THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello, my passion maker. This is Miriam Schulman, host of the Inspiration Place podcast. You’re listening to Episode 140. I’m so grateful that you’re here. Today we’re talking all about moving beyond creative hurdles. This interview is going to motivate and inspire you to create no matter what your circumstances are.
Today’s guest is a Los Angeles based consultant for artists and art organizations. She’s the author of Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles. With a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Missouri, she provides career consultation, grant writing, fundraising, financial and strategic planning services for artists and art organizations throughout the US.
She teaches at the California Institute of the Arts School of Theater and teaches workshops at universities, companies, and art spaces throughout the US and she’s the author Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles. Please welcome to the Inspiration Place, Beth Pickens.
Beth Pickens:
Hi, everyone. Hi, Miriam. Thank you so much for having me here. I love hearing my bio in your voice. It sounds so good.
Miriam Schulman:
Even with my thick New York accent?
Beth Pickens:
I love it. It sounds serious.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m actually writing a book myself and I just had that discussion with my agent. I was like, “Yeah, I know they probably want to hire a voice actor for my book, but you know that it has to have somebody with a New York accent.”
Beth Pickens:
No, it’s got to be you. It’s got to be you. You can read your own book.
Miriam Schulman:
I agree. Come on.
Beth Pickens:
Tell them you want to read it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I should put that in the contract. I literally get dozens of requests every week from people pitching me to come on the podcast, book authors, they have, what do they call, PR people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I get so many and almost everybody gets my form. “Thanks for submitting. Fill out this form. We’ll let you know.” Don’t call us. We’ll call you. But when I saw the title of your book, I told my assistant, “Hey, see if we can get a copy.” And when I got, I loved it.
Beth Pickens:
I’m so glad. That’s the best thing in the world is when an artist loves the book.
Miriam Schulman:
It is so important. This book couldn’t have come out in a better time because my artists, and myself included, I don’t want to make myself other in this conversation, we are all struggling right now. It is so hard. All the things we used to have, you wrote this book pre-COVID right?
Beth Pickens:
Right. In 2019.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. It’s hard enough to get your mojo on in the best of circumstances and to have museums taken away, have lunch dates taken away, have all these things taken away, artists need this book that you put out.
Beth Pickens:
It’s been a really hard time-
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Beth Pickens:
… in that specific way of being an artist. It’s hard for all of their personhood, but their artist self has really been eroded by the pandemic
Miriam Schulman:
I saw this Disney, well, all Disney movies are problematic, but just push that aside. Moana. It was mentioned in a book and I thought, “I don’t know the culture reference, I better go check this out,” that heart is taken out of the goddess and then everything shrivels up. And I’ve been telling my artists, that’s like what’s happened to us. We need to restore our artist’s heart so that we can be creative again. We’re burnt out. Something’s missing from us.
Beth Pickens:
I have to go watch Moana. That brought tears to my eyes. When you said that, it’s like, “God, that’s so sad.”
Miriam Schulman:
It has the usual cultural appropriation that I don’t like about Disney movies, but the music is beautiful and it’s visually stunning. So maybe you and your wife might want to watch that.
Beth Pickens:
Totally.
Miriam Schulman:
Just for [crosstalk 00:04:28].
Beth Pickens:
We are going to Disneyland soon so this would be good.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. All right. Good and be your prep trip. But maybe you don’t feel the way about Disney that I do. I mean, I still like it. It’s kind of like how you like sugar. It’s bad for you.
Beth Pickens:
It’s awful and incredible. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Beth Pickens:
Disney as a whole is so, I mean, it’s like a trash fire that I want to go warm my hands next to.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s really is a really good way of putting it. Yes, exactly. Okay. So this is in one of the first chapters talking about not enough time for art. I hear this from artists who are in all levels of the art spectrum, those who are doing it just for fun and they can’t figure out why they’re not able to make time for something that’s enjoyable to them. And what you said, quote, “The world will only try to pull you away from your creative practice.”
Beth Pickens:
It sucks. And it’s so true. The world and you will try to deflect away from your art practice all the time. I think the issue with time is kind of two-fold. One, it’s the actual problems of being too busy and having to unpack our lives a little or turn some things down. And then there’s the perception. So, there’s the literal and the perception about time and our relationship to it. And both, I think, have to be addressed with a person who’s struggling with time, which also is like 95% of the artists I’ve ever worked with. Time. There’s a reason it’s the first chapter in the book because it is an issue for everyone and it causes so much anxiety. And we fixate on the amount of time we think we have or don’t have, and the quality of it.
And I think what’s really poignant over the past 13, going on 14 months of the pandemic, is people’s relationship to time has really warped for a lot of people to become really worked. And for a lot of artists I know, they may have found themselves with a lot more time. And so then they equated, “Well, then I should be doing something with it. I should be effective and productive and make all these things and be a genius.” And all of the stupid memes about like, “Well, Shakespeare wrote blah, blah, blah during the blah, blah, blah.” Whatever. It’s nonsense, because this is not, we’re not all at MacDowell Colony together. It’s a pandemic. You’re upset.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Beth Pickens:
You’re anxious and traumatized and depressed. So, the quality of the time is so compromised-
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Beth Pickens:
… that I don’t want any artists to think that something should have happened with it. If you survived it and you’re okay and your loved ones are okay, that’s a miracle and we can build back up your art practice. We totally can. But no expectation that something should have happened because you had more time during the pandemic.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I love the way you said that because I see that there’s a lot of shame layered on top of just the regular not feeling the usual mojo and what we talked about at the beginning. The things that I normally do to fill myself up, lunches with my friends, nope. Go to a museum. Well, actually I can do these things now. I can do them. For a while, I absolutely couldn’t do them because they just weren’t open, but I can but just in a limited way.
Beth Pickens:
Everything was so compromised and unavailable and people’s coffers are empty. Artists have to have their coffers refilled in order to do things.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Staying on the subject of time, my husband and I are big fans of Rabbi Heschel. I love what you said and what you brought out that he said, Rabbi Heschel, about Judaism being a religion of time. And that really is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, marking the time with the period of rest and making time sacred. I would love for you to elaborate on what advice you give to artists, many whom are not Jewish.
Beth Pickens:
A fraction of my clients are Jewish. Some of them, actually, a lot of them are Jewish, but very few of them are interested in anything about the Jewish tradition. And yet I bring to all of my clients the concept of this concept, because it’s so beautiful, making time sacred.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Beth Pickens:
And that is transformative for an artist to make time sacred. And it is so counter to what our culture tells us about productivity and working nonstop. It’s certainly counter to the Protestant work ethic that I grew up in, this working class idea of you work and work and work until you keel over and die. Well done. That was a beautiful life.
When I first read this book and then I started reading it every Friday night on Shabbat to really have it sort of sink into my DNA, I realized that this is sort of a gift and that gift would turn into something transformative for my clients. The idea that they could make time sacred and that rest would make the other time a different quality.
So I asked all of the artists I work with to pick a 24 hour period. It does not have to be the Jewish Shabbat and it doesn’t have to be the Christian Sunday. It doesn’t have to be any particular day of the week, but I ask them to pick a 24 hour period that they will commit to having a boundary around in relationship to the world of paid work and striving. That includes anything related to their art practice and anything related to paid jobs. Certainly there’s other work they’ll be doing. There’s always labor with children and homes and our own bodies and shopping and cooking and cleaning and this stuff of life, but having a boundary for 24 hours with the world of that kind of work, being a worker in that way, sort of freshens up and rests that part of the self.
And I think artists really benefit from it because artists, you all are a very distinctive class of workers. You’re the only worker I know of that works paying jobs in order to do your job. And that makes you different from me and the rest of the world. When I’m not working my job, I’m not then going to the job I really want to do and mean to do. I’m doing other things.
And so artists, I think over the years, really believe that seven days a week they just have to be working and that can corrupt their relationship to their practice, that can really, and just erode their personhood. People need rest. And so I ask them all to do this. People fight me on it. They hate it. And at first, they dislike it and I tell them, “That’s okay. You can curse me. You can dislike it, but I just want you to commit to it for maybe a month just to see what happens.” And it always starts to change something inside of them.
Miriam Schulman:
One of the things you just said reminded me of a different part of the book. I’m not even sure if this is on my list of questions, but I love the idea you have about how our practice does not have to be what fully supports us. It’s okay if we have an alternative stream of income that supports our art. Do you want to say a little more about that?
Beth Pickens:
Yes. I love breaking that myth for people that being an artist means you make all or most or some of your money from your creative practice. Some artists do. Many do not including listeners, some of your faves. Some of the people you think are amazing and brilliant and geniuses, they may make all or some of their money from other ways of living. Very few artists make all of their work from their practice.
And I know from experience, the artists who do make 100% of their income from their creative practice, they’re not happier and they don’t feel more fulfilled. It’s just a different relationship to it because it’s a job. And when something is a full-time job, our relationship to it changes. And in fact, those artists who make all of their money from their practice, I always ask them to sort of discover and carve out and protect a corner of their practice that is not currently touched by money so that they can have a different relationship to it.
Miriam Schulman:
What you said just now is just so wise and so brilliant because at one point I was fully only doing portrait and fine art work. I did feel happier when my income was also supported by online classes and other things, because that put me in a position that I could turn down commissions that I didn’t want to do.
Beth Pickens:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
And when I was fully supported by just my commission work, I didn’t feel I had the luxury to do that. And now I do. So my creativity is actually helped by that additional income stream.
Beth Pickens:
Yeah. It’s wild, right? When something becomes 100% a job, of course our relationship changes to it because then it’s fully intersecting with capitalism and capitalism, I mean, I love money. I want money. I want all my clients to have money. And when something is about money, as it’s sort of soul focused, it can change our relationship to the thing. I want people who want to earn money from their work to do that. And I help people move in that direction.
But we’re always looking at it for what it is and what that means and how to protect their practice so that its biggest value is not money. That’s one of the outcomes, that it’s central value is it’s foundational to their wellbeing as a person. That an artist, my whole thesis in life and my professional life, is an artist is someone who has to make their creative work because it’s how they understand being alive. And it’s how they process their lived experience. And that, again, is what’s distinct about artists from me and the rest of the world who benefit from it. Sure. I totally benefit from that, but I don’t need it the way I see my clients need to make their work or they feel bad if they don’t make it.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so true. All right. You had some wisdom around this, how to set employment boundaries. So those artists who do have work that is not their creative practice, what is your recommendation to them?
Beth Pickens:
I think one is thinking about, can you give your paid day jobs or whenever time you’re working them, can you give them like 90% or 92%? Still an A but not 100 or 110%. Can we turn down what that job has to be and then what it chiefly exists to pay for your life so you can go have a life. So I think one, I noticed, especially for art, a lot of artists teach. A lot of artists do many things, but a lot of you teach. And teaching is a very draining kind of job, particularly if you’re doing it remotely, because you’re just sort of talking into a computer, but teaching and many other kinds of work, there’s sort of an endless pocket of work. You could just keep pouring and pouring and pouring into it.
So I ask people to first evaluate the kinds of paid jobs that they have. What are they doing to them? How much are they asking of them? What are some natural boundaries we can set? So for example, with people who teach, I’ll ask them to think about, “Are there some commitments, committees, for example, that you could let go of? Can you slow down being a perfectionist in the world of your paying work and just do a good, solid job?” Even in turning down from 110% to say 90%, we can find so much capacity that can be opened up for their creative practice and be opened up for their art where I want them to give more of themselves because they get so much back.
Your paid job, you pour into it, you get a paycheck back and that’s the exchange. Your creative practice, you pour a lot into it and you get many other things back, too. And sometimes with artists, I find that we have to actually find them a different kind of paid work. I think of it as paying work that interacts neutrally or positively with yourself as an artist, but not negatively. And if you find that your paid work is actually just draining your practice, then we might start to brainstorm what other things could you do for money that it’s sort of easier to have a boundary with. Or when you’re not there, you’re not thinking about it. And everybody is different.
Miriam Schulman:
You had said in your book that if you have a day job, maybe do B plus work because your B plus is someone else’s A minus. But I would even take it a step further because even the work that I do that is my forward front facing stuff, sometimes I’m only striving for B minus. It is so easy to get caught up in that perfection of this high achieving thing of what you think it needs to be. And even your B minus is better than most people’s not doing it at all.
Beth Pickens:
Absolutely. And that’s the grade I’ve given everyone during the pandemic. You only have to do a B minus at everything in a pandemic.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that. Okay. So we’re fully on board with B minus.
By the way, I loved her book so much that I decided to give away books to my listeners and here’s how. I was going to limit it but we’re not limiting it actually, but you have to follow all these steps. Number one, leave a review on Apple Podcasts for the Inspiration Place before 5:00 on Monday, May 17th. Do that by going to schulmanart.com/itunes. If you do not have an iPhone, you can actually do this on your desktop. Just go to iTunes over there. Then take a screenshot of your review just before you submit it and send it to us in an email to support@theinspirationplace.net with your name and your shipping address. And then we will send you your copy of Make Your Art No Matter What. Only restriction, yes, you have to live in a place that Amazon ships your book to.
If you don’t know how to leave a review, check out this link for simple instructions, schulmanart.com/review-podcast. There’s written instructions there as well as a video to walk you through how to leave a review. And of course, we’ve got the full details of this giveaway in the show notes, go to schulmanart.com/140. If you’re on your phone, the link’s right there. Now, if you’re wondering what’s the catch, there isn’t any. I would just love your review in exchange for the book. Good luck. Now back to the show.
Resistance to asking for help. Now, I just want to set some context before we dive into the book. I’ve been hearing this a lot from my community. So I’ve been inviting my listeners and listener, you can do this now. Shoot me a direct message over on Instagram. I’m @schulmanart there. I would love to talk to you.
Some of the conversations that I’ve been having is around that concept of not asking for help, even in things that surprised me. And if you hear yourself in what I’m saying, don’t think I’m talking just about you. I’m bringing this up because there’s a lot of people saying the same things to me. They’re afraid of investing in a website. They’re afraid to invest in whatever it is, but really what it boils down to is it’s this resistance to getting help to make things easier. So, what do you think are the reasons artists don’t ask for help?
Beth Pickens:
I think it’s socialization, the many intersecting identities and the socialization attached to them. So, for example, not only women or people who’ve ever been socialized as female, but certainly all of them, too, have been socialized to believe that I can only give, I can’t receive. I can’t ask for things. It’s wrong. It’s selfish. How many people have been told asking for anything is selfish or narcissistic? So, socialization is a huge one. And then I think artists have an extra layer of socialization on top of that, where they’ve been told messages like if you ask for something, you seem desperate. I hear that all the time. You seem desperate. You have to wait for people to offer or come to you. Because if you ask for something it’s like thirsty or needy or desperate. Or that somehow if your work is giant quotes “good enough” that you don’t need to ask for something, like the world will come to you.
And none of these things are true. None of these things are true and people get help all the time. Often that’s made invisible to us. There’s so much help to people who have astronomical careers because of their proximity to power and capital, maybe because of their personality and willingness to ask, often luck.
But I find that the more people ask for of all kinds of things, opportunities, introductions, of emotional support, money, the more they get, it’s sort of like probability. The more you ask for the more you’ll get. And importantly, the more you’ll be rejected and turned down. And that’s a muscle I want all artists to strengthen, the ability to detach from being told no or not answered or rejected in some way, the ability to experience that and detach makes it easier to sort of rebound and then continue asking.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, that’s a perfect segue to my next question. It’s probably because I was going through your book in order and this is how you wrote it. Artists who get stuck on that perceived no. And I see this all the time when I’m coaching artists. They’ll say, “Well, I asked, but I haven’t heard anything.” I was like, “Well, that’s not a no.”
Beth Pickens:
Oh, my gosh. I’m living that right now because my book just came out. I’m doing tons of promotion. And so people are emailing me through my website. They’re DM-ing me, all kinds of things. And I’m very careful to respond to everything that’s real. Like not if you’re trying to get me to sell Ray-Bans, but artists who write to me or people who want to talk to me, I will respond to everyone. It’s just right now there’s a backlog. And so I will get to people, but I have had experiences where someone will be upset and say, “You didn’t write back.” And I have to say, “I didn’t write back yet.” I get a lot of emails. I have 70 clients. I have students. I have a lot of people who email me in a day. And sometimes I just have to make myself sit down and answer 10 at a time and then I get a break. So I’m living that right now telling people that, “No, no, no. If you didn’t hear back, you didn’t hear back yet.” You just didn’t hear back yet. It’s very possible you’re going to hear something.
Miriam Schulman:
You don’t know the circumstances around when they received your email. So they could have been standing in line at the grocery store and they saw your email with the quote for whatever it is. You have a commission that’s $2,000. Just because you didn’t hear back doesn’t mean it’s a no. They just may not have been in the position to write back. They’re standing there with their groceries and they just happened to open your email when they were there. And then they got home and they forgot all about it because their kid had a car accident and now they’re dealing with that.
Beth Pickens:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
So silence is never a no.
Beth Pickens:
No.
Miriam Schulman:
Make them say no to you.
Beth Pickens:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
Just keep asking until you get a no or a yes.
Beth Pickens:
Absolutely. It’s such good advice. Don’t say no for a person.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly.
Beth Pickens:
Get the no from them.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly.
Beth Pickens:
Because then you have closure, too. Then you’re like, “Okay, now I know, and I can move on.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. One thing you had put in the book is making a goal of getting 20 rejections, which I think is a beautiful way of putting it. That’s over what period of time?
Beth Pickens:
I think maybe a year or whatever a person wants to go after. I saw an artist tweet that a long time ago. Yeah. But just like go after rejection-
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, micro nos.
Beth Pickens:
… because along the way, you’re going to get stuff. And you’re going to get really good at moving on from rejection.
Miriam Schulman:
One of my most successful artists inside the Artists Incubator and that show, we’ll link to it in the show notes with Dawn Trimble. She got so many nos but what people see on social media are the yeses.
Beth Pickens:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Miriam Schulman:
Because she’s not going on social media and saying, “I got rejected today.” She’s only telling about, “Hey, I got this opportunity at Framebridge and I got this opportunity and all these people bought my art,” but she’s not going on social media and telling about all the nos. But in order to get those yeses, she had to be willing to be vulnerable and get all those nos.
Beth Pickens:
Files and files of nos.
Miriam Schulman:
Some of it were micro nos, like some are big nos and some are small nos. It depends what it is they’re going for.
Beth Pickens:
Some nos are a paper cut and some will take you out for a day.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, right. It’s like death by a thousand paper cuts.
Beth Pickens:
All artists make money doing so many things. In my chapter on work, I make a partial list of the different jobs my clients have had or do have. And people do all kinds of things for money, all kinds of things, because we live in the world and have to pay for things. That’s normal. And I want to normalize that instead of what is sold to us as this is what success looks like for an artist.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s beautiful.
Beth Pickens:
We have to detach from that because it’s not true and it’s not real. It doesn’t have to be meaningful to us.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. The next section is about diving into fears. So first fear, which I relate to, when you have been in the creative desert, that is 2020, 2021, and now you finally do have time to make art, that fear about making mediocre art.
Beth Pickens:
Yes. What if I make something and it’s bad or mediocre, and then what does that mean?
Miriam Schulman:
It means it’s all over.
Beth Pickens:
Right. [crosstalk 00:24:44]
Miriam Schulman:
You’re never going to make anything good again.
Beth Pickens:
Right. Which goes back to what you were just saying about Dawn. All of the work that we love in the world, the books, the films, the visual art, all of it, we’re seeing the end product. We’re seeing the end of something that a lot of time went into. We’re not seeing all the work that led to making the thing that was really wonderful. And artists, you have to move so much trash out of the way. You have to get so many ideas out to get to the thing that you’re going to make. And a lot of that is work that you’re going to think, “This isn’t very good.” And I’m not being mean to myself. I’m just like, “Oh, this isn’t very good,” but it still serves a purpose. It’s getting you to the thing that’s really good. And the only way to that thing is by getting all the other stuff out of the way.
It’s like you got to write, for people who do any kind of writing practice, people have to write. They just got to get the garbage thoughts out of their mind to drop in deeper. People in every discipline find that they have to sort of like work through whatever’s happening to get to an idea that’s interesting to them. And along the way, yeah, lots of stuff that you’ll think is bad or mediocre, but it’s valuable. Even if you’re not going to ever show it, it’s still valuable.
Miriam Schulman:
Sometimes you just have to move the paint brush around is the way I like to put it. But it’s no different than I think dancers, they go into the studio and they’re doing their plies.
Beth Pickens:
You have to warm up.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s not always a performance of Swan Lake.
Beth Pickens:
You’ve got to warm up. Yeah. And visual artists, I think, are at a disadvantage in the warmup world. I don’t think everyone’s taught that, “No, you have to warm up.”
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, yes.
Beth Pickens:
You don’t just walk into the studio and feel like, “Okay, be brilliant. Paint something great.” You have to warm up.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right.
Beth Pickens:
Lynda Barry is my favorite example of this. She famously talks about that the first thing she does in her studio practice is she hand paints the alphabet and that’s her warmup practice. She doesn’t just start making brilliant comics or wonderful work. She has to warm up. Not every discipline is equal in that training. Musicians, people who do body-based practice, they have been taught you have to warm up, but everybody, all artists have to warm up.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. That’s such a good point. I’m so glad you brought that up. All right. So let’s talk about how to become aware of your fears. What is your suggestion for that?
Beth Pickens:
You have to start listening to your brain, which is terrifying. To listen, to actually pay attention to what you’re thinking, which we do a lot of things to avoid our thoughts because they are harrowing when we actually pay attention, but just simply writing down and noticing your thoughts. Most of them are fear and judgment. That’s just most of what our brain does and that’s not bad. That’s just human. It’s just a human experience. But I think to first identify fears. And how you identify fears is just noticing thoughts, writing them down, what are the thoughts. Because sometimes we think something is just a baked in truth and it’s actually just a fearful thought that we’ve been basing our behavior around. And it’s just a thought. It’s just a fear.
So I think we have to become aware of them. And the way we do that, certainly therapy helps. Talk therapy is very good for helping another person draw fear out of you, but really talking in any context, not even with a helping professional, can help have your narrative reflected back at you. So somebody just repeating what you’re saying back, you will notice like, “Oh wow, I’m really afraid. Those sound like judgments and fears.” That’s the hard work is actually not overcoming or navigating around fear. I think the hard work is actually identifying them.
Miriam Schulman:
Feelings aren’t facts. They may feel big.
Beth Pickens:
12-Step classic. Feelings are not facts.
Miriam Schulman:
Don’t believe everything you think.
Beth Pickens:
They got us on that bumper sticker.
Miriam Schulman:
Especially when your PMSing.
Beth Pickens:
No, don’t believe the thoughts. Don’t believe the thoughts.
Miriam Schulman:
What emotions serve as motivation to make art?
Beth Pickens:
I think all feelings can because one of the gifts of artists is you take feeling and experience and you put them into your work. And then we the audience get to experience that feeling. And maybe that’s a feeling we have a hard time experiencing, but all emotion and experience is fodder for your art making. Not all of it’s easy. Different feelings will be a better sort of direct link into the studio and some might be really hard, but feelings are one of the gifts that you have to put into your work. That is like, what we the audience need is the feeling you’re putting in.
Miriam Schulman:
But what if you’re feeling lonely and isolated?
Beth Pickens:
Okay. If you’re lonely and isolated, we have to counter that. Loneliness and isolation can erode… They’re different from solitude, which many artists need solitude, but loneliness and isolation are a different quality of aloneness. And that’s a quality that I think erodes a practice. Everybody needs a creative community, a group of artists, any discipline, who want good things for themselves and each other, a first person to turn to when you’re feeling isolated, may be somebody in your creative community, another artist, who certainly understands and has experienced it, too. And can sort of be with you in that feeling.
Miriam Schulman:
Fears of marketing. One thing you said, I’m just going to quote you, “Artists who avoid marketing tend to fear or want to control what other people think of them.” Oh, let’s talk about that. That was so good.
Beth Pickens:
Because marketing and publicizing your work is you taking up space. It’s taking up space, which is very frightening for people. And sometimes people have been told they shouldn’t, or that it’s bad to do so. So, you’re taking up space and you’re making assumptions that your work belongs in the world. And those are scary prospects for people. And the bigger you let your life become outside of your own control, the less control, which was always an illusion anyway, but the less control you have over other people’s perceptions and what they say and think and their opinions.
And I’ve experienced that in real time with my books. It was so scary to put my first book out because it meant sort of like being visible in a way I had never been and never intended to be. But to sell a book, I couldn’t hide. To sell a book, I had to take up space and tell a lot of people about it and do lots of marketing, things that made me supremely uncomfortable, which made me even more empathetic to what artists go through.
But particularly in modernity, in the crowded world of our digital age, there’s so much stuff. There’s just so much stuff going back to Shakespeare. It’s not like there was a million playwrights in his town. He was probably one of the main playwrights. There wasn’t a lot of competition for people’s eyeballs. Think about just the sheer volume of not even art, but content. How much stuff is plugged, is stuffed into our lives that we don’t even want, that we can’t get away from. The noisy world. It’s very visually and orally noisy.
And so artists have to actually kind of like crowd in and say, “Here I am. Here’s what I have,” and do the work to help their work get to the audiences who want and need it. And that takes effort. And that effort is uncomfortable, but it’s not going to kill you. Which sometimes I think artists think, “This will truly kill me. If I have to do this, it will kill me.” And it will not.
Miriam Schulman:
I speak also to artists who feel that they just want their Prince Charming in the guise of a gallery to come and rescue them. And what I tell them is, “That’s fine, but you have to market to galleries to get into a gallery. And when you’re in a gallery, they’re going to want you to market.” Yeah. They’re still going to want you to market. You can’t get away from it.
Beth Pickens:
You’re going to experience this with your book, too. The publisher, they’re going to say, “Okay, so tell us your marketing plan.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Like it was a 60 page document. It took me six months to write this thing. When people say, “Well, haven’t you written the book yet?” It’s like, “No, you don’t understand.”
Beth Pickens:
[inaudible 00:32:07] the marketing plan. [crosstalk 00:32:08].
Miriam Schulman:
They want to know everybody I’m friends with first.
Beth Pickens:
Yes. Yes. So many spreadsheets of every person you’ve ever met.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, exactly. And then now color code them by how well I know them.
Beth Pickens:
Yes. It’s intense. It’s intense. And all of that stuff feels so counter to why people are making the things they want to make. But it’s sort of like for artists, I think, you know that your work is meaningful. It means something to you. You probably have heard it means something to other people. And so it helps your audiences to do the work on its behalf to get to them so they know about it. You’re not bothering people. They want to know about your work.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I spoke to an artist recently who was starting over after 20 years. And the advice I gave her was like, “Well, if I were to start from scratch and I had no podcast and I had no social media, I would just tell everybody I knew that I was an artist and have that authentic conversation with them.” And I said, “And by the way, that is how I started my business 20 years ago before there was social media.”
Beth Pickens:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
Working it into every conversation. “Oh, you want to see my art? What’s your email address. Thank you.”
Beth Pickens:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
You’re reaffirming it to yourself and you’re telling the universe.
Beth Pickens:
Exactly. You’re taking up the space. You’re asserting, “This is who I am and this is what I do.” Every time you tell someone else, exactly, you’re telling the world, the universe and you, you’re reminding you, “This is who I am. This is who I really am.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Everybody get the book, Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles. We have linked it in the show notes, but I am giving it away. Oh, you have only until-
Beth Pickens:
May 17th.
Miriam Schulman:
… thank you, May 17th. So if you’re listening to this podcast after, hey, it’s a paperback. Just get it.
Beth Pickens:
Just get it.
Miriam Schulman:
Just get it.
Beth Pickens:
It’s never a bad thing to buy a book.
Miriam Schulman:
No.
Beth Pickens:
If you don’t like it, give it away.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Buy it anyway. Okay. Best $17 you’ll ever spend. Okay. We’ve included links to the book in the show notes, schulmanart.com/140, as well as the details about that giveaway. So send us a screenshot of your podcast review before Monday, May 17th and all giveaway details, again, are in the show notes, schulmanart.com/140.
All right, Beth, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Beth Pickens:
Yes. Keep making your work. If you take nothing else away from me or anything I ever say or write, keep making your work. It will make your life better.
Miriam Schulman:
Beautiful. Thank you, Beth. All right, next week we have the one and only [Terri Cole 00:34:37]. And trust me, you’re not going to want to miss it. Make sure you hit the subscribe or follow button in your podcast app. Thank you so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook @facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart, and, of course, on schulmanart.com.
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