You Should Sell That

This is supposed to be a compliment.  This is supposed to say, Im so impressed, that looks real, that looks like something I or someone richer than me would spend money on.  We have been so completely trained to believe that commercial value is the highest honor, the ultimate goal, the challenge of our lives.  It makes us, and our time, worthy.

What if we tried out different compliments for artists?  What about, wow, this piece looks like you.  Like your soul.  Like your intellect, like your sense of humor. I imagine that you must have lost yourself while making this, lost track of space and time, found yourself wound around it like a snail shell and were surprised when you finally looked around that the sun had set.  This piece looks like it challenged you, like you pulled it out of the depths of your mind, like you researched it at the library and read tangentially relevant books about something like it.  It looks like you wandered aimlessly for days and napped and felt bad about napping.  Wow, this piece must have brought you peace, clarity, a break from the endless self doubt and insecurity.  This looks like you used your body in service of creation, you made a brand new thing that now lives on this earth.  This looks like alchemy.  It looks like you spent an afternoon making something, which is the highest compliment I can possibly give.

Because as artists we are already thinking about money.  We’re artists!  It’s a scrappy, nonlinear journey of survival.  But in between the moments of wrathful, crippling insecurity, wondering how we are going to make ends meet this month (by selling that, obviously,) we made something.  We made something because we felt like it, because we had to, because we are trying to be more disciplined about our creativity, because we wanted an escape.  And just for a moment, wouldn’t it be lovely to let that be.