How many times have we heard ‘Money doesn’t buy happiness’? At best that’s a warning to value the non-financial things in life. At worst, it’s a ploy to convince poor people to be content with their lot.
Money *can* buy opportunity, or the chance to maximize opportunity. It can buy time.
Fox mouthpieces mocked Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for being too poor to afford an apartment in Washington DC until her lawmaker’s salary starts in January.
Writers and artists muse on the false ‘bootstrap’ of having sizeable monetary support from their parents or partners, and how that opened opportunities for them.
We struggle with definitions of success and failure: when are creative people perceived as ‘professional’? When they finish art? When they receive meaningful critique and recognition? When they can subsist or thrive on their sales?
A decade ago I had a messy parting with an art gallery (our mutual fault, to be honest) and the owner’s last shot at me was along the lines of ‘You’re not a professional artist because you’re making art on a kitchen table.’
I remember laughing at the time. As an insult it meant little beyond the fact that I didn’t (and still don’t) have a separate art space.
I tried that several times: too much money for too little result, and too much risk of losing art and supplies to theft or landlord lockout. The co-op studios I’ve worked with (including that one) had precarious finances to begin with. I’ve seen friends lose their possessions, tools, and supplies when they couldn’t pay space rent or storage fees. I recently watched several local boutiques crater when their actual sales traffic wasn’t able to support their rent.
I’m selling about 65% of my completed art within three years of finishing it. That’s a good ratio for me. Still, I need to be making a lot more on art before I’ll set up a dedicated studio. Even then, it would be within or steps away from my living space for convenience. And insomnia.
I make some pretty good art on household flat spots. My ‘kitchen table art’ is in museums, university libraries, and corporate and private collections. I’m far better known as an artisan, than a writer.
Then too, the ‘kitchen table’ I most often work on (not in the kitchen) is an ancient, heavy, carved walnut table my parents rescued from a barn near Santa Fe decades ago. Family legend, bolstered by the testimony of then-retired government workers, placed the table in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe around the time Lew Wallace wrote Ben-Hur. Is it true? I have no idea. The table certainly matches some period furniture that I’ve seen for sale online. I take a certain whimsical pride in that massive gothic pile of wood. My other main tables are whatever cardboard is around, and a $40 folding table from Home Depot.
Antique table-gifts aside, I cringe when I see creators discount the effect of family support. My family and friends have made my creative life much easier, compared to many of my fellow creators’ experiences.
When money is equated with merit, poverty is criminalized. Or reduced to a voiceless caste.
Artists, writers, and other creators are routinely expected to produce high-value work for free, for “exposure”. The same people offering such dubious gigs would not dream of asking other professionals to work for free. Or they are quickly shot down by saner voices.
Newer members of the ‘creative class’ are so desperate for opportunity, they’ll take those free gigs. They’ll pay ridiculous amounts of money to vanity publishers. They’ll jump on pyramid schemes, fee farms, and terrible work-for-hire situations (IAPWE and Upwork, I’m looking at you.)
How many lost opportunities are out there? Not just in art and writing, but in science, business, and politics? What is humanity losing when only rich people’s kids can afford bold chances to change the world?