My art adventure over the last couple months
I have an art story to tell: Understand that I have a mental tweak, an insanity that drives me to create art obsessively, and most of my decisions in life have been driven by this.
In my defense, I think all people, deep down, are crazy in one way or another. It's a measure of our maturity and effectiveness how well we hide the crazy. Art is my crazy.
My gigantic labor of love was to build a screenprinting shop in my basement out of duct tape and chicken wire: I called it Sunny Days Screenprinting and I loved it. Over four years I pumped out thousands of shirts.
But there were problems with growing Sunny Days, a lot of them. I defensively want to shout the list of problems to anyone nearby; people nod empathetically and edge away from my wild gesticulations and in the end it doesn't really matter.
I could have tackled the cascading problems of expanding the screenprinting shop to a location outside of my home. I'm an energetic and creative problem-solver. I' would have to take out a loan and hire some people, and work around the clock to get it rolling. But it would have meant the loss of any freedom to do any other passion for a long, long time, maybe forever, and it would have become difficult to do art.
I chose to fade away from Sunny Days Screenprinting by outsourcing print jobs and focusing on other things. The kicker that made me give up on self-employment was that I had a gallery show, a big exciting show, and hundreds of people came out to see and say very nice things to me. I hid in the gallery and watched people love my art, and I was filled with life affirmation.
Nobody bought anything.
Well, that's how it felt. Later I sold several pieces and I continue to sell regularly but that big show left me feeling like it was useless and impossible to carry on as an artist.
So I got a job as a production artist in a big local screenprinting shop, but it became clear very quickly that there were a lot of problems there. Every single fear I'd had about moving Sunny Days out of my home was confirmed. I didn't tell anyone that I was employed because it was so clear that there was trouble there. I tried to stick it out but made it nine weeks. I hope it turns around for them: I don't wish trouble on anyone! If they become wildly rich and famous I'll be very happy for them, but I couldn't stay there.
Focusing on the good things from that nine weeks:
1) I can work much, much harder then I had previously done on my own.
2) I lost ten pounds, mostly by not working in the room next to my kitchen.
3) I discovered that many local people need design and illustration services and don't want to hire a remote freelancer off the internet to get it.
I could write a book about all the things that happened in the last nine weeks. It was such an adventure! The time was valuable, and I'm glad I got to have that experience. Ask me about it sometime and settle in, I'll talk your ear off.
So I’m back to working on my own again. I've rented an office and plan to treat my job like a regular 8 to 5 gig, I plan to work hard creating art, and I plan to spend the rest of my life doing it.
Before you say "You're nuts," I have to add that half the time I'll be creating color separations for screenprinters remotely via my website screenprintprepress.com, which is a much more practical business plan than creating artwork. I've done it for 10 years already, I know it works. If you know a screenprinter, tell him/her/it/them about me
Okay, enough for today, more later
This artwork is about Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.