Hawaii the First Time

This has been a shake-up, wake-up year for me, your normally stay-at-home-in-my-Internet-Ivory-Tower kinda gal. Oh, sure, I might wander up to Maine, or down to New York City – once in a while. But 4 trips in 4 months that all started with getting on a plane?

In the first place, I’m an introvert – which means I’m pretty darn happy toddling around in my own space, frolicking with the fairies and elves of my endless Idea Machine. It’s why I prefer being online and on the phone to, say, a keynote address where my body is in front of a bunch of other bodies – being alone keeps the external stimulation to a minimum so I can access, and cough up ideas like the smARTist Telesummit, or write books like Writing The Artist Statement.

However, something dramatically changed at…

Keep reading →

Post Note – Up Front: Because this post highlights the incomparable Molly Gordon, one of the best Self-Employment coaches ever, I wanted to make something very clear right away. Molly has been a strong supporter and keynote speaker the minute the gates opened at my annual smARTist Telesummit. Her work is based on solid and smart practices for how to be self-employed that includes multi-levels of self-awareness.

Now…let’s get personal…

Way back in 2007 I made a critical mistake in judgment that has affected my business practices ever since – I listened.

Don’t get me wrong. I consider listening one of the finer skills in life. I like listening, especially to you—my merry band of artists.

You tell me what’s working, how a smARTip helping you, what you want me to cover at the next Telesummit, sometimes a thank you for featuring your art here on the blog. Listening is a smARTist way of life.

In this case, however, I listened to the wrong information. Worse yet, I constructed the information to fit an emotional agenda that has been pointing me away from who I really am – and what I most desire to share. It’s like I’ve been dancing with the reflection of my deepest truth via smARTist, my coaching, my tweeting, my embrace of this wild and precious life.

The Back Story

Right after my first 2007 smARTist Telesummit, when I was most vulnerable as a start-up art career resource, one of the participants sent me a long, thoughtful email telling me much value he’d found in the conference, but how offended, as a Christian, he was to what he called Molly Gordon’s New Age (not a positive term) approach to her presentation The 3 Inescapable Laws of Selling Art.

He wrote a credible, rationale for how many artists I would unintentionally exclude from important art career information if I continued to invite the Molly Gordons of our world (like there’s more than one?).

What Happened Next

His email was a home run as soon as I read: exclude. I knew all about being excluded (shy, only child in 12 different grade schools by the sixth grade) and that was the last thing I was ever going to do!

On the other hand, I love Molly. Love, love, love everything she does and stands for: authentic promotion. Come on! What could be more important for artists, whose ongoing mission is the very essence of authenticity, than to know that authenticity could also be true for the essence of their career path?

I was caught, as they say, between a rock and a hard place.

I didn’t want to exclude my Christian artists. I didn’t want to exclude Molly. So I did the next best thing: I excluded myself.

Bad idea

It’s always a bad idea to exclude yourself because you show up as only that reflection of self I mentioned earlier.

It’s also bad for business.

When you are not showing up as yourself, there’s no way to find your tribe or for your tribe to find you. Or, they get a glimpse of you and stick around hoping for more – but not forever.

So Here’s The More

I have made it very clear, in my opening smARTist Telesummit remarks each year, that I believe we do our best work when we are clear about, and intentionally cultivate understanding, of two domains: the internal landscape of self, and the external world we live in.

What I have not said openly is that my work, and the work I bring my artists, is based on my very personal understanding of the whole human: mind, body, psyche and soul.

From now on, I pledge…

… to address each of these levels directly. No more dancing with my reflection. If I have something to say that is spiritually based, is a little New Agey and this feels offensive, or doesn’t resonate, there’s that cute little “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of all my emails. Go ahead, hit it.

Or you can come here and speak up on the blog. Respectful disagreement is always welcome because difference is the chili and cinnamon of our lives. Yum.

And for the rest of you who have seen me peek around the corner, hang on. It’s going to get a lot more personal around here.

Every Tuesday night for the past year and a half, I’ve been part of an Authentic Movement group. This is a creative practice that I’ve been doing on and off for the past 25 years and it, quite simply, keeps me sane.

That all ended last week when the group (5 lovely women whom I dearly like, one and all), sent me an email, which kindly and lovingly, kicked me out of the group.

Ouch!

Besides engaging my not-so-kind Inner Perfectionist (always standing ready to give me a sound scolding when I screw up), it simply hurt to be rejected. My stomach caved in and I could feel tears welling up on the back waters of my heart.

We’ve all been there and it’s never…

Keep reading →

I just read a fascinating article in the NY Times about Budd Schulberg, a writer with a stunning career of screen credits, the most famous being the classic, On The Waterfront (Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint).

During the Joseph McCarthy era of Communist witch hunting, Schulberg named names of his colleagues to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and to his dying day defended his behavior. Good people lost jobs, lost reputations. He literally destroyed families because of his testimony.

The question posed in this article is simple: Do we boycott good, even great art because the artist’s behavior falls below our standards of a “good” person?

I know Picasso was famous for being difficult, but did he destroy people’s lives?

I have a personal connection to this idea coming from my childhood days with…

Keep reading →

I’ve been talking to a lot of artists lately in a series of strategy sessions, and I’m watching a pattern replicate itself like an out-of-control virus.

I’ve come to call it the Business Bitters–that mouth puckering contrast to the sweet taste of creative flow.

The story is simple and timeless: artist paints or sculpts or weaves or throws or composes, experiencing a kind of…

Keep reading →

It’s easy to deride Artist Statements. I’ve done it myself countless times when they are pompous, self-congratulatory, or badly written and trite, trite, trite.

But like the About section of any website, where we click in the hopes of connecting with the human being behind the virtual page, an artist statement has only one purpose…

Keep reading →

After the tangible evidence of your art itself, and the quality of your unique artist’s voice, the three most important pillars of success are choices made, confidence radiated, and contrast illuminated.

Choice supports growth, responsibility, and self-validation

Making choices (and giving ourselves permission to make mistakes because we’ve made a choice) is the single, strongest pillar of growth.

Keep reading →

Henri Matisse "Blue Nude"

Too often, creativity is equated with the wide open prairies of freedom where we’ve been conditioned to believe that unlimited roaming is what calls forth our creative impulses.

It reminds me of liberal parenting, that knee jerk reaction to authoritarian parenting where children were seen and not heard, and you spared the rod only to…

Keep reading →

In the old days it was location, location, location.

Now, it’s attitude, attitude, attitude.

We know this is true, especially as social media marketing takes over the traditional way of doing business.

I mean, it’s always been true that our attitude…

Keep reading →

In Motion by Lori Wolfson

It’s been great fun being here and sharing this wonderful blog, but it’s time for me to move on.  My work here is done. The canvas calls me and I must attend.

Have a wonderful time all you artists and good luck in all you do.  Until we meet again…

And thank you, Ariane, for the opportunity to spend this valuable and rewarding time here with you.  You are one of a kind and, as an artist, I can’t tell you how much your support and work out there in the world for us all means to me!

Abstract 1/3 by Lori Wolfson

All is tumbling down.  How to proceed safely?  Where to step when everything is shifting?  Like Alice, falling, falling, I wonder at the strangeness of my surroundings as I sink.  What is this sudden hurtling rush of events and circumstances, and what am I to make of them?

Like the midpoint in a painting, when you’re far enough away from the beginning to…

Keep reading →

What many people outside the arts don’t understand, is that succeeding in this gig takes as much discipline as it does for the CEO, Athlete, Lawyer, Doctor.

In many cases it takes more, especially if you also have a day job. Because, your “night job” is a calling that we almost never feel equal to, in which we regularly disappoint ourselves, and from which the check is normally late-possibley by a decade or two. 

Sticking with something, for which you may never get paid, and doing it with full-blown passion for years on end-takes…

Keep reading →

Grace Cathedral, New York City by Lori Wolfson

I used to look at writing a blog like being one of those people who get on the subway and tell their story to their briefly held captive audience.  Like when you’re on the train in New York and it stops, and people get off and people get on, and the doors close.  And then the train starts to move again.

And sometimes an unusual-looking person emerges from the dulled anonymity and proceeds to…

Keep reading →

I’ve been feeling the crunch of time lately; chewing away at emails, tasting the flavor of helping clients, swallowing whole chunks of I’m-not-getting-to-what-I-want-to-do.

And now that smARTist 2009 is over, one of the consistent messages I hear from artists is, How can I do it all?

Given the vast range of art career information that smARTISTs encounter over the 7 days of the conference, I’m not surprised that suddenly they have even more on their plates than before.

So I thought the perfect remedy, for all of us, would be Waverly Fitzgerald, our Slow Time Lady expert from the smARTist Telesummit 2008

This post is one in a series of her time-tested ideas about helping time work for you!

She has a unique take on time, and our relationship to it. Instead of the more traditional ”management” approach to all things hourly, daily, and monthly, Waverly advocates a sense of…

Keep reading →

what about you?

Why do you make art?

Blue Cat by Lori Wolfson

I mean, if all the outside rewards and possibilities of recognition and praise and money were removed from the picture, what would be left?

Do you ever think about what is at the core – the heart – of this need we have to make pictures?

Do you ever wonder?

To me it’s quite mysterious; I wonder all the time.

But, what about you?  What moves your hand and eye?