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……the beginning of this year.

It started with a spontaneous jump-on-the-plane and flying out to Portland, OR for New Years – where I hooked up with one artist, abstract painter Barry Mack, and visited the home of another artist, Ray Losey, whose work plays off of traditional totems.

Then, in April, I flew to the Big Island of Hawaii for a 7 day “Swim with Wild Dolphins” retreat, came home, and 4 days later was in Savannah, GA giving one of those in-the-flesh keynote presentations (that I don’t give :-) for CODA.

Hawaii the 2nd Time with Peruvian Elders

Five weeks later saw me back on the Big Island of HI for a week-long PAQO Conference of indigenous shamans and healers. And, as if that wasn’t enough for one stay-at-home introvert, I fell madly in love somewhere in-between the two trips to Hawaii.

Whew! Makes me dizzy just putting all of that in two paragraphs!

Of course you weren’t keeping up with any of this because I was still hiding underground in my mistaken smARTist Identity.

But, besides giving you a peek into my personal life, why on earth am I telling you all of this?

Because…

… Shaking It Up Loosens The Crud

Putting myself into completely unfamiliar places, without a ghost of a chance of sticking to my daily routine, netted me a few surprises. Here’s some of them:

1. Getting away from the computer (I don’t travel with a “laptop” or other digital devices – except my camera.), and not watching TV while flying (in 4 months I logged 59 hours in the air!), allowed my Idea Machine to flow freely. I came up with 6 new projects and 3 books to write – each one outlined and ready for the next step – and all on **real paper written with a real pen.

2. Meeting new people juiced up my energy flow so I was more accessible to myself, and I returned to my Internet Ivory Tower where all of this is now spilling over into my tribe (that’s you).

3. Living in a daily cauldron of the unfamiliar opened up my perspective so I could see what needed changing in my company, and what could stay the same. This led to my most commented blog post ever, and an outpouring of support I didn’t even know existed. (Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.)

4. Working offsite once a month (that new love I mentioned, who doesn’t live close by…) was the real eye opener. Away from my homey work space, I discovered I could write blog posts – a task that, before, felt tedious and uninspired. On the other hand, I could not complete the to-do stuff that dominates my time back at the office.

Beyond The Valley of Discomfort

Shaking up a comfortable routine feels… well, uncomfortable. I enjoy operating on automatic pilot where certain habits and pathways are well worn across familiar territory – so I can use my active mind for other tasks. And now I see just how seductive this comfort can be, and that it is not the most effective way of operating for me, my tribe, or my business.

Discomfort is valuable. It gives me a chance to pay attention to what actually happens when I shake things up – to look over the edge and align my behavior with what works best instead of sticking to my easy chair.

What can you do to shake up your routine? I’d love to hear what you discover when you step away from your comfort zone.

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**A complete aside: Did you know that hand writing activates different neural pathways in the brain from typing on a keyboard? Next time you are having trouble writing, mix up the process.

Which reminds me, are you having trouble writing your artist statement – that extra chance you have of bonding with your collectors? I’ve written a whole book just for you. Click here to check it out.

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.

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…

a day at the fair.

Honestly, I was glad for the email (emotional coward that I can be), as I didn’t really feel like breaking down and crying in front of the group. I emailed back that I was already considering bowing out (true, but not because the group wasn’t working for me. It was.), and thanked them for letting me fly with them for the past 18 months.

As I mulled over what happen, I realized that their “rational” reasons (I missed a lot of sessions. Yes, true, but so did they. My AM practice was different from theirs. Yes, true, though I had no trouble incorporating their differences.) had missed a more basic dynamic: rhythm.

From the very beginning, it was clear that I lived life at a different pace, hitting very different notes, and with a high-cylinder rhythm – plus, I had been practicing authentic movement about 15 years longer than anyone else. Meanwhile, they were all in the same rhythm, with about the same amount of practice under their belts. So, in some sense, it was them and me.

And if you follow Ken Wilbur’s work, anytime you have a dynamic further along on the spiral, that dynamic is able to incorporate the stages it passed through on its way up the spiral, but it is impossible for any dynamic further down on the spiral to incorporate what it hasn’t yet become.

And now, since I’d looked under the hood of the rejection, I realized it could be no other way and all of the personal sting vanished. Not all of the sadness, though, for I shall miss those magical 2 hours on Tuesday nights where I could talk to the stars, or travel into a Samurai experience.

Tell me, has there been a time when you’ve looked under the hood of rejection?

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…Henry Miller, the notorious writer who put pornography on the intellectual, literary map.

My parents were great friends of his, and I found myself at his dinner table more than once, where he would deliberately embarrass me to the point where I’d have to leave the table, or hide my shame with a knotted stomach, leaving dinner on my plate.

For years I refused to read a thing he wrote. Then I picked up my autographed copy of A Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, read it, and promptly dashed off to Pacific Palisades to visit him one last time before he died.

In this day, when Twitter and Facebook have revolutionized the personal a la professional relationships and connections, how does one go about disassociating who the person is from the work she/he is doing?

Read Randy Cohen’s Can You Hate the Artist but Love the Art, the come back here and let me know what you think.

http://tinyurl.com/m9cq5j

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…ecstasy. The result is a work of art that has first moved the artist, and then – if the skill, artist voice, and materials are up to the job – reaches out to move someone else.

In the beginning, the artist is joyous when one person is moved enough to tell the artist how they love the work.

As time passes, and more creative flow produces more work, eventually the artist’s expectations shift from a verbal stroking of her or his artistic voice to a definitive nod from a collector’s wallet.

Once this shift happens, there is no turning back: the gift of words, without a corresponding exchange of money, slowly pivots from mild irritation to outright frustration.

And here is where the story starts to show the true color of its underbelly: dark, foreboding, brooding, and painfully blind to a common, shared reality–that an exchange of money is the material core of a business transaction.

The “underbelly” I’m speaking about is not this reality, but an artist’s relationship to this reality… or should I say, non-relationship to this reality.

As much as some artists want the affirmation that comes with a sale, they make choice after choice that denies them a rational relationship with the business of art. For these artists, all they can taste is Business Bitters.

Imagine, for a moment, what this would look like if you had the same attitude toward bread on your table.

You want bread. You love bread, especially fresh baked and warm from the oven. But you don’t want to sully the experience with money. You want the bread to drop from the sky, already dripping with butter.

Goodness sakes, no, you can’t imagine paying somebody for this heavenly experience–that would be sacrilegious. That would steal the very flavor from each bite.

Pretty silly, yes?

And  yet, that is the same attitude artist after artist has about their art career. They will pay for art supplies. They might even pay to have a studio of their own. But that’s where the buck stops, literally.

When it comes to the business side of their art career, suddenly they want that loaf to just drop out of the sky.

Here’s a prime example: one artist I spoke to just spent $20,000 on building the perfect studio, but dug her cute little heels into the ground when it came to spending a couple thousand on improving how she markets her art. The excuse? (Which, of course, cleverly disguises itself as a reason.)  She felt too stressed out over how much the studio had cost.

Never mind that learning how to market her art effectively would help her recoup that studio cost.

Never mind the incongruity between expecting collectors to dig into their pockets for your art while you are unwilling to do the same thing to help move your career forward.

Never mind that there is no business in the world that can sustain itself without some level of upfront investment.

Heck… just brush those pesky flies away from your face!  You’re an artist!

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Here’s a straight forward investment that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars, and is backed up with the experience of your peers. Check out what other artists – who are not afraid to invest in themselves, roll up their sleeves and go to work – have to say.

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…to engage the reader so they feel closer to the mystery behind the art–you!

Isn’t that, truly, the deepest desire that any of us have: to feel connected? And why Social Media has shoved the Information Highway over to a footpath?

Artist Statement & Social Media = Same Essence

Long before Twitter and Facebook came along, artists were practicing the art of audience connection vis-à-vis their Artist Statements.

Which means that, once again, artists were ahead of the cultural wave.

Here are few ways I’ve noticed similarities between the two:

• Both need the same judicious mix of personal and professional, like that infamous bowl of porridge: not too hot (personal), not too cold (professional), but just right!

• Both need to be short to be most effective.

• Both must be more invested in the value being served their audience than any narcissistic appetizer.

• Both are best when done in first person.

• Both focus on revealing enough to bond with the reader, but not so much that you drive them away.

• An artist statement  – and Facebook or Twitter – are purely about connection: you to your audience, and your audience to you.

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.Everything happens because somewhere along the line we made a choice. Sometimes we abdicate active choices in favor of a passive one. But make no mistake, it’s all about choices: to do this or that, or to not do this or that.

Choice can also be confusing, especially if we are leading with our intellect before we’ve checked in with our hearts. You would think that running an annual art career conference, where I have to decide on 11 to 12 different art career speakers, would indicate choices based on logic and reasoning. And, obviously, to some extent this is true.

But it’s uncanny how the speakers I’ve invited because it felt “heart right,” have been the ones who made the most difference for the most smARTist participants. Now after three years, I’ve learned that choices based on heart logic give back ten fold what choices based solely on intellect return.

What really gives you confidence…

I was raised by a mother who truly believed that praise was the foundation of self-esteem. And that self-esteem was the foundation of confidence.

She was right about the confidence part.  She was wrong about the praise.

It turns out that a great deal of research, in education, psychology, and social science, has been conducted to determine what creates self-esteem.

Praise, ironically, diminishes self-esteem because it panders to our desire to be loved. So if we do “x” and are praised for “x,” then of course we want more ‘love,’ and so we continue to do “x” or variations on “x.”

Originality, invention, chaos – all characteristics of creative behavior – are neatly killed off by praise.

So what does support self-esteem?

Competence.

When we master a skill, any skill, we feel better about ourselves. And since skill is based on our competence to execute a task, we get immediate feedback about how well we have done, or not.

So next time you want a boost in confidence, choose a task from one of the 11 smARTist^® presentations and execute it! 

How contrast helps you figure out what works 

One of the reasons I pack the smARTist Telesummit with a dozen or more expert speakers is to make sure artists are not stuck with one point of view, one angle on the wide world of art.

Contrast between art career experts and successful artists, and between your reactions to the different experts, gives you a chance to stay in tune with your own instincts: what feels right? What sings to you?

It’s critical to have points of view that challenge your own, because shining the bright light of contrast helps you define what is important to you.

When you notice what you don’t want or don’t like or don’t agree with, you can more clearly identify what you do want, like and agree with.

In other words, contrast, and the resistance it naturally brings up, is your friend, your ally. Embrace the light it shines on defining what you value most.

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…

spoil the child. Liberal parenting, the new darling of the older parent generation, holds that limits are literal, and not reflective of a natural boundary that keeps us safe.

I mean, think about it for a moment: without the boundary of our skin, our organs would spill out of our bodies. Without the boundary of rivers, towns are flooded and destroyed. Without the boundary of “no,”  yes becomes tyrannical instead of gracious. 

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that unlimited freedom is a fiction of the frightened, those who feel that restrictions are handcuffs, a jail sentence of sorts. What I imagine is that the very idea of a restriction goads some artists into breaking free, allowing creativity and inspiration to spill out.

While others find that the tighter the reins, the higher their creativity prances.

I remember a museum in Amsterdam showcasing objects made by prisoners in concentration camps who literally had nothing. The stunning beauty of a small handmade, hand painted hair comb, among dozens and dozens of other objects of art, stopped me in my tracks. Here were limits unimagined by most of us turning out flames of creative hope.

“In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.”
— Henri Matisse

What limits do you dare to put on yourself today. On your art?

How will you embrace the creativity paradox: within boundaries, creative acts know no bounds.

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…affects how we do what we do in our business lives, as much as our creative lives.

But the Internet has changed the balance of power from promotion to connection.

Part 3 – A Season For Marketing

by Waverly Fitzgerald

I’ve found it useful to shift my attitude towards marketing. I used to think marketing meant promoting myself. Now I think of it as a way to find my readers, a subtle distinction but one that makes it much easier to do.

That is, now I am looking for the people who will appreciate what I do, rather than trying to convince total strangers to appreciate my work.

When I thought of marketing as selling my work, it seemed self-serving and arrogant. After all, who did I think I was? But, once Slow Time was published, I recognized that marketing was a way to be of service to the book. That took my ego out of it. Now my job is simply to help the book reach readers who want more time in their lives.

My ultimate goal is to find ease and joy in marketing. I want my readers to come to me. I want people to invite me to write for them (Thank you, Ariane!)

But first, they have to know that I’m the person to come to for information about seasonal holidays, organic time management, slow time. And until I have more requests than I can honor, more orders than I can fulfill, I’ll go on doing my marketing, easily and naturally, one week at a time.

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What’s your attitude toward marketing your work?

(Note: you do not have to be ‘pretty’ here. Rant ‘n rave if you want!)

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… forget where you’ve come from and what you were seeking, and far enough away from completion to know the naked possibility of being thoroughly lost.  Which brush to use next, and where to lay it, and with what expression?  With what hope or trepidation?  What is this I am making?  Who am I now, so far from where I’ve been before?  And where will it all take me?

Abstract 2/3 by Lori Wolfson

At times like these I turn to a different coping mechanism than in less exciting and turbulent periods.  I try not to make too many decisions at once, to not think ahead too much, in order to allow space for tender new ideas to show themselves and lead me, like fawns appearing in the sun-dappled meadow in the early Spring light, beckoning me to open to the always new and beautiful world.

Abstract 3/3 by Lori Wolfson

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… real discipline. 

Define “success”

…how you want, but to me it means succeeding aesthetically first, and financially later-which for most artists simply means turning some form of profit. 

However you define it, this kind of discipline means no screwing around. You don’t get there by going to all the parties, hanging out in all the bars, confiding in your friends and family, and talking about all the great work you want to do.

First, do the work

If you believe in yourself, if your goals are realistic, and if you’re driven, then you clamp your mouth shut and work your butt off.

Why?

Because you’re giving something to the world that is bigger than you, and more important than you.

In a sense you are serving others, and this requires great discipline. The end result will speak for you. Then you can go to all the parties and bars… at least until you start the next piece.

The haunting misconception

…is that artists indulge in substance abuse, are hopelessly idealistic, and devoid of discipline. This is hogwash. 

Some of the most disciplined people I’ve known have been sculptors, painters, and glass-blowers. Not only did they work very hard, but they had guts, laying everything on the line in a risky profession: their finances, their dreams, their futures.

Some realized the dream, many did not. But every one of them lived with courage and dignity and often a self-effacing humor. It’s that last quality that will save your sanity when all else appears to be failing. Oddly, it’s also a quality that can allow you to laugh off the failures, and persevere through to success.

Sure this is a tough life, full of sacrifices and hardship (although not like those of a Vietnamese rice farmer). I wouldn’t trade it for a million bucks (though I might for two).