the river and they were walking and usually walking and looking at the scenery around Taos and Santa Fe. Usually that would do it. It wasn't working. No ideas were coming. And she said she was really, really, it was getting to her. And as they were coming down the hill she noticed something sticking up out of the dirt. And she bent down and unearthed and she said it was this little wooden motorcy, a small replica, not a particularly wonderful one, but you could tell that someone had hand carved this motorcycle. And she said in the moment that she looked at it, she knew immediately what the next piece was going to be and visualized it in its entirety. She said that that was Lawrence of Arabia's motorcycle. T.E. lawrence had died in a motorcycle wreck and she could see him writing his memoirs in the sand next to a pyramid with that motorcycle as a part of the artwork. And she said it is to this day and she's in her 70s. She said it is one of her most successful pieces. And it all came from picking up this thing. Instead of kicking it to the side or thinking, what's that, a kid's toy? She knelt down and looked at it and allowed the ideas to come to her without censoring them. And it turned into this wonderful piece. When people ask, what did you get from this? The two things that the artist emphasized over and over. The ability to ignore the rules by experimenting and questioning and always asking, what if? What would happen if I mix this and this? What would happen if I made these things really big or these things really small? What would happen if I painted on wood or if I drilled holes in China? What would happen if. And then following it, experimenting and playing. And the other thing that my editors wanted me to downplay in this book a little more was their emphasis on work. These aren't people who are lying around in the hammock drinking mai tais and waiting for inspiration to hit. They said that no matter if you have an idea or a project underway, you get up in the morning, you go to the studio at a certain time, and you start working. And you work. I would have, would have assumed that most of them would say the idea came to them and then they went to the studio and worked. Most of them said, it's the exact opposite. You go to the studio, you start handling the materials. You work with the clay, you get out the saw and the wood. You take the jewelry bench and work on the silver. And then the idea comes after you have begun working with the material. Some of them said it's almost as if the material contains the essence of what it wants to be. That kind of touchy feely woo thing, but it contains that essence already, and it's your job as the artist or the creator to help it escape. You could argue the same thing if you're a musician. The piano contains the music already and your job is to get it out and write it down. Maybe, maybe not. But for most artists who are working and making a living at art, that's what they said they'd do, is every day they go to wherever it is and they practice. If there's a project underway, it's easy enough. You pick up where you left off the day before and you keep working on it. But if you don't have an idea, you just keep, keep messing with this stuff until something comes to you. And eventually it does. No one that I've talked to has ever said, I had an idea and it was the last one and I've never had one since. I've never heard anyone say that. There have been times where there are gaps and the creative block, most of them don't believe in it. They say, well, you don't get physician's block or Mechanic's block. So why should you get writer's block or artist's block? You just keep plugging along at it. So maybe it'll be a week or two when things don't go really well, but sooner or later everything will come back to you. Let's see, what else was I going to tell you about this? Let's see, there was one other thing that I wanted to read to you before we talked. The question that we're answering in the next book that I'm working on now is that of Spring. And most of these artists, you would think that because they're working and they're making a living at this, they would have wonderful, well appointed studios, huge places where they can go and create art. And for many of them that's not the case. They say that they try to keep it. Those who work on smaller pieces try to keep it compact enough so they can take it with them. So that no matter where they go, a lot of them have to teach to supplement their income. Teach. If they're a ceramicist, they teach ceramics. If they're a quilter, they teach sewing classes. And they have to have things be portable enough to take with them. Others have said that they can make art as well in a closet. And one of them actually does work out of a closet as well in a closet as they could anywhere else. So it's not that you have the space and then you begin to make the art, it's that you make it and whatever space you have will absorb it and you'll fit into it. So, okay, instead of reading more, I thought I would just let you ask questions. It works much better for me that way. And I kind of know what you want to hear instead of just kind of going on at you. So does anyone have anything in particular that you would like to. Yes.

For the process of discovery or based on a textbook by a guy that stuck me to a whole bunch of Nobel Prize winners about how they got their ideas. And what he kept talking about throughout the book is that they were working on the stuff. They kept walking, walking, walking. And at some point they thought they would never solve it. And they would take a break, they would walk around like in the story where the tactics discovered the motorcycle. And then that is when they would get their ideas. And I'm just wondering whether you saw that before.

Yes, because when they're working and working and working, they're putting it all in there. And then at some point you've just got to let that settle. And it's kind of, like, sifting it out and you put everything in and then you walk away from it and it kind of works itself out and the really good stuff stays and the dross sort of goes away. But I've heard that many times from the artists who say, yeah, you've got to do the research, you've got to do the study, you have to go and buy the material or whatever it is, do the sketches, do the preliminary work. And then maybe in the middle of the night, maybe while you're doing something else, that will come to you. And a lot of them tell stories. You know, they're cooking. One of them, she said she's given up cooking. She lets her husband cook now, because she would be cooking and she'd go, oh, that's it, that's it. And she would leave and go into the studio, and half an hour later, someone in the family would say, there's something on the stove, but we don't really know what it is. So, you know. Yeah, a lot of them talked about exercise. We kind of hit that a lot in one of the chapters about yoga and taking walks and mindless stuff. For some people, it works better if you put all the preliminary things into your head and then think about something else. And for other people, a lot of people, you don't think about anything, mow the grass, mop the floor, whatever kind of mindless task that will keep you physically moving. That seems to be part of a necessity. Most of them said when they're moving and the blood's flowing, that works, and you kind of put the brain on hold. So that's a good question. Yeah, most people, some of them. One woman said that the things will stew in her mind for maybe two or three years. She has a backlog of ideas, and she's got them written down and they kind of work their way forward, but it usually takes two or three years before they move up. One guy I talked to you recently said he has enough work lined out on his website. He has the years, and you click on the year to see what he's working on, and he has it up to 2015, 215 of things that he's going to do, because he's already planned out every month. He does about a piece a month, so you can figure how many months he has lined out in front of him. Yes.

These artists talk about their relationship.

With money, survival and art.

Yes. It's one of those things that it's so difficult, the creative people, you do something, you find something you love, and you start doing it, and it works well for you, it's going well. You start making money at it. And then as you become more successful and you make more and more money at it, then the other demands come in. Then you have to deal with agents, and you have to deal with museums and galleries and shows, and you've got a website, and you're selling things on your website and people are contacting you. And so you either have to say, okay, I'm just going to make art and I'm going to make enough money at it so I can hire other people to do all this other stuff, or you're going to say, I'm only going to be able to make art 75% of the time. And the other 25% of the time, I'm going to have to be able to be an accountant and a salesman and a publicist and all of those other things. It's really difficult. And a lot of artists will find that they spend so little time actually doing the thing that they love so much that it got them started. The ideal is that you would be able to have a balance or have a spouse who will help you, a partner, someone who will help you out. Scott Radke, the guy I was telling about that made the puppet of himself, he makes these puppets and he puts them. He takes a photograph and he puts it on his website, and within moments, like, 15 minutes, it sold. And he's been doing that for several years. He said he doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to do that. At some point, people are going to decide it's not the most fabulous thing they've ever seen because somebody else is doing the new most fabulous thing. But for right now, his stuff is so fabulous that it sells immediately and he doesn't have to do the gallery shows. And we were in Santa Fe and there was a gallery there, Pop Santa Fe. And the man said, I've wanted to get Scott's stuff here, but he never responds to his emails. Will you ask him if he will do it? And I contacted him and he said, I can't. He said, I stay so busy making the art that is selling that is allowing us to prepare for the child's college education. He said, if I quit in order to pursue a gallery show, then I can't be making stuff that I'm selling every month on the website that's putting food on the table. It's one of those things that's just really difficult. Yes, ma'. Am.

So a lot of artists will have sort of their art community. And it's very kind of low budget, I guess, because they're artists and they might be teaching classes. But then now you're fixing a lot of. I'm kind of a reality TV junkie. So you get like, Project Runaways and the Top Chefs, which are basically what you're saying, like an artist, but they're put under a deadline to create something. And so I go Project Runway, which is, you know, where they make clothes, but they're given, like, 20 hours from, you know, here.

You have no idea what you're going to do.

Here's your assignment.

Create something.

And it's really interesting, I think, to watch these people create something at such a good time. And then kind of what you're saying with when people do start selling their work, it's so much more deadline driven. And once they kind of make it as an artist and they get all.

Their money, it's deadline driven.

Have you explored kind of the difference between how they work as sort of the struggling, starving artists versus, like, becoming the rock star and having the deadlines and you've got to get this done if you want to get paid kind of thing, and sort of how that changes their creative process?

Most of the people that I have talked to that have become successful are the ones who have gotten past that point of not being able to deal with the deadline. So most of the people I talk to are the ones that haven't fallen by the wayside because the deadlines were so intimidating to me. Them. For a lot of artists, they think it's going to be just this fun thing. And then what you said, the deadlines come, or people begin to expect things of you. It's not you expressing your creativity. It's your fans or your agent or the gallery owner that set you up for January 6th opening. And they're expecting something from you. And a lot of people decide that's too much pressure, and they will go and get a job as a green at Walmart and make their art in their spare time, which is perfectly acceptable. But those aren't generally the people that I end up talking to. And a lot of those people may be making fabulous stuff, but they have decided, for whatever reason, perfectly, sensibly, in many cases, that they don't want to deal with the pressure, and so they will do something else to make a living. And then it's like the outsider artist. Somebody dies, and they find this house full of fabulous stuff that nobody knew was there. And it could be for that very reason that the pressure of trying to fit in and make the deadlines was just overwhelming. About the deadlines. A lot of artists, they tend to be really, really right brained. So they're not really good with, you know, they don't like schedules and they come up with creative ways to work around that. There's a woman who does fabulous work. She lives in Taos and her work is shown exclusively at a gallery in Santa Fe. And she just had a show and sold not only everything that was there, but had orders for two times that things to keep her busy for the next couple of years. And when I interviewed her, she told me that she keeps a grid every day and every day is marked off in 15 minute increments. And she writes down what she does every 15 minutes and she has it blocked out and she can show you the pages from every day. And she said that's how she makes sure that she meets these deadlines. This guy in Mexico ordered, I think like $30,000 worth of her work that she's supposed to have delivered to him by a certain time. And she's able to do it just because of that amazing self discipline. And the grids.

Are, you know, by deadlines.

It's not that I don't choose to talk, I just. You don't know about as many. I mean, it's hard to find people that are doing fabulous work that haven't chosen to try to make it public. The artists that you find on the ones that I interview for the magazines, generally, they're ones who have a website, they have sort of. They've worked hard to get themselves out there. It's difficult to find. I know that there are some artists doing things, specific things that I've looked for, but they don't try to get. They don't try to publicize it. And you know, they're kind of flying under the radar. And a lot of cases it's because they don't want that pressure. Yes.

And I believe since 20 years and all throughout that I've retained a job, a steady job, and I actually have a friend who's very successful and I visited that studio, that huge grandiose studio where he's running around and he's freaking out. How am I going to do all this? I need the help. How am I going to get to get this show on the road? How am I going to get all these mailings out and all this kind of stuff? You know, after becoming friends with him and going out to his huge house in the Hamptons, he actually lives in the Helene De Koonings old house. He lives by himself with his dog and this huge studio. Amazing light. I mean, it's phenomenal. But I almost think, I don't know if I would want that. I don't know if I want to be all by myself in the woods and the Hamptons, you know, freaking out how I'm going to pay for my mortgage. Even though he's, you know, know he's been around for many years and his career's gone up and down, up and down. You just never know. You never know how long you're gonna be the hospital. It's scary. So, I don't know. For me, I love to paint. I love to create stuff. My mom, very, very practical, is always like, you know, make sure you have health insurance, blah, blah, blah. And my dad, who is also a painter, is like, you know, just do what you allow to make you happy. So it's really. It's really hard. It's like walk that line and, you.

Know, figure out which way to go.

It's a huge.

It is.

Have you put your dad in market?

Certainly, yeah.

I've had shows in New York and Miami and, you know, some stuff here and there. But I just moved out here about a year ago, actually, through a job transfer here. And I haven't really gotten my feet without there yet. But, you know, it's up. In a lot of time, just your daily life just catches up if you.

Just don't have the. And that's something that a lot of them talked about, you know, health insurance and retirement and all of those things that regular employees take for granted. Well, not all of them, but what are you going to do? And some of the artists that I've talked to are getting. They're in their 60s and 70s, and they said, okay, I can't retire, even though I've saved enough money to be able for an emergency. But I don't have enough. If I live to be 90, what am I going to do? Some of them are starting to think about trying to do a book like, that's a Way to Make a Lot of Money. But what can they do? Teaching. A lot of them have to fall back on teaching in the end because teaching will at least give you some sort of cushion. But health insurance is a big thing. If you're an artist, you don't want to get sick. You. You don't want to have to have major dental stuff going on. It's just going to say there seems.

To be a lot of general society pressure to work, to be a good cog in the wheel and work for someone else. And what you just described is really uniquely a problem with artists simply because an independent artist is a business person. They're running their own. You're trying to live off your art. You're running a business for yourself here. And that is just really up against the wall again with respect to health insurance and, you know, the sort of thing that in a large corporation we just sort of take for granted because we can have people buy this stuff for us, you know, essentially. And, yeah, it's a. It is really a problem.

It is. And there's some creative solutions that artists in the book offered. One of them, Wendy, the one who lived under a van for a while, she said that she thought that we should have national treasures, and every year there should be an artist and a poet, a scientist, whatever, who are declared national treasures and are supported by grants that are given to them. And although there are some grants, they're kind of difficult to get. And if you're not practiced in writing grant proposals, those are kind of really a lot more trouble than they might be worth. But. And there are some organizations that try to have retirement and health benefits for artists, that if you buy into them, you can do that. But it's a struggle. And a lot of the artists said even success, any kind of success, is a struggle, because I even hesitate to mention it. But one example that a lot of them talk about is Thomas Kincaid, painter of light, who did something and got very successful at it and now can't not do it. Say that he was a wildly creative guy and he really wanted to do something completely different. Well, how can he afford to? Because he's making a ton of money, and he has a lot of people whose livelihood is dependent on his continuing to make that money. And a lot of artists are afraid. They say, sure, I want to be successful. I want to be able to make a living at what I do. But if people really start liking it, then am I going to be trapped into that same thing for the rest of life? My. My life, If I have the accountant and the bookkeeper and the publicist, are they going to insist that I keep making this exact same kind of thing until I die? There's a woman who's won several awards at the International Quilt show in Houston. She does wearable art and quilts and jewelry. And she's. She's probably in her 60s now, and she's wanting to go off in a different direction. There's something else that's interested her, and she Said the people who come to see her are livid. How can you do this to us? This is not what we come to see you for. This is not what we wanted. And it's not like they're jokingly protesting. They're actually angry at her. They expect that she is going to fill this particular area of their life with this thing that she's been doing. And they don't want her to do different styles, different colors, different materials. So if she wants to continue to teach and to be able to travel internationally as she does, she has to fill her classes. And the people who come to her classes, they want this thing from her. So, yeah, that's a real concern for a lot of artists. How do you make enough to live on without selling yourself out entirely? Ask me something else. Yes.

Did people talk about creativity a lot.

As more of an on, off, switch.

Or more of a matter of degree?

A matter of degree.

Something more creative, less creative, A little bit creative, Tiny, A little different way. Way different. How do people think about that?

I think that it's degree for them, and I think it is. It sort of flows. It ebbs and flows. But when I asked them how it feels when ideas come, most of them said they're bombarded constantly with ideas. And some of them, they say it's not so much the ideas are good ones or bad ones, it's which ones they choose to pour their energy and time into. So if you're the kind of person who's just bombarded constantly, you've got all these things coming into your head. You can't pursue all of them. A lot of people try to write them down or sketch them. We have a chapter on sketchbooks and journals where they try to corral everything into a manageable place. But they say the ones that are fully realized are the ones, okay, I've got the materials for this, or I have the space in the studio to be able to make something of this size, or I happen to have red paint, so I can go ahead and get started on that. And that may be the difference between an idea that is realized and brought to fruition and is sent to a gallery and something that is abandoned. And the thing that's abandoned may be as completely wonderful as whatever it was that sold for a lot of money, but it didn't get the time and energy because there's just not enough hours in the day and the ideas that are not given full attention. Artists talk about that too. If I had more hours in the day, there's so many things I want to do. There's all of this stuff, but it's just, you know, it's not possible. So it's interesting. One artist was telling me that she keeps a sketchbook and she's done it for years. And she said she has enough stuff in these back volumes to keep her busy for several lifetimes. She said she doesn't have to think up new things, even though they're coming all the time. She can just go back and open any one of them and find something that was fabulous 10 years ago and think that still would work. So it's like an endless. And if you do, if you are thinking about how to develop creativity or encourage your own creativity, keeping some sort of a book of some kind is invaluable. You don't have to write in it. You don't have to sketch. Just some way to put ideas, photographs or lists or whatever. Because especially as you get older, not that I would know anything about that, but things will slip away from you and you have a perfect memory and you never forget anything. And then some. Suddenly you're thinking, man, what was that that I thought of yesterday? We were laughing. We were sitting out on the porch a couple of weeks ago and my husband got up to go in the house and turned around and came back out and he said, what did I get up and go in there for? I said, I have no idea. I don't know. There's no telling. It was probably something wonderful, but neither one of us remembered what it is. But not all of the artists keep sketchbooks, but they said they have something. Piles of post it notes. One of them said, she has this drawer in the kitchen and there are grocery seats and menus and napkins and everything is in here. She said, it's not in any order, but you can randomly sort of fish through it. And if you had an idea and you said, okay, I had that idea when I was eating cake at the cafe. And their napkins are pink. Okay. So you dig through the drawer until you find something pink and hope that's what you wrote it down on. So different ways to try to corral the ideas that you have. Yes.

Have groups or collaborative efforts. I would just say the picture you were giving sounds very isolated in many respects. This artist gets up and works in the studio only by themselves for hours at a time. That's when my first, you know, working at home, just the dialogue that human contact. Do they have groups that they. Other artists that they get together with or how they connect with society?

Some of them have that, but not very many. It's difficult. If you're sort of new to the idea of art or if you're doing craft stuff and you're taking classes, it's easier to find people who are willing to do that with you. But if you're an artist who's working at it as a living and you're sort of obsessed with it, and that's one of my new obsessions, is people who are obsessed with what they do. And a lot of these people are. It's what they think about when they wake up in the morning. It's what they dream about, it's what they want to do. And finding other people in your immediate community who are as interested in whatever they do as you are and what you do is difficult. They don't really understand. If you want to get together and talk about brainstorming for gallery shows or talk about a new technique or whatever, other people don't really want to devote the time to it. The computer has been a great boon to artists, not only because it's easier to send images to galleries, but they said they can find like minded people and form online groups. And several of them mentioned that. One of them was telling me that she actually has sort of a small group of people to whom she sends pictures of works in progress. So she can take a digital photo and send it to half a dozen people and say, okay, I'm not sure if these colors are working on this. And because they're working artists, they can give her feedback. That wouldn't be possible without the computer because I think they're scattered across the country and in some cases across the world. And being able to connect with those people would be impossible except doing it this way where you can get immediate feedback just within 24 hours.

Yes, Gail and Mariah, they're working artists, but they don't spend a lot of time together because they're working.

That's true. We've known several couples that are both couples. Both members of the couple are working artists and you know, they have to have separate studios and they've got to figure out a way to actually give each other space. Although Scott Radke and his wife, she's a dancer and a choreographer and they're trying to figure out, figure out ways to integrate his puppets with her dance troupe to make those work together so that they can spend more time collaborating. Collaborative artwork is one way for artists to try to spend time together. And for some of them, it works really well. You know, you've got someone else and you kind of mesh with them and you can work together. For others, they said it was their own version of hell. The idea that they have an idea that they're trying to pursue. And there's someone else going, no, put the legs over here. No, I think it needs wings. No, make it blue along. In that same chapter we talked about commissions. Having someone say, I love what you did here. Make it in orange. It's kind of a love hate relationship. Commissions are great because, you know, you've got the audience, the buyer is ready, they're waiting on whatever it is. They've already probably given you some of the money, you know how long you have to come complete it. Boom. On the other hand, you've got someone calling you up saying, I changed my mind, I really don't want it 12 by 24. I'm thinking more like 8 by 36. And I'm going to send you a swatch from my new sofa. This actually happened. I would like you to kind of match that blue in the painting because it's going to go over the sofa or you finish the piece. And then it turns out that their life circumstances have changed. They've gotten a divorce, they're going to move, their house size has changed. And they say, well, no, gee. And you say, well, you've already given me half of the price. I've spent the last six months making this for you. Then what? So some of the artists say commissions are the lifeblood of their work. They couldn't do it without. They like knowing what people want. They like knowing that someone is going to want this thing. But most of them said, no. It's like the death knell to your creativity. Having someone one told me, she said, what I do is I tell them they get three minor changes. The collage artist, she's not in the book. She's an artist that I talked to. She said what she does is she tells them, okay, she lays it out, she takes a picture, she sends it to them before she glues everything down. And she tells them, you get three changes. That's it. Pick wisely. Pick well, because once I put the glue on, that's it. She said she learned the hard way because she would get everything glued down. And they go, oh my God, I can't live with that. That. So this is sort of the way that she's come up to get around that. Artist groups, the ones where people actually physically meet, they work well most often if the artists are on the same level. So if you're a full time artist who's really successful. It's difficult for perhaps people who wish that they were you to be with you, because they're going to be kind of envious and not just real happy when you get the next big show unless they're friends that you had before you got famous. So in larger communities, it will work? Well, some of the artists who live in larger communities have found that they can actually get enough people to meet together. But in places, a lot of the artists. Little bitty town on a hill outside St. Louis, Missouri, Or. Or. One woman lives in a log cabin in Washington state, like, far from everyone. And she said getting into town to take a yoga class once every two weeks is a chore. So different life circumstances make it difficult. Yeah. Anything else? Yes.

You mentioned getting peer feedback. Do they deal with.

Oh, yeah. No one. I don't think critics are anyone's best friend. You know, you want them to see your work and you're hoping that they will say, it's fabulous and it's the most wonderful thing we've ever seen. But that hardly ever happens. So it's kind of like it's the cliche where you're getting the magazine or whatever it was printed in and you want to read it and you don't want to read it and you have to read it and. And it's never going to be. You want them to all say what your mother would say, oh, it's fabulous. I love it. Make 10 more just like it. And nobody else ever says that.

I was just going to say my wife, actually, she's an amateur and occasionally small business professional, an analyst, went to the craft part of art school back when that was an important difference. The fine art people were a little like this, and the graphic people were like, fine, we're going to work on being skillful instead of just slapping whatever together. Which is the not very pleasant rejoinder that. But she said, yeah, art school. She never got peer or especially, you know, art school critiques that were ever helpful.

Never.

They were always poisonous. Worst case, harsh. Best case, never helpful. And really discovered that one of the things that she had to do is say, you know what? I don't care what you think. I'm working on my stuff. Actually, to some extent, I have felt some success of people similar attitude.

So just so you know, it's one of those. And there still is that division between art and crafts. Someone was talking to me about the artist in the book and they said, well, most of those people are craftspeople, aren't they? And I said, well, no, not really. Most of them or many of them have degrees in art. It's just that their expression, the way they chose to make their art, is not necessarily paint on canvas. So they've got the training and they've got the degree. They could be doing something that people would put in a museum. They just choose to do something else. But there is still that sort of snobbery, you know, you're not a fine artist.

Yeah, okay, whatever.

Yeah. It's a real problem for a lot of people. You know, they decide, and sometimes they decide later on to go back and get the degree in art. And they said it's not at all what they thought it was going to be. They thought it was going to be learning different techniques and studying the masters and furthering. And they said what it comes down to is learning how to deal with criticism, which may be a really important part of becoming an artist. Growing a thick skin.

I don't mind whatever medium it is, you know, it could be time for, but if it's not new, if it doesn't say anything, it's meaning other than an exercise and personal satisfaction of having creativity. There's a separation in my mind. There's creativity for creativity's sake. It's not necessarily art. And then they're hearing something that has some sort of message or.

That says.

Something that is art.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting because I will admit personally, to have something of the reverse snobbery that I don't care if it's fresh, new, executed poorly, whatever, you know, and, you know, say to the kids who are working on it, there's. There's two halves to everything.

Right.

And this is true of engineering, too.

You have to.

Not only do you have to be wildly creative, you have to have the skill to be able to turn whatever that vision is in your head into something nice and have it be creative, clear that you can execute on your ideas. And if you just, you know, if you're out there being so wildly creative, but just sort of saying, okay, but, you know, I can't paint a straight line. Maybe paint isn't the right beginning, or maybe you need to practice some more drawing lines. That's why real musicians do hours and hours and hours of scales and arpeggios, is to have the basic skill, it's line. Within our craft, we spend years learning how to write code.

That's good.

The first time is to have the skills so that you can then take something wildly great and turn it into something that's wildly great.

The skills are important. And that's one of the things that we talk about is, you know, you find out what you love and then you take the classes and the workshops and do the studying in order to learn and master the skills and even needed to demonstrate that. Is that it? Okay. Well, thank you very much for coming. I've enjoyed talking about the book and hope you enjoy it. Thanks.