Entries tagged "art"
Affordable US cities for artists
“It feels like almost EVERY city has become either an overpriced “artisan” boutique or warzone. A by-product of the destruction of the middle class in this country. Here’s my personal list, based on the national median income of $50K (middle class) with $25K as the earnings that most successful artists can expect to earn from a combined day job and art sales.
Unaffordable to even middle class wages:
NY, SF, DC
Affordable with a middle class income, art part-time:
LA, Seattle, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Portland, Austin, San Diego, Santa Fe
Affordable to work part-time in limited areas/situations, or outer suburbs:
Chicago, New Orleans, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Raleigh-Durham, Dallas
Affordable to art full-time, with high crime rates:
St. Louis, Memphis, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Wilmington, Houston, Birmingham, Orlando, Buffalo, Albany, Hartford, Cincinnati, Columbus, Nashville
Affordable to art full-time with low crime rates:
Louisville, Iowa City, St. Paul, MN, past the exurbs of cities is the last 2 categories.
Mostly every place is unaffordable or too dangerous. Commerce seems to be moving past their need for artists to displace the working classes, especially on the coasts.”
– from a 2013 comment on a conversation following Patti Smith’s urging of young artists to “find a new city.”
My gut instinct is more really teeny small places. Where do you think is a great place to live affordably as an artist? In what country? Do you live in one of these cities listed above? What do you think? Oakland is in the affordable art part-time list for now and for some it may be in the full-time wither without high-crime depending upon which section you live in.
Create Outrage. Profit from Same Outrage. Buzzfeed, Media and Creators.
A little ironic that BuzzFeed is making money with a highly shared piece about profitable media company wanting work for free from designers or artists. I’m not linking to it on Buzzfeed but here it is on twitter. It’s designer Dan Cassaro telling Showtime what they can do with their solicitation for free design work for a Vegas Mayweather Fight.
Buzzfeed already is based on sharing lots and lots of stuff it didn’t pay anyone to make (though it pays people to assemble these). See also Meaghan O’Connell’s important recent post on the odds Buzzfeed will eventually be platform of user generated free content (see also Jonah Peretti’s earlier business: The Huffington Post).
Art is not a quarterly business, says Rick Rubin. And me.
the structure of the music industry is rooted in a corporate structure. It’s a quarterly business, but art is not a quarterly business. At Columbia, if Beyoncé didn’t deliver a record one year, for whatever reason, that really affected the whole economics of the company. And it’s impossible to build a music company as if you were selling shoes.
I remember when the bankers came in to meet with my boss when I worked at New Line Cinema. They wanted to know about the second quarter films slated this year and then were going to compare them to last years second quarter. And I was only 24 and had only worked there for less than a year but it was clear to me that they had no idea what they were talking about. We weren’t making pencils, or as Rick Rubin puts it, shoes. The desire for predictability means the bankers want to decrease risk. But you decrease risk really differently in making art. Value isn’t created by avoiding risk. And as you would in a business, any business, you have to take the right risk to grow and benefit. And you have to keep taking risk to get good at it. And the knowing of art is not a thinking knowing. It is a feeling knowing. That’s where the value is.
Taylor Negron distils Sandra Bernhard’s impact
Great piece by the wonderful comic, writer and director Taylor Negron which captures the best of Sandra Bernhard and her impact. Sandra’s work had a huge influence on me and it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t be performing today if not for her groundbreaking solo show Without You I’m Nothing
Like many innovators, much of what she did unique and edgy was rooted in the context of the time. Taylor Negron’s piece captures that beautifully. He’s a wonderful performer too. If you get a chance to see him live too, jump at it.
Toni Morrison explains Charlie Rose’s privilege to him. Slowly.
Toni Morrison patiently schooling Charlie Rose on privilege and offensive questions:
If I’m going to say when are you going to write about Black people to a white writer? If that’s a legitimate question to a white writer then it is a legitimate question to me? I just don’t think it is….As if our lives have no meaning without the white gaze.
The rhythm starts building into this at 2:47 but watch the whole thing. I especially like the raised brow when she says “journalist” to him. Her absolutely profound self-legitimacy of voice (among other things) is inspiring to me. Her standing in her self is beautiful. She holds the moment. She does not seek only to make him comfortable. She does not avoid what is at stake. She does not cede herself in explanation. She holds the space and it is the interviewer who must understand. Toni Morrison creates a very rare genuine moment on television. Video after the jump. I’m trying to keep the pages concise.
Why, oh why can't I? Video of a beautiful moment in song pre-Prop8 trial.
Melanie DeMore sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow early morning Jan 11th before the start of the Prop 8 Trial in San Francisco.
I love the gentle threading of Judy Garland into this hopeful moment. She was a social force in connecting the GLBT community. Some say heartache after her funeral emboldened the harassed to fight back that night when the Stonewall Riots happened the next day giving birth to the movement that has led to this trial.
This trial is being led by Ted Olson, a lawyer with impeccable conservative credentials. The man who helped put George Bush in office. A man who had his own tragedy when his wife died in the 9/11 attacks.
This story has quite an arc.
Thanks for the song Melanie. I’m happy to feel the melancholy and the community and the hope of the moment. Yes, “why oh why can’t I?”
(via Elyse Singer, Michael Winn)
Comedy playlist: Madeline Kahn and Gilda Radner
70s SNL clip. Madeleine does a baby eating ice cream for the first time. Gilda does a parrot.
People often ask me about who i like comedically and what influenced me. I’m going to occasionally post favourite comedy bits. Here’s two of my all-time favourites together. Both brilliant. Both “heart over head” as I’ve read Judy Toll liked to say about comedy she liked and the brilliant comedy she did. Judy was the closest thing I’ve seen to Gilda and Madeleine and cancer took them all. Fuck you cancer. You’re not as big as this what they did.
Can you succeed at business and be a good person?
I got a lovely compliment the other day naming me as someone making a name for myself entrepreneurially and being ethical.
I think every artist has to deal with business. But we tend to do it the way Gruber quotes Disney (me I’m not so sure Disney meant it): we make money in order to make work not the other way round.
I believed I had to work in business and not make creative work for many years because I grew up in a family where business was seen as reality. I question for years, “Can you succeed at business and be a good person?”
I asked Sara Little Turnbull this question once (and why the hell doesn’t this pioneer of industrial design have a wikipedia entry? Among other things she invented Corningware). She lives for human values and it took her a while to answer.
She told me a story about turning down a job for Charles Revson who wanted her to put his lipstick in every drugstore in the world and sell it for some high price. She walked out of the meeting but turned around and walked back and told him: only if I can make it worth what you’re charging.
Now I think we have a moral imperative to make the necessities of life available to people. But to the degree to which business is the way in which human being exchange things to meet their wants and needs (tougher question about business’ ability to meet all needs) well being honest, having real choice and providing real value seems to be a better place to but your focus.This was the most helpful response I’ve had so far to my question. Focus on the value of what you’re creating. Make the exchange as fair as possible.
Do you want to feel you’ve out one over on people or that your stuff is really worth it?
And of course you can liberate yourself more from a money focus and business the more you minimize your needs and wants. The more you appreciate what you and and value what you do and make, perhaps the less you need.
I’m not sure I have the perfect answer. But I do know that you receive and live by whatever you focus on. If you spend all your time convince people and putting one over on them, well then that’s what your business, or “art,” is.
What do you think?
