Time + Money + Resources, Part IV

—The art world—

For several posts, I have been exploring this formula for artistic success: time plus money plus resources. Recently, I have found another twist to the concept. Some expenses are timed expenses. Every month I have to pay something toward the resources that run my studio: my phones, my insurance, my gas, my electricity, my alarm system, my Web hosting and domain registration, my rent, my water, my post-office box, and my internet connection. Whether I used these or not, I have to pay for them within a limited period of time and often at higher than residential rates. I have a limited amount of time to spend paying for them. I am not flush with time so it is costing me time as well as money.

This is a double whammy. In my formula of time plus money plus resources, I have a limited amount of time to pay these bills, and I cannot grow this time. As I am limited in one of the variables, my chances of growing things in my favor are severely disadvantaged. Meanwhile, if I can't pay on time, the cost relative to time increases as the bills pile up and fees and interest are added. The only way to view such a situation is to understand that it is rigged against me. It's costing me time twice.

With this knowledge I can make a decision that seems increasingly logical and necessary: I can eliminate as many cyclical expenses as possible, replacing them with expenses that recur only when I can afford them. For example, I can add minutes to my phone when I have money and if I don't, I don't. Another way to combat this situation is by collaborating with others and sharing resources so that we can double the time relative to money and resources used. In doing so, I buy myself time and money, with only a partial decrease in resources proving again that this formula tends to move in one of two directions: increasing or decreasing exponentially.

Mentoring as a viewer and life-long student

—Art education—

When I was studying art at a university, recently, I was sometimes subjected to an attitude that I think was not at all helpful. Sometimes, my teachers came to my work with an expectation of failure. They came to view the painting armed with rules and almost eagerly scanning the work for any areas that broke these rules. Instead of looking at the work as incompletely edited, they regarded it as mistakes that can't be resolved. Some of this comes from an ala prima mindset: a painting must come about through a series of deft brushstrokes so thoroughly schooled that the finished work is evidence of a flawless performance. But some of the attitude is based on a misunderstanding of mentoring.

I think a better way to look at a student's work is to respond to it as a viewer, and teach how it is working and not yet working with the expectation that the student will find ways to edit the work to expand on successes and resolve difficulties. My attitude is simply that a problematic work is not yet complete and that the student requires a fresh set of eyes to identify the discords. But only the artist can resolve those discords, and only through working on the piece. Very often, no one—teacher or student—can predict the method of resolution; it comes only through reworking.

Rather than negating the student's work as broken, then, my method is to reinforce the work as transitional. Either the work will lead to a better finished version or it will lead to a better next painting. Instead of saying, you didn't do thus and so it is flawed the teacher should say the painting is doing thus and that's not working. Instead of saying you should do thus to fix it, the teacher should say play with it to see what might resolve the problem; maybe the painting will suggest something to you as you work on it.The difference between these two attitudes is striking. In the first, the teacher is the authority and the student is lacking. In the second, the painting is lacking, but the painting itself is respected as the final authority and the student, not the teacher, is empowered to bring the art to life by listening to the painting, not by adhering to the teacher's commands.

My method of teaching comes from a particular standpoint that contrasts with the traditional top-down attitude of superiority that is common to institutional education. Instead of treating the student as a novice lacking knowledge that I possess, I treat the student as a natural in transition while I see myself as an experienced mentor.

All good artists are life-long students, struggling to make their art come alive. I understand the student because I am a student. I understand the student's art because I understand art. But no one knows the student's motivation and direction better than the student. It is true that the student cannot see the work as fresh as my eyes can. Instead of being prescriptive in my feedback, however, I am descriptive: I share with the student what works and what doesn't work to my mind and eyes. I don't presume to know how to proceed—I can only make some general and very open-ended suggestions that are based on a very rigorous knowledge of the fundamentals and principles of art and design.

For this reason, it is extremely important that the student is given the opportunity to finish the art before presenting it for feedback. Very likely the work will be in a draft stage, but it will be in a finished first or second or third state. It is not fair to ambush a student's unfinished work with prescriptive advice or admonishments of incompetence. This is not about self-esteem, it's about fairness. As a teacher, I can have no idea what a student is trying to accomplish until the work is completely presented. Then what is resolved and not resolved are clear. At this point, I can respond as a viewer to the work and offer feedback about what's working or not working, given a more solid understanding of the intent of the artist.

Time + Money + Resources, Part III

—The art world—

Sometime last year, I introduced the idea of an equation for success in an art career. I said that a successful art career is equal to time plus money plus resources. It's a simplistic formula, intended to illustrate the struggle we all engage in just to get to the point of a healthy art practice. It's basically an economics and ecology sort of equation, leaving out all the other elements of creativity.

But I pointed out that it's a recursive formula, feeding back into itself. When life is costing us time and money and resources, we spend each asset on the other, moving away from financial success. When we have an excess of any of them, it tends to enable us to increase all of them. We either spend time, money, and resources and lose, or we gain each of them.

Art is a luxury. Even for the artist. Art can only happen after the cost of living is paid. Below the bottom line, the equation moves backwards into negative numbers. Above the bottom line, the equation moves forward. It literally either starves or gets fat.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and, in short, you are for ever floored."

Along the lines of this Dickens quote, and sticking with our analogy, if we indicate the bottom line by using a zero as a starting point, we can plug imaginary numbers into the time + money + resources equation. In order for a successful career in art to happen, more of the assets in my equation have to be a more positive number (i.e., in excess of merely living). If more of the assets are more negative (not getting by), then the art career doesn't happen and the equation moves backward, further away from a successful career.

Let's complicate things. Let's expand the equation and say that each asset is either gained from or spent on the other two. We now test the limits of analogy and get ridiculously specific, but it helps to illustrate my point.

Time as (moneyA + resourcesA)

plus

Money as (resourcesB + timeA)

plus

Resources as (timeB + moneyB)

Let's take the last of the parenthetical calculations, which states time + money equals resources. Remember, each of these assets can be gained or spent. If I gain positive 1 money but spent negative 1 time to get it, everything remains the same, the money is just enough for subsistence. I've no time or money left for developing my art practice. My resources do not grow. I'm tired and need time for rest. But if I get twice the money out of my time, I'll generate new resources that can buy me more time through efficiency and productivity, thus earning me additional dollars. I suppose it's basic economic theory, though I never learned it this way in college or high school.

But, we are still speaking abstractly. Coming back to the real world (with a little more insight), I've found that it helps me to place a monetary value on my time. I can value it, for example, at $25 an hour. It also helps to value my resources. How much time and money do I spend on them? How much do I use up?

For example, when I first started going to an artist meetup almost an hour away from my studio, I calculated the gasoline and wear and tear on my van at 55 cents mile, and I calculated the time I spent at $25 an hour. Then there's the money for tolls, coffee, and a bowl of soup if I was hungry. I learned that I was spending in excess of a hundred dollars hanging out and decided that, for a time, it was worth it. Nonetheless, I only lasted a few months before my van had to be junked. I know that it cost me some months of owning my van. I can evaluate that, and I do not feel upset about the van breaking down because I understood what the costs were.

I realize that I'm geeking out on this topic. But the reality is, I need to be clearer about the economics of art making so that I'm not always so confused and angry about how hard it is just to get to make art.