Yesterday evening I was on a panel of four artists asked to speak about our careers in an “Art Survival Skills” course. I brought this admittedly odd deer figure (freshly completed work) as a bit of show and tell.
The panelist were Robert Canaga, gallery owner and Eugene arts community icon; David Funk, co-owner of a local marketing agency Bell + Funk (which I did just google and liked what I saw); Jon Cruson, who was making art and selling it before I was born; and me, with my deer dolly of course. I was clearly the inexperienced one of the bunch. Yes I was humbled, intimidated, awed, and invigorated. These three artists with their wildly different dispositions and divergent art career paths, were remarkably similar in a few important ways. They each conveyed their absolute determination to be artists, they each revealed a general willingness to embrace unconventional opportunities, and they were productive people (drawing, painting, experimenting, generating art). I can get behind all that. Look out world, I’m goin’ in, with or without the deer dolly!