The Art of Going Pro: an identity crisis

Today we’ll be start­ing another series this time look­ing at lan­guage and mean­ing so we can begin to set­tle on a way to describe our­selves, what we do and our “value posi­tion” in a larger con­text. We’ll also exam­ine the dif­fer­ences between an ama­teur and a pro­fes­sional to see how increased clar­ity of these two labels can enhance our iden­tity, per­for­mance and success.

So ask your­self these questions:

• Who am I?

• How do I describe myself, my work when the need arises?

• From what point of view do I respond to situations?

• Do I use that point of view when deci­sions are needed regard­ing my work?

It’s about language

The lan­guage we use to describe our­selves, what we do, how we do it and how we frame our responses to deci­sions, is directly related to how we are in the world and how oth­ers expe­ri­ence us…it seals our iden­tity and in turn describes our vocation.

We all know what an engi­neer looks like, or a nurse, or teacher or graphic designer, because these words have been so con­sis­tently  used to describe peo­ple with skill sets that are unique to their par­tic­u­lar voca­tion. We also gen­er­ally know how such a per­son responds to deci­sions that effect or involve their work.  We know this because we have time tested con­cepts of peo­ple who these folks are, and what it takes to do what they do. We also have pretty uni­ver­sal under­stand­ing of the “value “ posi­tion these folks hold in our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive lives, we know their rel­a­tive posi­tion within society.

Over the years of work­ing in a vari­ety of cre­ative endeav­ors I have noticed a trend, an iden­tity cri­sis… we (peo­ple who make things from ideas) seem lost. Unlike other voca­tions or pro­fes­sions, we have no con­sis­tent way to describe our­selves that gives us a clear pic­ture of our own iden­tity and seals our “value posi­tion” in the larger soci­ety. In other words, we don’t seem to have con­sis­tent lan­guage that pro­vides a uni­fied image of who we are, an iden­tity we can align with.

Instead, we kind of sput­ter as we move from one descrip­tor to another. Are we artists? Arti­sans, crafters, or ven­dors? Con­sis­tently I see these words describ­ing the same thing, the same voca­tion, no won­der peo­ple are con­fused when we respond to their “what do you do?” ques­tion with dif­fer­ent lan­guage each time they ask us. More­over, no won­der poten­tial buy­ers of our work don’t seem to value what we make…they have no clue because we have no clue!

Mean­ings and definitions

Before we begin though, let’s take a look at some of the com­mon def­i­n­i­tions of artists,artisans, crafters and ven­dors. My sources include Wikipedia, Miriam Web­ster, Amer­i­can Her­itage, Collins Eng­lish and Ran­dom House  Dictionaries..

Gen­er­ally, every source defines an Artist as

• a per­son who prac­tices or is skilled in an art, esp. paint­ing, draw­ing, or sculpture
• a per­son who dis­plays in his work qual­i­ties required in art, such as sen­si­bil­ity and imagination
• one, such as a painter, sculp­tor, or writer, who is able by virtue of imag­i­na­tion and tal­ent or skill to cre­ate works of aes­thetic value, espe­cially in the fine arts.
• a per­son whose work shows excep­tional cre­ative abil­ity or skill
• a per­son who dis­plays in his work qual­i­ties required in art, such as sen­si­bil­ity and imagination

By con­trast an arti­san is defined pretty evenly seen as:

• a per­son skilled in an applied art; a craftsperson.
• a skilled man­ual worker who makes items that may be func­tional or strictly dec­o­ra­tive, includ­ing fur­ni­ture, cloth­ing, jew­elry, house­hold items, and tools.
• a skilled man­ual worker; a craftsperson.

Defin­ing an arti­san as an artist is pretty much con­sid­ered obsolete.

Craft is defined as:

• an art, trade, or occu­pa­tion requir­ing spe­cial skill, esp. man­ual skill: the craft of a mason.
• skill; dex­ter­ity: The sil­ver­smith worked with great craft. (Ran­dom House)

Next let’s look at Craftsmen/craftsperson or Crafter:

• a mem­ber of a skilled trade; some­one who prac­tices a craft; ( Collins)
• An occu­pa­tion or trade requir­ing man­ual dex­ter­ity “(old English)
• to make or fash­ion with skill, esp. by hand
• a cre­ator of great skill in the man­ual arts

Finally, what exactly is a ven­dor? This label seems to be uni­ver­sally applied to peo­ple who are sup­pli­ers, who make or assem­ble stuff for oth­ers to sell.

So, are you an artist?

The impor­tant dis­tinc­tion here is that an artist is a per­son who’s work reflects imag­i­na­tion and tal­ent and often cre­ates work of aes­thetic value. So for exam­ple, those who might tra­di­tion­ally be seen as arti­sans or crafts­peo­ple by virtue of their medium could eas­ily be con­sid­ered artist because they  choose to use the medium in orig­i­nal or imag­i­na­tive ways as in altered pots or recy­cled and recon­fig­ured clothing.

An argu­ment could cer­tainly be made for the degree of orig­i­nal­ity involved in the mak­ing process as a key point of dis­tinc­tion sep­a­rat­ing artists from arti­sans and crafters. Where arti­sans and crafters make things with their hands artists take the whole thing to another level by not only mak­ing some­thing with their hands but also mak­ing some­thing that has its ori­gins in their imagination.

So for exam­ple a per­son who strings or assem­bles pre-made beads onto metal strands with lit­tle thought about com­po­si­tion or design would be con­sid­ered more of an arti­san or crafter. On the other hand, some­one skilled in shap­ing or using metal in ways that express a clear unity of design that requires imag­i­na­tion, knowl­edge of mate­ri­als as well as skill could be con­sid­ered an artist.

Iden­tity is the key

Finally, remem­ber why I’m tak­ing you here…it’s all about iden­tity and change. If con­sumers are con­fused as to what you are,they are reduced to visu­al­iz­ing you by using the terms they know. Gen­er­ally, unless you are show­ing in muse­ums or high end gal­leries and/or you work in one of the tra­di­tion­ally labeled “fine art” medi­ums, con­sumers will not see you as an artist but rather as a crafter or arti­san. Instead, they will see your low prices, your booth set up, your web site, etc. and  assume you’re not seri­ous  about your work. The degree to which they take you seri­ously, is directly related to how their expe­ri­ence with you and your work reflects  your own image of your­self as an artist.

In their best sell­ing book Switch Chip and Dan Heath clar­i­fied iden­tity issues by cit­ing research that boiled down to the three ques­tions below. So I’d rec­om­mend you  mem­o­rize them:

• Who am I?
• What kind of sit­u­a­tion is this?
• What would some­body  like me do in this situation?

When you come to a deci­sion point regard­ing your art or any­thing related to it change those ques­tions to:

• I am an artist

• The sit­u­a­tion con­fronting me has to do with me and my art

• What would an artist do in this situation?