Second homework summaries.

Katrina McCann

2/1/11

Catherine Scala

Professional Artist

Summaries of Chapters 1 and 11

Chapter one is all about overcoming the struggles that artists face in making a career out of a BFA. It goes through from grade school into that crucial time after highschool graduation when you need to ultimately make that decision. The chapter talks about how some art students make it all the way through art school and then end up questioning if they can make a living off what they've been paying to learn for four or so years.

It then goes on to talk about money and how more often than not, artists are required to spend money in order to earn money. This is especially true in my field. Kilns, wheels, and other such tools used in the art of ceramics don't run cheap. The chapter ends with a brief note on realizing that once an artist decides to sell their artwork, art is now becoming a business.

Chapter eleven gets more into gaining the courage, as an artist with your own ideals, to put yourself and your work and your ideas out there for people to view and dealers/curators to purchase or display in their gallery. The chapter then goes on to explain how paranoia can get the best of a lot of artists, causing them to never want their art to be displayed to the public. Some artists will show their artwork, but they will not go to every distance to advertise the fact that it's being shown in the particular gallery that's showing in out of fear that the “wrong people” will go look at it.

The chapter also talks about the matter of competition in the art world, overcoming it and not letting it get the best of you, as well as dealing with rejection. So many artists these days give up simply because of how many times they get rejected by galleries and collectors. This, the book explains is a good reason to get an agent to deal with rejection for you. They don't feel the pain you would if you were directly told you weren't good enough, or what the gallery is looking to sell under their name.