Like Sand Through the Hourglass
The inevitable end to a "vacation" week, a missed opportunity and deep thinking on my brand.
It’s Thursday. I have half an hour, at which point I will have to get up and start the sixth segment of my day, making dinner. Already, I have walked my daughter to school (with the supposed family dog that still stubbornly refuses to see anyone but his owner - my oldest daughter - as his family), worked on art in my studio, purchased two frames for pictures that have long waited to be hung and done the grocery shopping. I’m now in segment five, Substack, until 4:00pm and then I have to get moving on chopping some vegetables.
I have taken this week off of my day job to immerse myself in art making. But on this fourth day of vacationing for art, the needs of home have started to nip at my heels. I’ve avoided doing anything all week, save for school walks, that involved leaving the house. This morning, when I packed the last pickle from the jar in my daughter’s lunch and in the absence of fruit, crammed a small Tupperware with the remains of a candy salad that the kids had made a few weeks ago, I knew the gig was up and I had to head to the store.
I can feel the dread of the week coming to an end. Do you ever get this feeling? I have some kind of unfounded worry that I can’t cope with what’s to come in the week ahead. There seems to be too much in it to do and not enough hours in the day. I’m already mourning the loss of Monday to Wednesday to my day job. But I digress.
What I didn’t do this week is attend the Fempreneurs event I was pondering in an earlier post. However, unbeknownst to me until the event was sold out (so the decision not to go was conveniently made for me), my middle daughter has a job that connects her to the Fems, and so she was invited to go! She returned with a very positive review, and I now feel emboldened to attend the next one. I’ll take that as a win.
What I have been doing this week is thinking about my brand. The guest on the episode of my fav podcast that I listened to this week was a fella named Jon Ritt. He is an artist and designer who professionally helps businesses both understand and tell their story in order to work up their brand. The strong, art related message he shares is that in order to produce (and sell) authentic art, one needs to know their story, their truth. Others will identify with some element of an artist’s work if it’s honest. Some will want to purchase that art because they recognize something in it or want to own some intangible part of the artist. Therefore, an artist needs to know what they are about and how and why they produce what they do. We need to be able to tell our story.
As I think about rebranding while I leave my metal art behind, I need to do the work to figure out how to put words to who I am as an artist. What is my story, where have I been and why and where I’m going now? Once I process, understand and write my story, then I can put myself out there and make my art according to who I am, not by measuring my worth against others or by what I think the art is that people want.
Some people will love what I do, and others will dislike or criticize it. Regardless, I will be able to stand behind it and tell my story to anyone, be they admirers or deriders. At least they will know where the art came from, the meaning I assign to it and why I created it.