H.J.K.

Don’t you have that one friend who’s an artist and you sometimes wonder, how does this person pay her bills?  You’ve known her for several years, consider her a “friend” and not an acquaintance, you’ve been to her apartment, a small but nice space somewhere in Brooklyn probably, maybe she has an iPhone, a refined collection of art books, obscure DVDs and some decent furniture.  When you go to parties together, she usually turns up in Margiela, and when the conversation with strangers turns to “so what do you do for a living?”, your friend starts to answer and your ears prick up, you think, ooo maybe I’ll finally find out how she makes ends meet, but she replies “I’m an artist (or painter, or photographer, or whatever)” and you think, drat that doesn’t tell me anything really!

I know artists who have all sorts of different day jobs – they work at galleries, bars, clothing stores; they assist other artists or are personal assistants; they have real serious jobs as designers/editors/producers in museums, advertising agencies, magazines; they teach; they work in non-profit; they temp.  Some artists are embarrassed to utter the words “day job” while others are alright with it.

Holland Cotter’s piece in the NYTimes, “The Boom is Over. Long Live the Art!” inspired this post, in particular these lines:

It’s day-job time again in America, and that’s O.K. Artists have always had them — van Gogh the preacher, Pollock the busboy, Henry Darger the janitor — and will again. The trick is to try to make them an energy source, not a chore.

Did you hear that, people? It’s OK to have a day job!  Glad to hear it.