First off, here's a flock of stoneware Christmas ornament doves
I’ve been working on. They're bigger than the little doves I used to make, but I've carved them out a lot so I hope they'll be reasonably light. These doves are still "greenware" (unfired clay) and eventually will all get bisque fired then dunked in Chun White cone 6 glaze.
A couple of the doves looked like they wanted to be carved onto, so I did.
On to today’s other topic.
“Why I think I’m less of a deadbeat since quitting my biology career to
be a full time artist”
This post is dedicated to all my biology friends who may
have thought I was crazy for leaving my job to follow my dreams.
After my last post I did some thinking about what has held
me back from making a living as an artist, and I realized that I have perhaps
saddled myself with some unnecessary guilt.
I did some googling and found this article, reading it and
all the comments below made me feel like I’m not alone. It's a good read! And so are the reader responses.
Perhaps it is the public education system which trains small
children to believe that they should be marching off to work inside most of the week with
limited breaks to be a functional citizen.
I know when I made the decision to
quit my full time job, and move to Regina and start Art School with the plan of
following my bliss all day, I felt like I was swimming against a giant
tide.
A giant tide of people with “real” jobs.
I remember, after a couple of years, going back home to Richmond and my brother and I
went to an open house across the street from our mom’s house. It was a new development in a neighbourhood where old houses on
giant old building lots with rich, fertile soil are getting mowed down for
condos.
The sales agent asked me what I do and I said “I’m
an artist”.
It took me ages to be able
to identify myself as this, rather than say “well I used to be a biologist”.
I felt proud of myself for saying it. "I'm an artist". Outloud, to a stranger.
But, when I said "I'm an artist.", my brother, a mechanic, snickered.
No big deal. Of course he snickered, because
I think there’s a public perception that being an ‘artist’ isn’t a real
job.
Rather, I suspect that many people
could perhaps view artists as deadbeat mooches.
It turns out that I'm not making this idea up; the
idea that the public would regard a career in science as more worthy than an
art career. There’s even a report done by Princeton University that shows only 27% of those surveyed think that artists contribute a lot to the general good of society, and 26% think artists contribute little or nothing. Note we’re well below scientists but just a photo-finish
ahead of politicians (whew). Also note this survey was done in the states, I wonder if results would differ in other countries.
Perhaps this is the root of some of my guilt for choosing to move
away from my friends and family to start a new life someplace where I have a
chance of affording to do what I want all day.
But here’s the thing!
The other day I had a giant “A-Ha”
moment that would make Oprah proud.
I realized
that by leaving my job I was allowing myself to try to live an authentic life,
a life where my main objective is to follow my bliss. To use my talents in service to others. To work at what I truly love. In the words of Bob Marley to
"emancipate [myself] from mental slavery".
What if everyone in the world dropped what they were doing
and made the effort to align with that which they knew, deep down, they really
wanted to do, what they knew they really should be doing. Wouldn’t that be
interesting.
The other part of my “A-Ha” moment came from me reflecting
back on my biology career.
Did I really
accomplish anything?
I certainly blew
through tens of thousands of tax dollars.
I’m good at academics, so I won a big scholarship that paid for my
entire Master’s degree. My Master’s
research also came from tax money, a great big pile of tax money, which I spent
on counting birds, identifying plants, measuring sagebrush and coming up with
some conclusions that would possibly be obvious to anyone spending thoughtful
time out in nature watching what the various birds I looked at were up to.
Next I got some jobs.
And looking back on these jobs, just the other day, during my "A-Ha moment", I finally thought to “follow
the money” and think about where my paycheque was actually coming from.
For example, I worked as a fisheries observer
on off shore trawl boats for a couple of years in BC. It paid me well, but I think I only just
clued in that the fishermen whose boat I was on would have to pay the
consulting company $300/day or so. No
wonder the fishermen were pissed off about the observer program, there were trips
where the fish observer would make more than members of the crew.
Ironically, more fish would have to be caught to fund me, and pay the
consulting company fees.
And what good did it do anyhow? Small fishing boats are
being replaced by giants ships that require way fewer crew, changing the
sustainability of coastal fishing communities.
And as long as there are big
profits to be made by the corporations responsible for these ships, aren’t we
just going to fish everything until extinction anyhow?
Same goes for some contract work I did for a forestry
company. I couldn’t help but get the impression that some of the work I was part of
was part of some giant rubberstamping process and that industry would largely
end up doing what it would have done in the first place.
As with the fish that were caught to pay for me to be a fish observer, I realized that trees were possibly cut to pay me to have my cushy biology contract. Possibly beautiful, huge, old growth trees.
Eeek.
By 2005 I felt like it’d be easy enough for me to be a biologist, have a
comfortable life, getting paid to go on hikes, gather data, getting flown to
meetings and eating muffins, attending conferences, writing this report or
that, all on the public dime, while outside the world seemed to be largely
going to hell in a hand basket with big corporations calling all the real
important shots.
I envied my coworkers who seemed cheerful to go to work every day. Sometimes I wonder what if I'd have gone on antidepressants or
found some other sort of way to make my job bearable. Maybe I’d have stayed in Vancouver, maybe I’d have
married another yuppie and we’d have a condo in Whistler to go on weekend ski
trips to. I’d still be playing ultimate
frisbee, going for Friday evening drinks, cramming all my fun into evenings,
weekends and vacations…should I have tried harder for that life?
Nah.
Fast forward to 2013 and I have to say I love every square
inch of our 10 acres of riverfront. At least I can say that every frog, snake
and bird on this property has a healthy home, and my non-yuppie husband and I do what we can to keep it
that way. As my art career grows I hope
to earn enough to buy more acres of riverfront to leave for the critters.
And I can say I love every minute in my
studio where I try to sculpt things that I love, and hoping other will
love them too. I have to say I work way harder since becoming an artist, longer hours anyhow, if I was to count the hours where I was actually productive. Being a biologist never
pulled me to my work in the middle of the night the way my studio can. Instead of watching the clock and working for the weekend, now my time is spent realizing creative ideas and looking for the intersection between what I love to do, and what people need and want.
And, ironically, I think I live lighter on the earth.
No more driving my car to my conservation
biology job and stopping for a Macdonald’s McGriddle on the way (I did this a few times near the end). Now I have the time and space to grow my own
vegetables and cook most things from scratch.
Trips to town to buy things are infrequent, and I no longer feel the
need to numb myself after work with booze or shopping. So, inadvertently, I think all this makes me
a better ‘conservation biologist’ if I’m still allowed to claim that identity.
And I'm not out to bash biology. Rather, I think there are many scientists doing important work, and hopefully these are the people who are following their dreams. I'm grateful for all the biologists who work to protect the environment, and all the plants and animals we share the earth with. It just wasn't right for me, and the best thing I could have done for society, I think, was to go off and figure out who my authentic self is, and start living that life instead.
So there you have it. I refuse to feel guilty anymore about being an artist! I can't help it if I want to sculpt all the time. Back to the studio!
