+Me2 and I have been working together for nine months and have only talked once on the phone. All communications have been through Kik, this blog and an occasional e-mail. If you know anything about communication then you know this is a very limited palette.
Sometimes I think that +Me2 and I see eye to eye and then he posts a piece like yesterday and I know we don't. Don't get me wrong, we have much in common, more than we can both properly express. But we arrive at our mutual love of legography from such different roads it is almost laughable.
I have never worked for Big Inc. the closest I have gotten to a real job was a four year stint in an arts non-profit. I have been out of the corporate work force for so long that when +Me2 starts expressing business concepts I feel that he is speaking another language.
I am really trying not to take offense at this choice bit:
I feel a drive to take pictures and work my "art" but I need the touch with reality and big Inc. to feel that same reality and feel the power balance and not just live in my ivory tower seeking for inner beauty just within myself.Seriously is this how he views artists? I am sure you can find this stereo type practicing their art somewhere, but I am pretty sure I can lift the lid off any corporate hive and find similarly delusional individuals. They are not limited to the arts world.
Any artist who can count themselves as successful (by which I mean they can pay their bills) has been playing the business game just like any Big Inc. The scope might be smaller, but the spreadsheets, meetings, budgets, advertising campaigns, search for marketshare is no different. We just get the work done without the buzzwords.
Maybe +Me2 and I need to pick up the phone more because something seems to have been lost in translation.
~ xxsjc
After this post I wonder if +Me2 and I will make it another 9 months?
An interesting article on Art graduates and income from the WSJ.
I was surprised to run into this little Chima bird when I went hiking this weekend. A welcome sight after a tough hike.
I'm with you, Shelly, but I hope your differences don't tear you apart. I once co-authored a book with a Tea Party type, and we worked really well together on the book because we didn't discuss politics--or our kids, who didn't get along. Interesting article from the WSJ, though in some categories, including the one I happen to be in, there's a lot more corporate setting the parameters of what we write, unless we're very successful, decide to go the small press route as I am doing, or self-publish.
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