Creativity vs. Career
Localism, a great gallery & a damn good jam
Hello there,
The chaos of summer is dying down (or alternatively, if you attend to the weather, has jumped off a cliff). Thank Goodness! Ring in the changes.
Just about time for one last BBQ and fire pit (a prior one is immortalised above). Time for Autumn and jumpers and soup and jigsaw puzzles. Time to come back to our communities from our roving, back to ourselves from our exploding, and make things again. Process that harvest.
I took August off from all creative activities and admin, and then kept far too busy adventuring for it to be a fully conscious break, of course. Like time apart from a beloved partner, I needed to miss making and writing again (and to process fewer emails!).
In line with early onset perimenopause, I have been having what I now call a ‘mid career crisis’ for at least 18 months. For this, read: less and less writing, more and more block, making art in a flurry of stress and exhaustion, slowing self promotion amidst a haze of bitterness about the creative '“industries”, having very little money, feeling very little energy or time. I know I’m not the only one, so many friends are similar.
I had been trying to make creativity into a career, a money-making enterprise, and moral arguments aside (creative work is work! Being paid sustainably should be possible for more of us), nothing will kill that flowering impulse faster. Trying to sell yourself is like creative weedkiller, and the weeds, the happy accidents, are often the most beautiful. This career drive was mainly because I have made piles of lovely stuff (prints, books etc.) and don’t know what to do with (solutions on a postcard please, the house is filling up). That and ego intersecting with capitalism, of course. Looking at the financially successful creatives I know and love, I don’t think I have that drive or want the lifestyle that goes with it. One of my ways out is intense localism, having made a lucky move to a madly creative town. So, let’s throw out industry for community, shall we?
Back in printmaking class, I surprised myself by making something lovely in the first session of this term last weekend, and of course took no photos so it will have to wait its turn. It was printed from a lino block that had been hanging around since at least May. I used to passionately love linocut, a love I all but killed by teaching it and trying to make money from running workshops, and I’m now rediscovering it in my peripheral vision. Printing lino in a relaxed, almost careless way (at least for me!) around the edges of a new obsessive drive to screenprint. My tendency to get obsessed/stressed/perfectionist mess is beautifully tolerated by that group of fellow printmakers, many of whom, like me, have been attending for a couple of years. It is lovely to know each other lightly, make in parallel and return and return and return.
I am very fortunate to be part of the flourishing Hastings Arts Forum, where the print above and others will be displayed in an upcoming exhibition for the first 2 weeks of October. It is wonderful to get my work out there, on a wall that’s not my own. The forum is a welcoming and unpretentious community of artists all about making – the gallery always looks beautiful, and no one has asked me which art school I attended (I didn’t, and this is the first question asked at more galleries than you might think). It is mostly volunteer run, and I do my little bit about once a month by getting to sit in a comfy chair in the gallery and talk to people about artwork - bliss!
We just had the fourth instance of Hyphae Collective’s poetry and music jam at Barnaby’s Jazz Lounge in Hastings. This thing is hard to describe, the alchemy of it. A place to improvise, collaborate and create together, musicians and poets alike. The collective was cooked up in the Poetry Brothel Hastings melting pot, a sustaining and theatrical performance space I can’t wait to return to (a regular, local, paid and exciting poetry gig – imagine!). The jam magic has been growing via word-of-mouth (without social media! Another Hastings miracle which makes it less work and more pleasant to run). I recently turned down a clashing “good career move” opportunity to stay committed to this project, and I have little regret about it – creative joy comes first. Again, I’m not the only one – many of the collective, wearied by creative industry work, are reigniting their passion here. If it sounds like it might even slightly be your sort of event and you can get here, come for god’s sake! I couldn’t be prouder to be part of it, and I’ll share more details or a video another time.
Of course, none of this pays the bills. But if I try to make it do so, the creativity erodes away, and then so do I. I am a self-employed tutor for my bread and butter, which is beautiful in its own way – the sparks of learning, and often I see the same children for years! Such everyday blessings.
All my broke but inky love,
Reanna
For more of my work – poems, books, performance videos, musical projects on Spotify, artwork and more – see my Linktree.
Like most artists, my prints are for sale and I’m thrilled when anyone wants to give one a home. If you would like a piece, feel free to DM me and cross my palm with silver or offer some idiosyncratic trade. I will love you for loving the art, and we’ll never talk again of that dirty little illusion called money…