Life's Necessities and Feature #104

Nov 23, 20099 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Nov 23, 2009

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Life's Necessities

One must feed oneself, shelter oneself, and cloth oneself.  It's also nice if one can spend time with friends to keep from becoming too introverted, introspective, and depressed.

Any of you who have been following my account here for a long time will know that I go through periods of lots of art production, and very little art production, but this latest period of no art is particularly bad.  What you guys don't know is that it's not for especially bad reasons.  The truth of the matter is that I lost my only reliable source of income this time last year, and despite trying for months I was unable to find another paying job, not even something crappy at a coffee shop.  Out of desperation, I decided to try and sell corsets, a business endeavor I tried back in '01 but failed at horribly because I could not afford traditional advertising, and free internet advertising was not yet practical for business-building.  To my surprise, it has been working out astoundingly well.

It's not that I intend to give up on my art, but I do need to feed myself, and the sewing has real potential for real income, but only if I give it the time any start-up business needs.  Add to that the fact that the economy is even worse now than it was last year (with no signs of improvement anytime soon), and the handful of art sales I made at the holidays last year looks like it might just end up being none.  I don't at all blame myself or my art for that.  However, one must realize the irony involved in my complete inability to sell a $50 oil painting, while at the same time I can sell a $500 corset.  If that doesn't say something about what our society values, nothing does.

Thus, I made a decision to focus on the sewing and give it all the time it needs.  When I can, I'll still draw and paint, but until I've set up the groundwork for the corset business, that probably won't be very often.  Once the groundwork is set up, I can back off to about 8 hours a day, and take a couple hours to paint every day or two.  The sewing is fun, but the painting feeds my soul.  No matter what happens, I'll never give up my art.