The Skinny
Last Friday I participated in an event put on by Drake High School in San Anselmo, CA, known as “Career Day.” The format of the day was to have a variety of panels comprised of people in related careers talk to Drake High School students to give them an idea about how the individual panelists chose their particular career, what students would need to know in order to pursue that career, what the potential salaries could be anticipated, pros and cons of the career choice.
My group included a painter/sculptor/teacher, a graphic designer/teacher and me, a painter/teacher/clerical.
All of the panelists spoke for about 15 minutes each to three groups. I talked about when I knew I wanted to be an artist (I was eight), what my experiences were in learning my craft, including my early experiences with drawing mountains, taking art classes at Montclair Museum, going to Goddard College, getting my BFA at California College of Arts and Crafts, then getting my MFA at California College of Arts and Crafts, moving away from making sculpture and focusing on painting.
But I had to give them the skinny. Or at least my skinny and that is that being an artist and making art is tremendously rewarding on an internal level but they needed to keep their day job as the financial rewards are fickle and unpredictable and that only the very few make it to the top tier. I told that the trade off for not having lots of fancy cars, houses, trips, stuff, was a satisfied life, and it was a life that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I also told them that having a trust fund or some other sort of funding could be a boon when income was limited.