Existential Shakedown

A big new thing!

Dear reader,

Time is made up and still it passes. End of one year, beginning of another, “December” and “January” and so on. We love our little made up things. Well, we love to make them up, anyway. Once made, they tend to feel torturous and impassable, looming and tormenting, suffocating and destructive. How to climb out of this hole we have dug for ourselves? Perhaps we will never know.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. I always figured one could change at any time if one felt so inclined, if one really wanted to change. This moratorium extended to end-of-year reflections, too. I always hated the idea of counting my beans at the end of the year, measuring my productivity and successes achieved in a given amount of time. “To hell with it!” I would say to myself. I used to think it made me a maverick. This year, though, I find my self in a very reflective state of mind. The winds of change are howling through my little studio apartment, let me tell you, and they have blown some things wide open.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment of my revelation. I’m always thinking, that’s the thing, always turning things over in my mind, and I really can’t turn it off even if I wanted to. My inner monologue is not dissimilar to the voiceover at the beginning of a 90s teen movie, the kind that probably includes a shopping or makeover montage about halfway through. It makes it hard for me to know when these things happen unless I write them down. As luck would have it, I forgot to write it down this time and so have lost the timeline. When I was finally able to get a grip on the thought, though, it was like opening the floodgates.

The big new thing is this: I don’t want to be a career artist anymore. Maybe I never really did.

Being An Artist™ is something I’ve been consciously and perhaps also unconsciously working towards for as long as I can remember. At various times in my childhood and teen years I wanted to be a novelist, a photographer, a fashion designer, the list goes on and on. I didn’t take my first ceramics class until I was 20, but it replaced everything else as soon as I did. For almost five years I’ve been working in clay studios, always with the unspoken understanding that it was in service of making it my full-time gig. I trained as a technician and then did that for a while, then switched to teaching. The funny thing is, it turns out I enjoy teaching much more than I ever enjoyed the prospect of making art for someone else. Commissions put me in a months-long anxiety spiral, though I still took them on because that’s what you’re supposed to do to make money as an artist until you become ~famous~ and people buy whatever you make just because you made it. I had a few pieces in small gallery shows, some that sold and some that didn’t, and pieces installed at various shops all over Brooklyn. I looked to my peers for guidance and saw that they were applying for anything and everything they could–group shows, residencies, grants. Whenever I considered such things for myself, I encountered resistance. I always thought it was fear of failure holding me back, what if I apply and don’t get it, that sort of thing, the imposter syndrome that is all the rage these days. Through hard thinking and discussing with friends and therapists, I’ve actually come to the conclusion that what I truly fear is restriction.

Some of you who know me or have been reading my newsletters for a while (or both) may think this is really obvious. To me, it was like a lightbulb the size of Olafur Eliasson’s weather project went on above my head. Younger me, like most of us, was under the impression that in order to make things, we had to make it our jobs since all we have time for as adults is work. (Thanks, capitalism!) I guess I didn’t realise that I’ve been carrying that around with me all this time, that it has shaped the course of my work life and my art life. The moment I realised I didn’t have to do it that way, the weight lifted off me. I actually felt physically lighter. It’s the clearest sign I’ve ever had that this is the right thing for me.

So I’m going back to making art for pleasure and peace of mind. “Hobby” doesn’t feel like the right word, though technically I suppose it is, and the phrase “art practice” always bums me out. I don’t know what to call it yet, but I suppose I have plenty of time to figure it out. On the flip side, this now means I have to find something else to work towards. Another story for another day.

And so another letter draws to a close. If the holidays weigh heavily on you, be sure to do something nice for yourself this week. If your family is stressful, remember you can take breaks if you need to. As always, feel free to reach out via email or in the substack chat!

Until next time.

xoxo

Emilie