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)
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.
