Are YOU Creative?
If you continued to read, then I'll take it for true that you are a creative person. As you may have guessed, a creative person is talking to you. At the end of this article, I'm going to tell you about one of my works of art that is being created continuously with new additions. Please keep this 'bait' in mind when you read the article.
Have you ever dreamt of supporting yourself with your creativeness and talents? That dream may seem to be very far away with the need to make a living pressing in upon you. In fact, in the techno age, it may seem that it is a better thing to get educated for some career so that you have a field that you can rely upon to earn the bucks. In other words, in this day and age it may seem better to become yet another piece in the huge puzzle of mankind - plugged into the working machine, so that you have a roof over your head and food at the table.
But still, with the workout of the career in place and you proceeding forward, the dream of supporting yourself, getting the exposure that you need and becoming a household name never does die, does it? Perhaps you promise yourself that you will work the extra time each day besides your regular job to do the things that it takes to get known in The Arts. Perhaps, the plan is to work until retirement so that you can receive your pensions and then start your art career. But, now-a-days, even working to retirement age may not happen because of inflation and pensions not being enough to keep up with it.
Or, maybe you have found a way to get yourself work as a creative person - and many things can happen along that route, too. Not enough bucks fast enough, not enough exposure or worse - you compromised.
The percentage of full-time successful artists is incredibly small compared to the amount of artists that are part-time, less than part time or not creating their art forms at all.
We live in a society that is moving along with technological advancements, space aged plans - even the talk of "One World" government where the people would be plugged into their little workstations to carry out the functions of their assigned tasks to push forward the "civilization".
The one thing that I must mention though, as one creative person to another, is that it is the artists that are the ones that envision the techno advances, it's the artistic people that create the unique diversity that forms the culture and it is the artists that are the ones that push the society forward to improve the culture.
In other words, you are needed as an artist. Your ideas, dreams, inventions, art and viewpoint are needed to create and shape the culture - making forward advances.
Well, then - we did answer the conundrum of create or not, didn't we? Absolutely, you should be out creating beauty, unique ideas, inventions and changing the culture with your unique style. So, we get to HOW. How on earth are you going to find the time to get out of the "machine" to create, market and get exposure?
Have you looked online? Read books? Searched in your area? All to find a way to get out of the hum-drums and into the field that you truly want to be working in?
Yep, me too. There is help for sure and then you also find the people that will "HELP" (or so you are told) and you wind up supporting the person that is suppose to be representing you. You're charged for entry fees, advertising fees, representative fees and then, a sale is made or a gig is signed up for and what happens? You are again charged a fee - a percentage! Honestly, after your time to do the creation, your equipment and supply costs, your representative's expenses, the advertising and the percentage- well, you worked practically for free. (By the way, any other business that had to put up with expenses, such as the ones artists encounter, would shortly be out of business.) So, you set out to do it yourself but find that it isn't easy to do all the actions on your own.
Being an artist, wanting to create full time and support your life style is two things: an artist creating and a business owner. If you want to succeed, accomplish your dreams in The Arts and help create a better culture, you need business basics to truly make your dream a reality.
As I stated in the very first paragraph above, I promised to tell you about one of my latest works of art that I continuously add to. I did find the good, bad, the pitfalls and even how and what to do to run a business as an artist...but I didn't stop there, I started sharing with other artists help that I researched or located, I shared my ideas, and I even shared the results of my trial runs at getting the word out. Then I took it to the internet to share with creative and talented people worldwide. Stop over at Help 2 Succeed - and please keep in mind the points that I mentioned in this article and you will see why I say it's a piece of art in itself being continually added to, here's the link:
To Your Success!
ILIA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Article by ILIA aka Leigh Ann Lemire. All Rights Reserved. =A9 Art 0f ILIA
Help 2 Succeed
Art of ILIA