Stop thinking of yourself as an artist
Creative fodder #3
La la labels
I hate to sound like that situationship you finally got out of, but labels aren’t all that great.
Although, I’m talking about labels in your creative pursuits. They can limit you, keep you swirling in impostor syndrome, feel “too much”, and drain the process of fun.
The creative label people wrestle with most:
Artist.
Let’s face it, the word is loaded…
The A-word
It has an air of pretension and despair. Visions of Banksy and Van Gogh’s ear follow.
Tortured artist. Starving artist. Entitled artist. Pompous artist.
Sometimes the only version of an artist without a La Boheme-esque stigma is when nepo and/or trust fund babies own this title, unbothered by the weight of monetizing their passion.
You don’t have to let those misconceptions get to you (though sometimes it’s easier said than done). Call yourself anything you want and embrace it!
But…
You can use this “artist” aversion to get even more creative.
To quote many internet girlies: delulu is the solulu here. That’s fair energy to borrow from the 1%. We deserve a slice of that levity after they’ve exploited many of us to achieve their billionairedom.
The pathway to that?
Get mysterious
This amazing note from
at The Molehill struck a chord on how to tweak what you share to serve the ultimate vibe check: mysteriousness.Chalk it up to mindset and embracing some role-play. Filtering your words so you come across as that girl. (The one we all aspire to, yet already are.)
So what’s a mysterious version of an artist?
A curator.
Welcome to your Met era
You do not need to train or apply for this position because, spoiler, you already embody curator energy just by being alive and having taste.
You screen ideas, choose shapes, and are attracted to styles. At every turn, you’re curating to your taste.
The process of selecting what words make it to the page is no different than the process of swiping paint on a canvas in a way that captures your inner vision.
Or picking the perfect movie or outfit.
Ira Glass describes the creative journey through the lens of taste in the best way.
The Taste Gap ↴
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. ALL OF US WHO DO CREATIVE WORK, WE GET INTO IT BECAUSE WE HAVE GOOD TASTE. BUT THERE IS THIS GAP.
For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
IT IS ONLY BY GOING THROUGH A VOLUME OF WORK THAT YOU WILL CLOSE THAT GAP, AND YOUR WORK WILL BE AS GOOD AS YOUR AMBITIONS. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
—Ira Glass
The TL;DR: focus on your taste and you’ll actively close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
The secret is to continually curate your work as you go.
✦ RECOMMENDED READING
Check out this post by
where she talks about Marc Jacobs’s taste and creative journey.
NEXT
Let’s unlearn what might be getting in your way…
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Let’s unlearn “it’s not _____ enough”
A lot of times we diminish what we like/love/are drawn to because we think it’s not enough. Not good enough. Serious enough. Professional enough. Nice enough. Cool enough.
But all that kind of thinking does is keep you from your secret sauce. Aka your taste. Let’s look at how the following statements from creators feature their unique and unusual tastes, which, in turn, creates a stronger body of work.
Below, I’ve put words in bold that highlight their taste and POV.
🍌 Gab Bois
Gab Bois’ work is interested in revealing the surreal quality of everyday objects, notably food, technology and fashion. Influenced by childhood experiences of playing pretend, she brings a distinct element of fantasy to her body of bizarre tableaux and whimsical props. Her unique visual language, informed by design, fashion, pop culture and advertising, approaches the mundane with a sharp sense of humor. Having truly grown up in the selfie era, self-representation is a recurring theme in Gab Bois’ work, inciting a sense of closeness and relatability from her audience. It is with this particular intimacy that she transports us to a world of her own in which cocktail dresses are made out of scrabble tiles and clam shells can double as pocket mirrors.
Her work is a place where the double entendre of hyperrealism and the commonness of the familiar object happily coexist. Through her imagery, the artist challenges the viewer to question what they are seeing while at the same time modifying their perception of reality. Having a deep interest in paradox, Bois positions her work at the intersection of reality and simulation, futurism
and nostalgia, affect and object. With a practice focusing on photography, video direction and object design, Bois has her foot in many doors. While versatile in mediums and disciplines, her body of work is tied together by a distinct thread of recurring themes and subjects. Self-taught on all fronts, Bois’ curiosity and passion for bringing concepts to reality is what keeps her practice ever-evolving.
🎀 Petra Collins
Petra Collins is a multi-talented artist and director whose photography set the stylistic tone for much of the 2010s. Shooting since the age of 15, her work is fueled by self-discovery and a contemporary femininity which explore the complex intersection of life as a young woman online and off. Collins weaves through the worlds of art, fashion, film, and music. She is currently working on her narrative feature debut set to shoot in 2021.
✦ Example 1: Fairytales book
Fairy Tales is an erotic folklore of short stories shot by Petra Collins starring Alexa Demie. The pair created the concept and text collaboratively. Alexa portrays nine characters that embody new stories they would have liked to see. As children, Petra and Alexa were both enamored with fairy tales, which provided an escape from their own painful realities.
Each of the nine tales are set in unique spaces, ranging from suburban homes and parking lots to fantastical sets. Petra and Alexa’s chapters of elves, mermaids, sirens, water sprites, fallen angels, fairies, witches, and banshees blend their own stories with retold fairy tales. The photos combine elements of camp, prosthetics, and shibari in a surreal update to the imagery of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Perrault, and others.
✦ Example 2: I’m Sorry by Petra Collins fashion brand
Petra Collins, artist and fashion world muse, steps into the creative director’s seat with the launch of I’m Sorry by Petra Collins, an SSENSE exclusive collaboration. The Toronto-born, NYC-based artist has been at the forefront of a new wave of millennial directed feminism, capturing the awkward beauty of early womanhood through her dreamy, pastel-tinted photographs. Since the early 2010s, Collins has worked to create a safe space for girls, encouraging them to express their vulnerability, sensitivity, and sexuality both on and off camera. A sartorial translation of her photographic vision, I’m Sorry by Petra Collins captures the interiority of girlhood with sincerity and wit. Matching sweatsuit and pj sets, satin slip dresses, and bodysuits feature sassy graphics and playful colorways. The collaboration speaks to a nostalgic female adolescence with designs reminiscent of the poster-plastered walls of a teenage bedroom or a mid-2000s Myspace page. These are the clothes you might wear when rolling around in bed with your besties, all the while casually defining a new wave of authentic female self-expression.
The lesson: embrace your weirdness, embrace your niche-ness! Then curate it.
Let’s curate curation
Where does curation start? (Other than in your imagination/mind, ofc.)
There’s a world outside of you to notice in a new way.
Noticing is similar to curiosity where it helps you ease into the process (aka you’re less likely to self-sabotage with negative self-talk, overthinking, etc.)
Start noticing what you’re drawn to.
✦ STEP ONE
Brain dump a list of what your bold words would be (like the ones highlighted above.)
✦ STEP TWO
Make a list of places where you can find things that aren't just made today, where a variety of new and old lives.
Some of my favorite places:
Museums
Historical societies
Libraries
Antique shops
Flea markets
Thrift stores
These places help you curate my secret equation for making work that feels fresh and modern:
Past + present = modern.
When attempting to create through a lens of modernity, frustration can arise when you focus on the future. While that's a good thing to aspire to, the reality is that it doesn't exist yet. The future has yet to be written with something familiar as the foundation.
It's your job to write it and ground it with your unique blend of what’s come before and what you bring to life at a moment.
✦ STEP THREE
Cross-reference your list and take action…
Go on a creative field trip
Seek out places on your list that are rich with history and different periods so you have the most at your fingertips to curate your interpretation/mashup of modernity.
This gets supercharged when you can collect objects, whether by purchasing or snapping a pic with your phone. The former is where a thrift store comes in. It’s cheap and a veritable treasure trove.
I consider photographer Nadia Lee Cohen the patron saint of the thrift store. She makes her projects provocative and steeped in realism with found objects (see photo, above.)
Keep an eye out for an upcoming post that explores more about Nadia’s project “HELLO My Name Is”, where she collected and curated items from flea markets, junk auctions, and thrift stores to make one of her most iconic books. 👀
May-December inspo
A visit to my fave antique mall revealed an inspirational collision between novelist Hunter S. Thompson and the TV show Sons of Anarchy.
I spotted a love-worn paperback copy of Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson in a display case. It was familiar but I couldn't put my finger on it… until it hit me:
The DVD cover for season one of Sons of Anarchy depicted a similar style of art direction. A perfect representation of how to make something new and fresh by looking to the past.
This paperback turned out to be a first edition published in 1967. Season one of Sons premiered in 2008. Just a cool 41 years between the two.
Think of your inspiration sources as a May-December relationship. The old and the young together… So wrong it’s right.
Fun fact: the show itself looks to the past even more because of its taking thematic elements from Hamlet. And Shakespeare’s work is obvi even older than Hunter S. Thompson’s.
Curation mindset matters
When you explore and notice things to curate, have an open mind. Let your gut take you where you need to go and don't get frustrated if you don't find what you want at once or just how you expect.
Remember the taste gap. And keep moving forward to get closer and closer to the highest version of what you envision.
In the process, sometimes the journey, or the experience, is the most important step rather than a specific outcome. You could see one thing that connects later only when you discover another thing that pairs perfectly with it.
It’s most important to begin. Open your eyes. Think of the freedom you felt back in school when you’d get to venture outside of the classroom. Find a new path, a fork in the road.
Let this enliven your every day with the possibility of finding, rediscovering, or remixing a gem or two or more.
No matter how secure we are in our taste or work, we always need exposure to something new to get out of our heads. Let curation be this system reset for you in more ways than one.
Here’s to getting into the feeling, vibration, and energy of the world around you...
…and to your mysterious, badass self,
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