ritual-and-chaos:

ritual-and-chaos:

ritual-and-chaos:

I’m upset and it’s time for a rant. 

I’m upset that there’s no winning in art. If you focus on a traditionally craft medium, you’re fucked. No one cares or is willing to pay good money for it unless you manage to get in the NY or Art Basel scene. You have to be known to be good. And that means you have to go to the right schools or residencies or events. If you don’t have money to do that, nope, good luck making any money on your own. Doing drawing or painting is easier to get money, because people recognize that that’s art, and that traditional mediums deserve to be paid for. Except, no, if its not up their perfect god damn specs no one is going to buy it except for other artists. We’re all poor, we all pay for each others work or trade. 

Someone told me the other day that I needed to find some rich patron to sponsor me. Bitch, how you think that works? You gotta be at the fancy parties and locales to get people to notice you and then introduce you to someone else. Unless Oprah features you on her show, you aren’t going anywhere. 

Ugh. Negativity aside, yes, it’s possible to make it as an artist. I’m just so tired of this uphill climb and disdain for the arts. Fuck. 

Also, yes, this is America-centric, but besides major European hubs, I don’t know the art capitols of other nations.

To clarify before someone tells me I need to do something about it instead of complaining:

I AM. 

I’m writing a book that’s basically about how ceramics is treated badly because of white suprematism, colonialism, racism, and sexism. 

Artifact, Vessel, and Craft. My book’s name. 

Artifact because that’s what ancient art was called, unless it was made by a white culture, then it’s ~art~. 

Vessel, because the craft movement was started by men as a return to the handmade and functional, but when they weren’t successful, all that was left was the primarily domestic work for that was making vessels to survive, not for art’s sake. 

Craft, because the 1960s-70s feminist art movement strove to push traditionally domestic mediums forward and they succeeded with textiles but failed with ceramics, because it’s still functional, it’s still considered craft, which is the Low and the Domestic. 

I’m paying to return to college to get a second bachelor’s in art history because no one will take me seriously without it, and I need access to scholarly resources to write a book and speak on the subject. I need that connection to make a difference, and be able to teach others about art history without excluding my medium(s). 

I can make that difference and I will. 

But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to cry at how hard it is to make a living off of the arts when people ask you for commissions and then shit on what you give them. Or balk at the price tag. Fuck.

*rubs her dusty ceramicist hands all over this post*

Yes good