So you want to be an artist. Why?

Here's a little essay on what I've learned since I first decided to become an artist, in the summer of 1994.

early frustration:

I was 20, and had already failed at my first 'calling,' which was electrical engineering. I hadn't really failed as much as I had just dropped out of school. Now, I figured, it was time to get serious. As I leaned on the fridge in the kitchen of the restaurant where I worked, subtly checking out the ass of an eighteen year old hostess, I planned my future.

I had chosen engineering by default. It's what my dad had done for 30+ years, and I was good at math. The only problem was, I hated it. It was all about computers, and this was a couple of years before I associated computers with free pornography, so it was when I still hated computers.

Travel - that's what I wanted to do! Travel, see exciting places, and avoid real work. How could I make that into a career, preferably a career that hot chicks would find fascinating? One word came to mind: photojournalism. At that fateful moment, I made a decision.

"Stop looking at my ass," said the hostess.

"But I'm going to be a famous photographer," I replied.

"Then take a picture," she said, and walked off. I knew, someday,I would be shooting wars from helicopters in rain forests. Girls would fondle my Pulitzer (that's what I call my wang). Guys would envy my beautiful Nikon (that's another pet name for my wang). I would somehow develop an Italian accent.

later frustration:

So, I went to another school, the 'J-school.' Not a hip hop training center like it sounds, but the world's first journalism school, at the University of Missouri. Mizzou is actually what people there call the state, and they don't even wear do-rags. I packed up, moved to Mizzou, and enrolled at the J-school. One semester later, I moved back home.

I hadn't done my research. While U of M is a great school for journalists, it kind of sucks for photojournalists. They don't teach you photography until your senior year. If only that had been in the course catalog. Well, it had been. If only I had read the course catalog.

So, I defaulted back to the University of South Carolina, in the city where I grew up, Columbia SC. In-state tuition will do that to a guy. For a lack of better options, I enrolled in the Art department and took photography courses, until I could find a better school for photojournalism.

As fate would have it, five years later I had not attempted to find another school, and found myself graduating from (the other) USC. I was officially a Gamecock. I am one of a select few who can stand up in a stadium and yell "Go Cocks!" without meaning anything dirty. Thus ended my 8.5 year undergraduate degree.

my search for direction:

Sometime between then and now, I decided to be an artist. I figured that a guy can get laid from a cool job even if there are no bullets flying. Plus, someone has to shoot those Victoria's Secret ads. Now I had to figure out my angle, my motif. My voice. How to pay my phone bill.

I got a job running a photo lab at a community college in Arizona. I continued making art, but never decided on what I wanted to be known for. I shot architecture because I love the technical challenge. I shot models because I love images of people (and I like hot women). I shot industry because it is beautiful in a Blade Runner way.

This is not how you get famous as an artist. Think about Ansel Adams. Photographers hate Ansel because he is the only photographer that people can name. And his work is pretty cheesy. Beautiful, but cheesy. "Hallmark calendar" is not what you want people to associate your work with. Anyway, he did one thing pretty well - market himself. He stuck to one kind of image, and anyone in the world can summon one of those images in their mind. That is what sells - consistency. AA shot lots of other stuff, by the way, but he only marketed the landscape stuff.

I needed my Snake River - Wyoming 1942. But I can't limit myself. I need to shoot every idea I have. It's a craving. I'm not a photographer, I'm a photojunkie. So I shoot every idea I have. But, I only market a few of them. I have a series of abstract nudes, a series of social landscapes, and an ongoing documentation of urban growth in Phoenix, AZ. Each of these genres I market to different audiences. I've hedged my bets, and each group of work is like a career in itself. I played with the idea of having pen names, but it may be too late for that.

the payoff:

I promised to tell what I've learned about being an artist. Here it is:

You can't decide what your message is going to be. It decides on it's own, and you as an artist can merely channel it.

There is no area of art that is superior to another. However, every artist thinks their approach is the only one that matters. That frame of mind makes for a very successful artist.

Blunt ideas do not make for good art. If your idea is crystal clear to you, your message obvious and unpolluted by contradiction, then you are making clichés. Only questions make good art, not answers.

The only way to find your voice is to try everything that comes to you, and keep it up no matter how unsuccessful it is. The more frustrating your search, the more brilliant the foundation of your final success will be. Every click of the shutter or stroke of the brush is a step towards enlightenment.

Other artists who have a 'gift' and enjoy easy success usually disappear into meaninglessness. They have not gone through the great struggle, therefore do not understand their own work. They had an idea, and got lucky. They know how to exploit techniques that others have shown them. The work is not their own, and when they fail, they will not know how to persevere like the artists who wallowed in failure for eons before 'making it.'

You cannot learn much from what other people tell you. Disregard most of what teachers and other artists tell you about making art. If there is truth in what they say, it will stick somehow. The truth will resonate with you subconsciously. If you do everything the experts say, then you will end up being a very trite artist.

Girls do indeed dig artists, but only if you treat them kind of bad.