I think I suck at self marketing all together.

I would much rather be in the studio making something than on my computer promoting that which I have made.  But, I know that I can make all the crap I want to, but with no one to buy it I won’t be able to afford to keep making it.  So, I have a new game plan that involves being more involved.

So, become a fan of my facebook page by clicking HERE.

This morning as I was attempting to convince myself to GET OUT OF BED! my husband said, “Did you know that Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive?”

Think about that for a second.

Van Gogh is an artist that you talk about at a party because most people will know who he is and will have an opinion about his work.  His Starry Night is plastered around the world on almost every kind of surface you can imagine.

His paintings sell in the $35 millions.

Do you think Van Gogh worried about being a “successful artist”?

I think he just painted because he had to.

So, for the last month or so I have been standing in my studio staring at an empty table with nothing to say and nothing to make. I was scared and am still scared that I don’t have anything meaningful left to contribute. What I find most interesting about my struggle with my own art making is that the artwork that made me want to be an artist is the same artwork I am afraid to create. I consider myself a conceptual artist and want my viewers to walk away from my work with a certain thought, idea, emotion, or message. The main goal is to shake people out of their own reality for just a second. Slap them across the face visually to see what happens. But, the work that influences me and gives me butterflies is not labeled conceptual art.

I would argue that all art is conceptual because all artists think about what they are going to make before they make. Even if they are not thinking at the time they are creating. But, that is a whole other topic.

What I am trying to communicate is that I love work that looks awesome, that’s beautiful. A painting of a woman walking across a plaza. A photograph of a store window. Art that captures everyday moments in time so that they can be truly appreciated. Although this artwork is fulfilling for me, the viewer, it does not seem to be fulfilling for me, the artist. Seems pretty silly to me. As usual, my concept about art is being challenged by me.

As far as I still have to go as an artist I have made one step forward today. I actually made a print. It was inspired by a photograph I took in San Francisco this week.

It’s a start!

I can’t ever really figure out what makes me make art and what makes me stop for a certain period of time.  For a good amount of time I have had the intention of creating a project with the working title of “A Conversation with my Grandfather.”  The basis of the project is taking photographs with my grandfather’s old camera that was given to me after he died.

Just about 4 days before I was set to graduate college my father called me to tell me that his father had suffered a stroke.  I screamed at the top of my lungs.  I had lost someone that had just begun to become one of my best friends.  We had written each other back and forth while I was in college and had grown to understand each other.  Most of it was me realizing both our vast differences and our great similarities.  I was also old enough to realize that my grandfather had lived for 62 years before I was born and that all of those years influenced who he was.  I understand him even more now, even though he is gone, as I get older.  Generations can grow together when they are willing to accept that they are leading separate lives in the same place.

I have rolls of film taken from my grandfather’s camera, but they are sitting in a drawer in my living room.  I don’t know if it is fear or what, but they have been sitting there for more than a year, waiting to be developed.  And, I know that one or two rolls will not be enough for a strong series of work, so I need to keep photographing.  But, I’m not.  I can give you many many reasons.  I don’t have the time, the energy, I have a lot of things on my plate right now.  But, I am figuring out at this moment that I am afraid.  I am afraid to say goodbye.

But, there is hope for me.  About 15 minutes ago I discovered Briony Campbell and the dad project. She used photography to cope with her dying father.  The artist also created a film which may be viewed HERE. The work is honest, soft, natural, heartfelt and very inspirational.  Just what I needed.

Briony Campbell, photographer

]]> http://laurenusher.com/blog/just-the-inspiration-i-needed/feed/ 0 http://laurenusher.com/blog/i-guess-i-took-a-break/ http://laurenusher.com/blog/i-guess-i-took-a-break/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 06:37:23 +0000 lauren http://laurenusher.com/blog/?p=67 It’s funny how some things can be put on the back burner for a while. As much as I obsess with routine and organization, I doubt I will ever reach my perfection goals. At some point I think I will have to learn to let go of the idea of perfection and let myself do whatever it is I want to do. The problem I’m having is not trying to figure out what I want to do with myself, which seems a life long quest for a great many people. What I am finding difficult is what I want to do first.

I have been thinking a great deal about cloning lately as I believe that will be the only way I will ever get to accomplish all of my aspirations in this lifetime. I think I need to prioritize. I have to choose.

I know one thing for sure, my art has been suffering and, in turn, so have I. I have a studio that is pretty ridiculous right now. I can’t even really stand in it. So, step one, purge the studio. I am in that kind of mood lately. Step two, make something (even if it sucks). I have a feeling I may have to start scheduling time in each day or one or two solid days a week to be in the studio. I mean, it is my job, so I need to make a product. I’m torn because I just want to make art. But, I also don’t think that I exist soley to produce visual art. There is something telling me I need to do more.

I want others to feel the way I do when I have an idea and I make it happen. I want art to be a daily practice for the majority of Americans, because WE NEED IT! I want to change government policy and make it mandatory that all public schools have an art studio where children are always free to create. Art does something to an individual that nothing else can.

That’s where I am right now.

So, I found a couple of artists that I know I would totally have been friends with if A. I were French B. I were in my 2o’s in the late 1990′s and C. If I were making the work I make now in the late 1990′s. I happened to be in high school at the time, obsessed with the weather and photographing it as it was occurring. (That was my senior year final project–sounds interesting I know! But not really if you live in Arizona, where the weather doesn’t really happen.)

Onto the essay I read where I found my new friends. Written by Lynn Gumpert, entitled, “Beyond the Banal: An Introduction to the Art of the Everyday.” If you have seen any of my work, you know I should be in this club. Anyway, most of the artists seem to be documenting the everyday. Lots of photographers using their own lives and own families as subject matter. Photographing everyday events like putting on make up and the like. They also named an artist, Claude Closky, who makes assemblage pieces from grocery ads and magazines. So, I was sitting there and thinking, “Alright, some cohorts!” And then a little voice replied, “You are not unique.” And for the most part I would agree.

I have to go on a bit of a tangent to explain this part of my discussion with myself. A while back my family and I had an AWESOME discussion in regards to original ideas. I argued, and was the only one at the table that was on my side, that there was only one original thought. Believing that one thing leads to the next and that we are all connected, how could I not? My father pointed to my art and my ideas and told me I was selling myself short. I told him that it makes my art and my job so much more beautiful. It is made up of all of me and all of everyone else (past and present) all at the same moment. What could be better than that?

So, the thoughts I had today, after wondering if I would find my present day cohorts, was, “do I want to find my present day cohorts?” Artists survive on being original. It takes a great deal of effort to impress a viewer and even more to get them to stay a while or come back later. What would happen to my psyche if I found someone who did art exactly like me? I think I might be shattered. I know she/he is out there. But, for now, I don’t want to find them. That is so against everything I believe! I’m such a hypocrite sometimes.

Yes, I know the organizing and hanging of work IS part of the process, but man oh man can it get annoying sometimes. The pile of crap that I have to go through in my studio may be another reason I’m not producing art lately. But, that pile of junk is there because it is part of the administrative shit that goes along with curating and organizing shows.

On top of that, I need to apply to more shows in order to show more art. It never ends. I’m not complaining. Well, at this moment I am, but I do want to stress that I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. That’s the problem with choosing a career that can take a long while to pay off (monetarily) sometimes you feel guilty when you spend most of your time doing that thing–because at some point you want to be able to do it with out stressing about buying bread instead of ink. That’s a bit dramatic, but I’m trying to make a point.

Just wanted to say that I’m working, just not on visually attractive stuff. So, here’s the record of my process of being an artist, for all the world to see. I’m sitting at my kitchen table, just having finished editing a video, that will hopefully be up on my Art is Moving site next week (as it pertains to the subject of Political Art–and that is this month’s theme). And, I’m thinking about that pile of junk that I need to sort through to at least get the tiniest bit of space on my studio table to do a couple of carvings of the “Mothers of the Pill” as they are so lovingly referred to–I need to print them on about 6 cases of birth control pills for the show I’m in that opens next week.

So, there I go–off to hopefully make some more NEW art in order to get into more shows in order to make more NEW art.

It was just what I needed. It reminded me why I have chosen to be an artist. Its not for the money, its not for the pain (I try to stay away from being a drama queen). I don’t like to tell people I’m a “starving artist.” Believe me, there are some artists out there who get off on that stuff. I am not one of them. I would happily get paid to do what I love to do, as would anyone I suspect. And someday that will happen.

Anyway, the timing for these comments were perfect. I needed that boost to get myself going today. Money has been tight and unfortunately it effects my art making. If I can’t afford supplies, I can’t make art. And it’s also emotionally trying at times. But, I’m not complaining because I’m still surviving and I’m doing what i love to do. And apparently, according to the lovely Alana who wrote Lisa and I, I’m doing something right.

So, here’s to doing something right.