well, fuck that!!!
Aug. 27th, 2007 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonvoiceIn this world, at this time, you can - if you have been genetically gifted - wear scraps of fabric artfully on your body for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you can learn how to walk right, be a good spokesperson, and find yourself on one of the Next Top Models, you could maybe make more.
In this world, if you are willing to drive a big truck on a mine in Western Australia, you can make $100k plus as your starting wage. If you are a cleaner on a mine, you make around $70k. An engineer? Well... let's not tease.
In this world, if you want to work retail in Perth as a casual, you make around $18.00 an hour. If you want to work at a television station cutting advertisements together, you are lucky to make $12.00 an hour.
In this world, if you work 7 days a week, bleeding your soul out onto paper and canvas, sharing your visions with others in this world... you are lucky to scrape enough money to pay the bills, and for the most part cannot afford such a career without a supportive partner.
In this world, if you want to be a fiction writer... don't quit your day job, or make sure that someone loves you enough to support you through the rejection letters, as you realise that it is becoming harder and harder to publish with the big companies, which is one of the only chances you may get to become self-sufficient if you're not willing to sell out and spend 40 hours a week editing other people's work just to make enough money to spend a handful of hours writing your passion.
There are exceptions to all of these rules. I plan to be an exception to the art one.
But when I am being encouraged to go and clean in the mines, I become extraordinarily indignant.
It is not my fault that the general attitude of the capitalistic world is to devalue it's writers, artists, film-makers, and god forbid if you want to be a professional poet.
Gone are the days when you will be as celebratedly famous as the bitter Byron.
ART is my calling. I happen to be SKILLED at it. The only reason I am not making more
money from it, is because a great bulk of our society values supermodels and truck-drivers more.
No, I will NOT become a graphic designer, no, I will NOT teach art instead.
I am a competent artist, I am a professional artist, yes I'm constantly broke. I haven't been able to afford some of my own medical bills for some time now.
But I'm not going to succumb to the will of capitalism just because I'm scared of not becoming an exception to the 'poor artist' rule. I don't plan on being a poor artist, and like a couple of others on my Friendslist who know how hard it is, they don't plan on it either. But the fact is - we ARE at this stage of networking, making contacts, supporting each other, and working harder than many other people we know until our hands hurt and shake, until our eyes blur, until we hate our own passion, our own skill, our own products and need to just walk away and take a deep breath and go right back to it.
In any other non-artistic career, if you put this much work into an endeavour, you would be making a great deal more money. Fuck, if you were a cleaner - at this point - you would be making more money.
I find this unfair, but moreso I find this a sad representation of how much the greater world has lost sight of its artists and creators. How much you are valued if you can blow up the ground, vs. how much you are valued if you can inspire someone or move them with something visionary.
I am commercialising to a degree, I am finding that road of compromise, but I will not stand down and become a cleaner just because I'll make more money. If I don't sacrifice this dream for dishpan hands, I believe I will make enough money to one day be financially independent, sufficient, comfortable.
But fuck I have my doubts,
when the wider world doesn't seem to care either way,
just wants another labourer to tear the iron ore out of the ground
just wants another person to spill bleach onto concrete
just wants another skeleton to show off the fabric.
In this world, if you are willing to drive a big truck on a mine in Western Australia, you can make $100k plus as your starting wage. If you are a cleaner on a mine, you make around $70k. An engineer? Well... let's not tease.
In this world, if you want to work retail in Perth as a casual, you make around $18.00 an hour. If you want to work at a television station cutting advertisements together, you are lucky to make $12.00 an hour.
In this world, if you work 7 days a week, bleeding your soul out onto paper and canvas, sharing your visions with others in this world... you are lucky to scrape enough money to pay the bills, and for the most part cannot afford such a career without a supportive partner.
In this world, if you want to be a fiction writer... don't quit your day job, or make sure that someone loves you enough to support you through the rejection letters, as you realise that it is becoming harder and harder to publish with the big companies, which is one of the only chances you may get to become self-sufficient if you're not willing to sell out and spend 40 hours a week editing other people's work just to make enough money to spend a handful of hours writing your passion.
There are exceptions to all of these rules. I plan to be an exception to the art one.
But when I am being encouraged to go and clean in the mines, I become extraordinarily indignant.
It is not my fault that the general attitude of the capitalistic world is to devalue it's writers, artists, film-makers, and god forbid if you want to be a professional poet.
Gone are the days when you will be as celebratedly famous as the bitter Byron.
ART is my calling. I happen to be SKILLED at it. The only reason I am not making more
money from it, is because a great bulk of our society values supermodels and truck-drivers more.
No, I will NOT become a graphic designer, no, I will NOT teach art instead.
I am a competent artist, I am a professional artist, yes I'm constantly broke. I haven't been able to afford some of my own medical bills for some time now.
But I'm not going to succumb to the will of capitalism just because I'm scared of not becoming an exception to the 'poor artist' rule. I don't plan on being a poor artist, and like a couple of others on my Friendslist who know how hard it is, they don't plan on it either. But the fact is - we ARE at this stage of networking, making contacts, supporting each other, and working harder than many other people we know until our hands hurt and shake, until our eyes blur, until we hate our own passion, our own skill, our own products and need to just walk away and take a deep breath and go right back to it.
In any other non-artistic career, if you put this much work into an endeavour, you would be making a great deal more money. Fuck, if you were a cleaner - at this point - you would be making more money.
I find this unfair, but moreso I find this a sad representation of how much the greater world has lost sight of its artists and creators. How much you are valued if you can blow up the ground, vs. how much you are valued if you can inspire someone or move them with something visionary.
I am commercialising to a degree, I am finding that road of compromise, but I will not stand down and become a cleaner just because I'll make more money. If I don't sacrifice this dream for dishpan hands, I believe I will make enough money to one day be financially independent, sufficient, comfortable.
But fuck I have my doubts,
when the wider world doesn't seem to care either way,
just wants another labourer to tear the iron ore out of the ground
just wants another person to spill bleach onto concrete
just wants another skeleton to show off the fabric.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: naive impressions
Date: 2007-08-27 01:50 am (UTC)I have some prospective art things on the horizon, but some of them won't pay at all, because sometimes I'm doing work for authors and publishers who like me just don't have the disposable income. *sigh*
Also, what you say about America may have a great deal of truth in it since I wonder if Americans value art more - almost ALL of my sales, pretty much every single one of them, have gone over to Americans. Not people from the UK, and not even many fellow Australians. It's why I didn't get a website with a .com.au prefix, because there just aren't a great deal of Aussies who buy art. There is perhaps one Australian that immediately comes to mind who has commissioned me for two pieces, I'm not sure of any others.
Even my extinct thylacine picture - an extinct native Australian animal - is now living in the UK. No one in Australia (who saw it, mind you, my coverage wasn't very big back then) wanted it. A UK woman did.
So maybe it's as much the country too. *sigh*
Re: naive impressions
Date: 2007-08-27 02:10 am (UTC)"The Tasmanian devil was chosen as the symbol of the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service." If you had more illustrations of Tasmanian Devils (like the commission), there's a market trying to get out information on the critters and the cancerous mouth tumors plaguing the species. Quantas has created sculptures for charity auctions... I'm not sure I see an opportunity to get canvas art pieces paid for by a nice corporation looking for appealing objects to use for this effort, but it's just a thought.
http://www.utas.edu.au/foundation/devil.htm
Re: naive impressions
Date: 2007-08-27 03:31 am (UTC)Re: naive impressions
Date: 2007-08-27 03:33 am (UTC)I knew managers at Toys R Us who worked 70+ hour weeks easily and their annual wage never went about $35k. It's all relative.
Re: naive impressions
Date: 2007-08-27 04:56 am (UTC)But they have problems retaining staff these days! I wonder why... :P
Re: naive impressions
Date: 2007-08-27 05:35 am (UTC)It just saddens me that some of the staff they are losing are going up North to help our society blow great holes into the ground, looking for fossil fuels, or better yet, the metals that will help them make the machines to look for more fossil fuels.
To my mind, that is no better than the capitalistic roller coaster of retail.
Toys R Us is definitely evil. *grin*
Re: naive impressions
Date: 2007-08-27 03:43 am (UTC)