Category: purposes and ponderances

What's It Like To Be a Professional Artist? It's Just, Well…

BZTAT-professional-artist-at-workI am speaking with groups of middle school students today about what it is like to be a professional artist.  Not a difficult topic for me, obviously, but it is still a challenge. When you speak to youth, you always feel a compulsion to leave some kind of impact and impression upon them.

And that is really kind of silly.

The last thing kids want from you is YOUR wisdom, because, you know, they always know more than you do.

I am not being sarcastic. Kids DO know a lot, and they have a different perspective on things than those of us who reached adulthood long ago.

I respect that. I have found that I am better off if I let THEM leave an impression on me, rather than vice versa.

I expect to learn a lot today.

Teach me guys, and ask me questions. I will try to make it a reciprocal exchange.

I was going to put together a PowerPoint presentation, but I decided against that. Young students are very tech savvy these days, and PowerPoints are boring.

Since my trajectory into making a career out of my art has been built upon using social media, and the school that I am visiting has WiFi, I am instead putting my presentation right here on my blog.

The presentation is all about images. I will post a few here, and see where it leads.

And I hope that some of my readers will give my students some comments to consider as well.

BZTAT Studios
My Studio in the Canton Arts District
BZTAT-Studios
BZTAT Studios First Friday

Canton-First-Friday
Canton First Friday
2nd-April-Galerie
Second April Galerie, Canton, OH
BZTAT painting on location
BZTAT painting on location
Downtown-cats-mural-canton-OH
Downtown Cats Mural
Brewskie-Butt-Tweeting
Creative Use of Social Media

So, what would you like to learn about being a professional artist? And what would you like to learn from my students?

Life is an Adventure!

BZTAT

Paradoxes, Purposes and Ponderances: What a Difference a Week Makes.

paradoxes-purposes-ponderances

Until recently, I never considered myself a business person or an entrepreneur.  I never had any desire to be one either.

I never really had any intention of going into business. The whole idea was distasteful to me. Life experiences, though, have led me down this path of becoming a professional freelance artist. And that means I have to be a business person if I want to succeed.

Last week, in thinking about this, I was almost bleak–desperate.

I was contemplating my weaknesses more than my strengths, and I was reckoning with the realities of my capacities versus my incapacities when it came to business oriented tasks.

I wasn’t throwing in towels by any stretch. I was just getting real about my needs and asking for help.

And help I got.

I posted a blogpost about needing direction as an entrepreneur  in several online locations, and I received moral support, concrete suggestions, resources and enthusiastic direction.

I have connected with people all over the country who are interested in helping me succeed. I have some interesting business ventures to consider and lots of new opportunities. I have contacted some resources in my own community that are designed to help people just like me, and I am realizing that I am not as lost as I may have thought I was.

I am being deliberately vague here, as it would not be prudent to discuss some of these opportunities publicly. I do, however, want to share my hopefulness about this process of developing myself as an Artist Entrepreneur.

My situation is far from fixed. I am still a hopelessly right-brained person needing a left brain.

I have discovered, though, that I have an ability to attract people of integrity to help me with certain needs. I am now feeling that I can do this, which I am not sure I could say last week.

Some things that I have learned about business this week that have been a pleasant surprise to me:

  1. There are people out there who genuinely want to help you succeed. Especially among women entrepreneurs, I have experienced a real “Pay-it-Forward” approach of women reaching out to other women to help them get going in business.
  2. Women-owned businesses are projected to be a game-changing force in transforming the future of the workforce.
  3. The fact that our economy is so bad right now means that there is a lot of support for new small businesses. There is also a lot of forgiveness and less pressure to succeed instantly in the business world, because, quite frankly, everyone is struggling.
  4. Social media has turned traditional marketing on its head. Authenticity is back in style.
  5. Being a creative artist with limitations in certain skill sets does not necessarily mean I am destined to fail at business.
  6. I am actually, sorta kinda, enjoying this process of learning and developing new skills!

Stay tuned to see where this adventure leads…

Life is an Adventure!

BZTAT

Paradoxes, Purposes and Ponderances–Project52

My friend Liz Hover encouraged me to sign up for a blogging challenge called Project52. Project52 is a blogging community that focuses bloggers to set a goal to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year.

It is not a stretch for me to post weekly here. I already do that. Currently, I post 2-4 times a week.

Most of my posts, however, are very image rich, meaning that I post mostly images of my artwork, with some writing about them to give them context. Either I write about the process of creating the work, or I post a quote that gives a “Thought for the Day”.

I like to write about other things, however. Often, I am too lazy or too caught up in other activities to write about them here, however.

So my Project52 personal challenge is to write weekly about something beyond my images. I will continue to post the other things, but I want to add a new element to my blog.

I am calling it “Paradoxes, Purposes and Ponderances” because these are the things I intend to write about.

I am constantly amazed by the paradoxes and ironies in life. I seek to serve different purposes in the various directions of my life. And I often ponder about ideas, events, opportunities, etc.

So once a week, I intend to write about some idea or activity or poetic reflection here in this space. it maybe about my cats. It may be about my adventures with social media. It maybe about my journey to become a professional artist, balancing the creative as well as the business activities in which I must engage.

Or it may be just some stream of consciousness reflection or piece of poetry.

I might throw out some questions to get ideas from my readers.

Whatever I do, I intend to WRITE. Lets see where this new adventure takes me!

Life is an Adventure!

BZTAT