art is important. and artists and art workers are too.
In my last year of my M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I remember two friends telling me how they had to get a tooth pulled rather than filled because they didn’t have the money. These friends were also people who were exhibiting their work often and selling it at times.
The cost of a work of art from a recent M.F.A. graduate is far below the costs of consistent dental care, and a filling a cavity doesn’t rise to the top of one’s needs when you add up the costs of living, working, studying and caring… especially when you can just pull it.
I was told when pricing a work of art to factor in things like my education, and how much time it took to research the content and acquire the materials on top of the cost of the materials and how much time it took to physically make the work. But I wasn’t told to factor in my needs like how much it costs to maintain my physical and mental health so that I can make the art that someone might want to buy.
I don’t sell work so I don’t have to face this fact often, but did when I was invited to propose a work of art for the Hyde Park Art Centre’s Not Just a Pretty Face, a “… matchmaking commissioning program for artists and potential art buyers, facilitating lasting relationships between artists and patrons, a new base of support for artists, and investment in the vitality of Chicago’s cultural community.”[i] I had a significant amount of cavities, like 13 (I blame being a vegan and not having seen a dentist for like four years), and to get them all filled it would have cost me thousands of dollars which I did not have. I got the Xray of my teeth and pitched a series of photographs where people would pay for a filling and get a framed X-ray photograph of my cavity in return.
H.P.A.C. did me one better and found a dentist who was a fan of my work, interested in sponsoring my project, and doing the dental work himself. One problem, in the time between having proposed the project and this dentist approaching me, I had signed up for Medicare and got all my cavities filled for free. I wrote back to the dentist explaining the situation and telling him I could work with him to find an alternative. I suggested someone close to me who also needed a lot of dental work but couldn’t afford it. I got a reply from the dentist saying he was only interested in working on my teeth and wished me the best in all my future endeavors (I hate it when people say this at the end of rejection letters. Like, without your support… what future endeavors?).
There was a lot of word play going on in Chicago that year. I remember at the time I was also a resident at The Chicago Artist Coalition’s HATCH programme, an artist residency I paid for that offered (and still currently offers) community, a three-person exhibition, a six-person exhibition and a year-long programme of professional development. C.A.C. had an event called the Starving Artist Fundraiser which served, “As a way to raise funds for the coalition to support local artists [showcasing] the artist’s talents while giving party goers quite the show and a delicious meal.”[ii] They didn’t offer free tickets for the residents, and the tickets were priced too high for me (and a number of other people) to afford. I remember texting a friend a screenshot of my email inbox where one email alerting me to how my bank account was overdrawn sat below a notification about the Starving Artist Fundraiser.
One reason why I moved to Europe was because I found artist residencies that didn’t require me to pay but instead paid me, often in addition to offering housing and a material stipend. When I left the U.S. in 2017, I knew of quite a few grants who would not let you budget for artist fees, only materials. Your time? We don’t pay for it. We only pay for wood. Shit like that. I found it, and still find it, wild that we are able to divorce the art object from the person who made it. How are we supposed to have art if we don’t have artists?
Katriona Beales spoke about how one of the latest reports on artist livelihoods (perhaps the 2018 Arts Council England report) noted that,
… artists on average earned under £10,000 a year. But I think that's gone down since then. I would be surprised if it hadn't. So... stupid. [LAUGHS] Stupid system. Unsustainable!
Yeah. And if you think about the creative industries being one of the main drivers of G.D.P (Gross Domestic Product), and you think about the role that artists have within that, and you think about, you know, institutional budgets, and then once you trickle down what the artist fee is, even within a major institution, you know... it's criminal really. We need to be a lot more militant about how wrong it is, um, because talented people can't do it. Loads of interesting artists are not making artwork and we are poorer for it. [SIGH][iii]
Something Jessica Gaynelle Moss told me which has rung in my ears ever since has been, “…people not projects”[iv]:
I think, people not projects always. Like that is the pillar that all of it is built on. Like that is the one. It's people. And I feel like across the sector, we often forget that, and we forget the value of the artists. It's so much tied to the artist's labor and like what the artist can produce. And I'm so less interested in that. I really have had so many folks invest in me and like really make a point to check on me and help me and guide me, uh, and mentor me that I see so much value in that. [v]
We should invest in artists beyond their art objects, beyond what their artistic labour can produce. We should invest in them because they have invested in us, and their work has impacted our lives in immeasurable ways.
Ruth Lie and I joined SPACE Studios’ London Creative Network Programme mid-pandemic and Lie told me that one of the things L.C.N reminded her of was the importance of just listening. Lie told me,
Like right now, I'm really enjoying having conversations with artists and that's a really nice position to be in right now. And, um, yeah, I hope that we can continue to be critical of the world that we're working in and that we can continue to be, um, to think about the fact that actually what's important is the people within, within, um, this field. And it's the care that we offer them, to artists and those working in the industry. It needs to be across the board. Like cause right now it's not happening, and it needs - there needs to be more of it.[vi]
We should invest in artists and art workers beyond the objects and events and programs they produce because we need to offer care to them and to one another, because that’s actually what’s important, and it’s not happening.
Beales who co-founded the Artists’ Union England ended our interview with this gem that I love because it speaks to this but also appeals to artists to remember how important the work we do is. She said,
… as an artist, it's easy to undervalue what it is that you do. And I just feel like, actually taking on the fact that we need to affirm to ourselves and to others that what we do is important. Because I think it's really easy to come under this kind of like general kind of like malaise or like meta... sort of bigger picture political environment that actually kind of actively is trying to dissuade us from doing these things.
And it, it sort of like infiltrates, it becomes like a kind of fog. You can, it feels like a kind of oppression or like a weight. And actually, what we, we're doing is, is really important and creativity is important, and imagination is important and rethinking systems and structures is important. And art does that.
So, if you’re... I don't know, without being too like emotive, but if you are thinking about giving up, I understand. And I've been there and so many of us are there. And I think, you know, let's try and do what we can support each other so that, you know, we can minimize that because yeah. Art's important. And artists are too [LAUGHS].[vii]
Kelly Lloyd
[i] “NOT JUST ANOTHER PRETTY FACE,” Hyde Park Arts Center, https://www.hydeparkart.org/get-involved/donate-and-invest/njapf/.
[ii] “STARVING ARTIST 1,” Nitewerk, https://nitewerk.com/projects/starving-artist/#:~:text=Starving%20Artist%20is%20the%20annual,design%20collateral%2C%20referencing%20deconstructed%20food.
[iii] Katriona Beales, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 14 December 2022, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/katriona-beales.
[iv] Jessica Gaynelle Moss, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 15 September 2021, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/jessica-gaynelle-moss.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ruth Lie, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 3 December 2022, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/ruth-lie.
[vii] Katriona Beales, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 14 December 2022, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/katriona-beales.