Thursday, December 22, 2016

Art Art Art & Money Money Money

Andy Mouse - Keith Haring

The Museum of Modern Art helped raise me.

When I was young, my friends and I would take the F train from Queens to 53rd Street and go hang out at the Museum of Modern Art -or as we called it, "the Museum"--or we’d head all the way up to the the tip of Manhattan to hang out at the Cloisters - where we’d examine the Unicorn tapestries.

It is because I saw the big, soft, rumpled, fabric hamburger -  filed with foam rubber - at a Claus Oldenberg  exhibit at MoMA, ---and that my grandfather was in the fabric biz, that I’m an artist in business.

I seemed perfectly possible to pursue my dreams and make a living.

I’m here to urge you to go into business.

Small biz - micro biz, art biz is what makes capitalism fun! We are the verve meisters.

Go into business - become part of the world of commerce. Figure out how to make some money from your art.

Painting nudes

Us artist have it so good.

In art school, we live in creative hives.

We can follow sparks of imagination to see where they lead, which is always to something else. We can record traffic and make it music, print our own art money like Andy Warhol---invite an audience to the forest for an outdoor, nature symphony - like John Cage --and---we get to take classes where we stare at nudes and draw them. It’s a good life.

...and then we graduate and leave the paradise.


So many of us wonder what we’ll do with our degrees.
  • Will we be able to get a job?
  •  Make a living?
  •  Are we destined to work in restaurants?
  •  What will we do?
For people who want to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, nurse ---it is indeed a good idea to pursue those professions.

For those of us who think putting paint on a canvas is heaven, composing a photo, writing a novel, making a movie or directing a play are the things that make a life meaningful ---don’t be swayed into becoming someone you aren’t don't go for plan B - don’t disrespect your own talents.



  Learn how to write a proposal, write an invoice and reel in the job. It’s exciting to be involved in the mainstream conversation.

As Andy Warhol said, “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

©Jennifer Smith 2016 - Artist in the Material World