Steven's's book revolves around the exceptionally successful career of Jim Henson and explores the lessons all artists can learn from how Henson approached both creativity and business. It is at once permission giving and enlightening. What could spawning Kermit the Frog and a multimillion dollar puppetry business have to do with one of a kind metalsmithing, teaching, and a one woman small business? You'd be surprised.
The book is a very big picture look at Henson's decision making and determination in which the author does an exceptional job of relating those lessons to individuals like me. How Henson handled copyright, balanced his creative process with cutting edge yet hippy business practices, tremendously evolved a centuries old art form to fit a new medium, and continually pitched his art are all key strategies for anyone who makes, writes, composes, or choreographs anything.
In my life as an artist I had failed to recognize one hugely important lesson until reading the book. In the soul sucking junior high and high school I went to, I learned that anything I wanted to learn and anything I wanted to do could only come as a reward aftert all the things I was supposed to do. At the age of 12 I had 4-1/2 hours of busy work homework every night after 7 hours and 15 minutes of being in a place I hated with only the occasional respite of an intelligent teacher and an interesting class.
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Copper, hand lettered and mixed media over printed
photo montages of original collages
5-3/8" long x 3-3/8" wide x 1-5/8" high
© 2011, V. Lansford $6200.
Featured in Lark Book's 500 Handmade Books, vol 2,
juried by Julie Chen
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I have long had a difficulty moving from the management side of work to the making side of of the studio before 3:30 in the afternoon. In the days before my son was born and in the days after he was born and I worked late into the night while he slept, it didn't matter so much, but with my ability to work in fine detail increasingly dependent on sunlight, this time divide is dreadful. I never associatd until reading Make Art Make Money that 3:30 was the time I got out of school and felt at least marginally more in control of my own time and life.
In short I learned in school to treat creativity as a reward instead of a way of being. Bad lesson for someone who earns her living as an artist. (Talk about school not preparing kids for real life!) Doing the work that excites me when it excites me and not when I finally get a chance to squeeze it into the rest of my work is my ongoing goal.
Since finishing the book, I've made it a habit at least 3 days a week to bypass the email inbox and the mammoth to-do list and head straight to my drawing table or bench as soon as I get into the studio. Some days, often the best days, this happens while I'm still in my pajamas. My overwhelming sense of responsibility and the 46 hats I wear as a small business owner are ever present. For my sanity (and the sanity of those nearby), making things comes first at work, knowing that I always come through on time on all the "have to's" of entrepreneurship the same way a Border Collie will always catch a frisby.
A few months ago I finished one of the three best books I've ever read on the work life and business of being an artist, Make Art Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens. My other two favorites are Eric Maisel's Making Your Creative Mark: 9 Keys to Achieving Your Artistic Goals, a way to strategize the professional necessities of being a successful artist by looking inward and being honest about the challenges and Alyson B. Stanfield's I'd Rather Be in the Studio, a nuts and bolts guide to navigating the practical requirements of bios, artist statements, working with galleries, etc. Each of these books fills a special need and has helped me be focused, but Make Art Make Money is one of the few books I've ever been a little sad to have finshed the way I'm sad when a fun event is over.
