Long story short, I finished my MFA and moved back home to deal with some of my debt before I move to a bigger city with galleries and opportunities, etc. I only plan to be here for a year or so. I’m trying to remain active so that there aren’t bare spots on my CV—doing shows in cafes and bookstores, lobby galleries, things like that. My family and friends seem generally supportive, but they still ask skeptical or frustrating questions like, “Are you still painting?” “How long did it take you to paint that?” “What does that mean?” “Do sell your work?” How do I answer?

Julie Mehretu. Untitled (Skybox), 1999; ink and watercolor on three overlaid vellum sheets pinned on board; 18 x 24 in.

There’s no shame—or at least there oughtn’t be—in exercising some sober options to get your financial house in order. In the long run, you may be setting yourself up for more stability than a graduating MFA who ends up further in debt by heading straight to the Big City in an attempt to fast-track a career. However, it sounds like you’re a bit isolated, and anyone in your position might be tempted to make biased, self-denigrating comparisons. If your peers have taken other routes that currently seem more advantageous, then you might have the sense of being overlooked or delayed in your progress. And after the rush and rigor of an academic program, many newly graduated artists initially feel estranged from their own practices. Taken in aggregate, all this might be enough to make an artist feel defensive, and it’s possible that you are hearing questions like, “Are you still painting?” through the lens of some insecurities. Perhaps these questions aren’t skeptical; maybe the questioners just don’t understand how an art practice or a career in the arts work.

In any case, the easiest way to answer these sorts of questions is to answer the questions. “Are you still painting?” “Yes.” “How long did it take you to paint that?” “I don’t know.” “Do you sell your work?” “Yes, thank you. I take cash, checks, and PayPal.” And surely, when asked what an artwork or a motif means, your MFA crit-group training will aid you in making something up on the spot.

Endeavor to reserve a little compassion for yourself, and some empathy for others. Remember that the MFA is a specialist degree that has endowed you with a technical vocabulary. Imagine yourself talking to someone with an equally specific body of knowledge that’s foreign to you, like a linguist or a plumber or a key grip. Imagine that, despite your genuine interest, your conversation might be awkward or stilted because you understand only the broadest outlines of what they actually do all day: “So, uh, do you get to hang out with famous actors on set?” Our key grip could now roll her eyes and sigh, or she could meet your enthusiasm with patience and kindness: “Not often, because I work directly with the lighting. But sometimes I help with the blocking, which is lining up the actors with the best audience sight lines.” Though they may occasionally frustrate you, try to assume that your questioners have good intentions, and do what you can to enlighten them about an artist’s practice and career.

The best counterbalance to your frustration is to have a community that you can talk to. If you aren’t already doing it, line up studio visits (or laptop studio visits) with other artists, critics, and art professors in your area. Use Skype to keep in touch with your MFA colleagues. If occasional trips to a city nearby won’t break the bank, consider going a few times to visit galleries and museums, and to meet with people who share both your interests and your specialist insights. If you can make a trip to the place you’d like to eventually live, you could work strategically to make contacts well in advance of moving. The important thing is to focus on the activities that support your practice: making your work, talking with your peers, and looking at what’s happening in the art world(s). If you concentrate your attention on the things that bolster your efforts, you won’t have time to get annoyed. Good luck!

Caroline Woolard. ourgoods.org cards, 2010. Courtesy of the Artist.

Within a neoliberal economy that supports the debt-backed-professionalization of artists and activists, I question the relationship between overproduction and underpayment. What are the conditions that make overproduction desirable? When did monetary payment for art and activism become necessary? While artists and activists demand payment for work, we must also articulate our relationship to payment systems: market sales, state-support, philanthropy, and solidarity economies that center on livelihood. Acknowledging the diverse economies that I circulate in, I hope this writing points towards the internal contradictions that make professionalized, debtor artists and activists in the United States (including me) hustle for cash while engaging in projects on scales that cannot possibly compensate all participants equitably.

As most people reading this already know, the labor behind many works of art is veiled by a myth of individual genius. Although contemporary artworks that circulate in museums, galleries, and biennials are mostly produced by unpaid interns, underpaid artists’ assistants, seasonally-employed shop technicians, and far-flung contractors hired by artists’ project managers, narratives that celebrate individual charisma and “the artist’s touch” continue to permeate wall labels and art discourse alike.

Many artist-collectives, by sharing labor and decision making power, counteract the alienation that often occurs with an hourly wage and a drive towards efficiency in rapid production. To make labor visible, for Artists Experiment at MoMA in 2013, I proposed an ongoing event where artists, interns, assistants, and craftspeople would stand beside the works of art that they labored on, telling visitors about the process of producing each work, as well as the forms of compensation received by each person. This proposal, submitted as one of six options for Artists Experiment project at MoMA, was not chosen.

Read the full article here.

This week’s column is illustrated with collages by Irina and Silviu Szekely.

Your financial counselor, hard at work.

My question is: how does an artist decide how much a certain piece is worth, monetarily?

One of the most difficult things to do is put a dollar value on your work. In the absence of a gallerist’s guiding hand and prior knowledge, you have to ask yourself all kinds of ancillary questions: where am I at in my career, is this object well-made, is it unique, what have I sold in the past? etc. Pricing your work means it’s time to be brutally honest about where you stand in your career vis à vis what the market will bear. It can be a tough call. Who—at least of the unrepresented among us—hasn’t sold a piece and then wished they had asked for more? Or wondered if unsold work might have had a buyer if it was offered for less?

This is just one more situation in which artists need to do their research. Start with the local galleries and art fairs and look at the prices of work that is similar to yours to get a range of values. This will help you create a basic list of prices, but don’t stop there because numbers aren’t the only part of the equation. Take a look at the resumes of the artists, too, as accomplishments make a difference in setting a price. If the paintings of an established mid-career artist with work in private and public collections sell for $30,000, and you’re fresh out of a BFA program, then your work is not going to sell for the same amount even if the size, medium, and style are comparable.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( framing, deframing and reframing of semi-accidental linkages ), 18 x 22. Image courtesy of the artists.

You’ll also need to consider what it takes to make your work and what kind of work you’re making. For example, take the economics of production into account. What do you spend on your materials? Likewise, if you’re selling framed work you need to account for the costs of matting and framing. The type of work you’re making also has a particular value. If the work is part of an edition, it’s valued less than an original. A print from an edition of three hundred is less expensive than one from an edition of five.

When you’ve accounted for as many variables as possible, give yourself a small range of prices that you think are acceptable and run them by an artist friend who understands the art market. If you have access to a sympathetic teacher or dealer, you could ask those folks, too. I find that bouncing a number off a neutral party can help me make a final decision. I also take into account the words of a former professor, who told me that his sales strategy was to price things on the lower end of the scale. “I’d rather have a slightly smaller check than store [my paintings] indefinitely,” he said, and this is yet another thing to consider when you’re trying to put a dollar value on your work.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( the amputated experience of Sir Coincidence Sobject ), 27 x 23 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

I am a performance artist. I have had many invitations lately to show my work, but I am worried I won’t have enough money to pay for all of the travel and materials. Is there a way to get an ‘art loan’? What would you do? I’m right on the cusp of something. It is so much about freeness, but also, it’s crazy to be running on hot air.

The first thing I want to say is that if you’re receiving invitations to perform, you should be getting at least some financial support from the institutions and venues themselves. Have you written any emails along the lines of, “Thank you for your interest in my work. Here are the costs associated with my performance, including airfare to your city. Please let me know how you are going to fund this performance.”? Though I suspect that this is not a magical solution to your problem, I would love for your work to be supported by the venues that ask you to perform for them. That’s not going to happen if you don’t ask directly, and at least it gives you a place to start.

As always, there are some larger issues at work here. We all know of some great institutions that operate on a shoestring budget. What happens when one of those worthy venues sends you an invitation? Do you turn them down if they can’t fully fund your work, thereby maintaining your financial integrity but losing an opportunity? Or do you suck it up, go into debt, and hope that this performance leads to one that will be fully financed? In a broader sense, how much do we artists have to give away before our work has (real cash) value? Can any of us afford to turn down an opportunity on principle? It’s frustrating to feel manipulated by a system that asks the very producers of culture to give it away for free. Considered on a global scale, someone somewhere is making money on our collective work, and it’s no good if you’re contributing meaningful effort and not getting your slice.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( unrefined manners of repossessing devaluated objects ), 18 x 18 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

Would I get an art loan? Only if absolutely necessary and with a clear and realistic repayment strategy in place. Debt has a way of spiraling out of control, and it might be a while before you can get out from under the lead thumb of interest rates and minimum monthly payments. After all, this isn’t just about cold hard cash; it’s about your mental and emotional health, too. If the debt from today’s performance crushes your soul, how in the world are you going to get out of bed to make tomorrow’s? You need to consider the long-term implications of debt so that you can have a satisfying career instead of money-related burnout.

After you try to get some funding directly from your venues, the next step is to look into grants and awards. Grant Space at the Foundation Center has a comprehensive list of grant-making institutions. The online guide is by subscription (about $19/mo), but you can search their site for a bricks-and-mortar location near you where you can look through the guide for free. Grants are great. Not only do you get some money toward a project, you also get a line-item on your resume; even if the grant is small it has more than a financial benefit. One of the related perks of getting a grant is that it provides you with a grant history, which makes it easier to receive grants in the future (in general, granting institutions want to give their money to artists who have a proven record of being able to manage their funding properly). Start small and work your way up—a $200 grant today might not cover many of your expenses but it boosts your chance of getting a $2000 grant next year.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( temps de rêver au temps de vie, s’écrire et s’en douter ), 30 x 41 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

Local funding can be crucial. Is there an institution in your area that provides small grants and awards? Try googling the name of your city and “art grant” to see what comes up. The great thing about funding on a local level is that is gives you the chance to form relationships beyond mere dollars. One artist I know received two grants from this regional institution and then was asked to sit on a grant-judging panel a few years later. The money came at the right time, to be sure; but additionally he got a wonderful “grant education” from being a judge and helping evaluate the applications. That’s the kind of knowledge that will help him get larger grants in the future.

Some of my friends have had substantial success with Kickstarter and similar crowd-sourced funding. One friend raised enough money to go off to a two-month residency across the country, and another’s campaign was so effective that he raised almost $4000 more than he requested. However, a good Kickstarter campaign takes time and energy to put together. If you’re going to try it, I suggest you spend a lot of time researching the site’s prior funded projects to determine what elements contributed to their success.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( simulacrum of an aesthetic mistrust prepared on the back of a postcard after periods of ontological fissures ), 56 x 82 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

One thing to note about all of these sources is that they don’t provide money overnight, so it’s a good idea to think as far ahead as possible. Kickstarter may be among the fastest to pay out, but for any of these options it can take weeks to put together a strong application, and the checks from granting institutions come months after the application process ends. Where will you be in a year, and what will you be making? If you can start planning well in advance of production you’ll have a better chance of finding financial help. Art is so much about freeness: to experiment, create and perform. The trick is to find financial backing so that you can continue to develop your work without the weight of pecuniary shackles.