Make Your Art No Matter What – some notes

Notes from Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens.

Artists need

  • To make art
  • To have a community of likeminded artists caring for each other
  • To consume art and information in any form

Time is always a scarce resource. This is at least as true for artists who need to manage their time carefully. Tool: keep a time diary.

How to make time for the right things:

  • Have a sabbat: do nothing productive, including not making art, 1 day a week. Slowing down will reorganize your thinking and priorities.
  • Have a personal maintenance day once a month. During this day, create a list of goals for everything: what to try, where to be, with whom, what is important, etc.
  • Warm-up exercises: a ritual start to get your mind into a productive state
  • Ask help. If someone can help free up hours of your day.

Making 100% of your income from your art will not make you happier.

Create an inventory of your skills, both technical and general. This will help you understand the jobs you are qualified for.

Do not let your employer dominate your life. Employment is a contract. That is all.

Investigate how your peeroes (peer heroes) are making money.

On Looking

In ‘On Looking’ (‘Met andere ogen’ in het Nederlands) by Alexandra Horowitz, I read, paraphrasing: if you look closely, there is always something interesting to see.

As a photographer, I was already convinced of this. You should be able to stand anywhere and take good pictures. This principle is also one of the starting points of my Noord-Holland grid project: every block can bring interesting pictures.

Some photographers suffer from the opposite: looking for the most amazing image; Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. BS. Recognizing a good image is then based on the images in your head. And thus, touching on Horowitz, you look over the other interesting things around you.

A third way of photographing is fantasizing about an image and making it. That is more or less how Jeff Wall works. He drives around the city, recognizes an image, remembers it, and later reconstructs it to make a photograph of it. Or Viviane Sassen, Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson. The freedom of the mind is your only limitation.

Jeff Wall - The Thinker

Rutger Bregman en de mandarijnen van NRC

Rutger Bregman schreef een boek over ‘Morele ambitie‘. Stine Jensen schrijft er een rammelend en jaloersig stukje over in NRC: ‘Rutger Bregman bedenkt die sterke ideeën niet zelf‘. De Correspondent reageert fel en vindt dat Jensen/NRC Bregman beticht van plagiaat en eist rectificatie, wat NRC weigert. Heel fijntjes toont De Correspondent de gaten in het betoog van Jensen aan in een reactie op hun site.

Onbegrijpelijk hoe Jensen, die ik toch redelijk hoog heb zitten, zo onzorgvuldig kan zijn bij zulke stevige beweringen.

Mandarijnen bij NRC.

Ach, leefde W.F. Hermans nog maar.

The mass of the 20%

Yesterday, I talked about the 20% of photos that don’t immediately qualify as worthless (79%) or as “keepers” (brr word) (1%).

Hotel, Oamaru, New Zealand
Oamaru, New Zealand

Picture editing is a little horror

Editing photos is difficult for me. Bad is bad, and very good is also clear. Where it gets difficult is the unclear 20%. The feeling of missing just that one good image forces you to rethink the whole set.

I’m falling more and more for these kinds of images. Empty spaces, desolate people staring ahead at nothing.

Petrified Forest Curio Bay
Petrified Forest Curio Bay