An old acquaintance of mine saw my letter in the straight and wrote me this:
"I just noticed your letter about art/business. Three tangential thoughts occurred to me that you might find of some small interest.
First, I went to first year art school in 67-68 when it was still downtown. On fridays we had a history class, occasionally a field trip, and sometimes a guest artist speaker. One speaker was Jack Wise, a guy whose work I liked and whom I later came to know on Texada Island. He spoke and then asked for questions. One was, 'how do you price your work and how do you make a living at art?' His reply, rather sadly, was that every artist he knew who actually succeeded spent more time marketing, schmoozing, and hustling than they did producing art. The class went pretty quiet and glum. He noticed this and said that he was only telling us the sad truth.
Second, I have heard from numerous artists that the surest way to get a Canada Council Grant is to show that you don't really need one. In other words, they are overly cautious and give grants to proven successes. A strange logic.
Third, there still is a fairly healthy art scene, society, support network here. Some of it is apparent on Culture Crawl especially in some of the more obscure ateliers. One of the recurring conversations I have heard over the last few years is how often artists are giving up because whatever vision they had just won't sell. This may be because the work isn't of a high enough standard, or it doesn't receive enough exposure, or the potential market is not enlightened enough to appreciate. But for whatever reason among these or others, until the society appreciates the unique contributions and is willing to provide some funding, it is a brutally hard way to try and make a living. I don't see such a funding attitude changing anytime soon unless there is a much more broad social change."
What a strange dichotomy! There is funding but only for already successful artists while other artists are giving up because there is not enough funding, plus, it's not your work that lets you succeed but your schmoozing.
I give up, it's just too confusing.
