The Canadian author and well known knitter, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has just written a searingly polite but vicious post about the recent obnoxious comments about the arts made by Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

The comments on Stephanie’s blog were mostly supportive of the arts but one comment really got my goat because it betrayed such a profound lack of understanding about the realities of working in the arts.

Tonja wrote (cut to show the relevant parts, spelling in context):

“I, also being a relative “average” citizen as yourself, find it extremely irritating when artists of all sorts feel that it is their “right” to be a snob about their art. What I mean is this: I am using my God-given talents to the best of my ability, and while they are not astronomically brilliant, I have to work to provide a living for myself. I am using my TALENTS to provide for my LIVING. Operative word: work - and I work hard. I find it resentful when artists feel that thier talent should entail them to life’s finer side of life simply because their painting (which sometimes I feel I could replicate easily) or their violin playing (which I could possibly mimic by whistling) is “talent”. Pure talent is not an entitlement - and this is what I felt that Mr. Harper was saying - that there are those of us “average” citizens who work hard and labor for our livings while there are people - “artists” - who feel that they don’t have to work simply because of their “talent”. Having a subsidy is not work, it is a privilege that they receive as a recognition for their talents, therefore those artists that receive such subsidies should be grateful.”

Here is the response I posted on Stephanie’s blog:

Ah, clearly spoken by one who has never gone through the hell of filling out an arts council grant form!

Tonja, who are all these artists you know who sit around twiddling their thumbs and expecting to be funded? Because I work in the arts and everyone I know is a) skint, b) working far more hours a week than most people and c) doesn’t get holidays, sick leave or any benefits. Most of them DON’T get grant funding and those who are lucky enough to get funding spend weeks or months putting together highly detailed funding applications and scrabbling around for every single penny.

Most of the artists, writers, musicians and theatre people I know need to work two jobs - their art job and then the job they have to do to pay the rent. I believe that the majority of the artists in the US have no health insurance and I know for certain that the majority of artists in the UK have no pension, not because we’re too lazy to work and sit around expecting our talent to somehow miraculously translate into money but because the arts are appallingly badly paid. Often the artist is the one person in the equation who gets nothing. Are you regularly expected to work for no pay? As a fine artist, I am! People expect me to put in written proposals for free, I am expected to pay my own way when I enter shows, hell sometimes I’m expected to pay an application fee for the privilege of even applying for a show! In the last six years as an emerging artist I’ve never been paid and I’ve have had travelling expenses ONCE.

Talent means NOTHING without a great deal of hard work and there are damn few folk in any area of the arts who haven’t ‘paid their dues’ by spending YEARS working very hard for very little financial reward before ’suddenly’ becoming famous.

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Are there pretentious idiots in the arts? Hell yes! Undoubtedly there are those in the arts who don’t do the rest of us any favours but every industry has its stereotypes (Lawyer jokes, anyone? And what about those arrogant doctors?) and I’m sure there are people in every industry that make their peers cringe.

I know that many people don’t ‘get’ what we do and sometimes we don’t explain it very well. Heck, some days I don’t get why I do it either! But I am incredibly fed up of people assuming that artists don’t work, that artists expect to be funded and moan when we aren’t.

Oh OK, so artists do moan about funding but come on, everyone moans about the ‘upper management’ in their jobs, don’t they? Artists moaning about the Arts Council (or local equivalent) is mostly just our version of standing around the water cooler bitching about those idiots in Accounts!

I’ve certainly never expected to get funding from anyone and I know very few people in the arts who do: as a rule, we’re all extremely aware just how fragile, random and incomprehensible the funding system is. I’ve never applied for an individual grant from the Arts Council England but I have been involved in two groups who got tiny sums for a couple of projects and believe me when I say that those couple of hundred pounds were very hard won - I could probably have earned much more in far less time if I’d gone and stood on a street corner!

Right now there are a lot of very hard-working, unpretentious and worthwhile arts organisations in Britain who are hurting because the Olympics have resulted in widespread funding cuts to the arts (despite our government saying that ‘no, no, of course money wouldn’t be taken from the arts to pay for the Olympics). In the last year I’ve noticed the number of opportunities advertised in [AN] Magazine has absolutely plummeted although whether this is related to the credit crunch or funding cuts, I’m not sure.

It’s not just the visual arts either, I know several writers and they’re freaking out about the state of the publishing industry. There are currently lots of changes happening in the way that the arts are organised, distributed and paid for and many of us at the bottom of the arts hierarchy - i.e. those of us who actually make the art - aren’t doing at all well.

So no, we’re not sitting around waiting for taxpayers to fund us and expecting that our ‘talent’ will see us through. Most of us are out there working a second job and/or choosing to survive on very little so that we have more time for our art (I have to do my taxes next month - yet another year where I won’t even have made enough to pay tax) and wondering if we’ll ever get out of debt…

LOST: ONE ART MOJO
If found, please return to Kirsty at Up All Night Again.

Sorry for the lack of posting folks, I’ve been down with a virus for the last few weeks. Needless to say, there hasn’t been a shred of art going on. I always know when I’ve got something else on top of rather my usual Chronic Fatigue because I stop wanting to make art altogether. With this bug I didn’t even want to potter around on the internet much, which is almost unheard off! Instead I’ve mostly been reading or knitting when I’ve not been in bed.

Thankfully I’m starting to feel a bit better and I hope to be back to my regular posting schedule within the next few days. In the meantime here are some autumnal photos to tide you over.

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I am always surprised by how red bramble stems can be.

Kirsty Hall: Red Bramble Stem, September 2008

I shot a whole load of this spider web. I was shooting directly into the sun and this is my favourite because it has just the right amount of glare.

Kirsty Hall: Sunlight on broken web, September 2008

The late afternoon sun made this tree glow with colour

Kirsty Hall: Tree Bark, September 2008

This wasn’t a set up shot; I just spotted this fallen leaf on the bonnet of a car perfectly framed within the dark reflection of the tree above.

Kirsty Hall: Bronze leaf/Black car, September 2008

Does everyone call horse chestnuts fruit ‘conkers’ or is that just a British thing? They are one of the ultimate harbingers of autumn for me.

Kirsty Hall: Conker Shell, September 2008

The late afternoon sun looked incredible through our very grimy windows - sometimes muck and poor house-keeping is just so pretty!

Kirsty Hall: Hazy Window, September 2008

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How apt, just before I posted this, my itunes started playing the Lucinda Williams track, I Lost It, which has the following lyrics:

I think I lost it
Let me know if you come across it
Let me know if I let it fall
Along a back road somewhere
Money can’t replace it
No memory can erase it
And I know I’m never gonna find
Another one to compare

Let’s hope that art mojo is making it’s way home because although I love reading, knitting and the wasting far too much time on the internet, I certainly won’t find another obsession that annoys, infuriates and fulfils me in the way that my work does!

Autumn is suddenly very much here (hey, what happened to our non-existent summer?) and I have been gleaning.

Jean-François Millet: The Gleaners, 1857

OK, not literally gleaning from the fields but definitely harvesting.

Several days ago I pulled up the dying dill plant in my windowbox of herbs, cut off the fragile seed heads and sat them in a bowl to dry.

Kirsty Hall: Dill Seedheads, Sept 2008

Kirsty Hall: Dill Seedheads, Sept 2008

Yesterday morning I sat, half asleep, and gently plucked aromatic seeds from tousled umbels. The ripe ones fell off easily, any that felt silky under my fingers I left to dry out further.

Kirsty Hall: Dill Seedheads, Sept 2008

I ate one at the end of the task and the taste exploded in my mouth - one small seed so much stronger than a handful of the leaves.

Kirsty Hall: Dill Seeds In Bowl, Sept 2008

This morning I collected seedheads from the two poppy plants that arrived unannounced in my garden - in entirely the wrong place naturally! I cut them over a bowl to catch the tiny black seeds that spill everywhere with the slightest provocation.

I have been gleaning in my art as well. I am in a research phase so I’ve been reading a lot, using tiny scraps of paper to mark pages and then transcribing found words, phrases and ideas into my sketchbook. I’ve been searching through my boxes of images looking for just the right combination of visual information and trawling through ebay for the materials I need to start my next project. All seeds that will grow into something new.

Everywhere in my life; gleaning, gathering, hunting, harvesting, searching and storing.

I thought I’d write about balance today. It’s supposed to be my ‘word of the year’ but I don’t feel I’ve been very focused on it or that my life has been very balanced in these last 8 months.

I remember walking along the beam in gymnastics when I was in primary school. It was simply an overturned wooden bench with a thick, solid cross-beam and it was probably only about 30cms from the floor but it might as well have been a rickety log above a raging torrent as far as I was concerned! I never felt safe on that beam and I often fell and had to go back to the start and try again. I was not an athletic child and my balance was never great. Of course, I might have done better if my imagination hadn’t been soaring above me, so that I was secretly half convinced that I was a spangly circus star on a terrifyingly thin wire suspended above a gasping crowd.

Last Monday my son returned from his summer in Scotland and the rest of the week was spent getting ready for his return to school on the Thursday. It’s always a bit of last minute scrum of haircuts, laundry and new school shoes and I’m sure that I’m not the only artist mother who has found her art falling by the wayside on the week that term starts. Some weeks, life simply takes precedence and art has to be shoved aside.

This week we should settle back into a normal term-time routine and at last I’ll have more studio time but even though it’s positive, these transitions still hit me hard. This year was even more stressed than usual because due to illness, my son hadn’t been in school since Christmas. Fortunately he made it back without incident and although I have a lot of residual anxiety, things seem (fingers crossed!) to be OK now.

It recently occurred to me that I secretly believe there’s a perfect life/work balance that can be miraculously attained and then indefinitely and effortlessly maintained. Whereas in reality, I’m still this distracted kid who constantly falls off the beam and has to go back to the beginning. When I’m parenting, I feel slightly irked that I’m not making my art but when I’m making art, I feel slightly guilty that I might be neglecting my parenting. It’s never a perfect balance: I am always on the wrong end of a see-saw or spinning frantically on a roundabout feeling sick and wishing I could jump off.

And in truth, that’s how it is for all of us because balance isn’t balance if you can’t fall. To be mutable, unstable and ever-changing is simply the nature of balance - if a thing is steady, immovable and fixed then there’s no need for balance at all. And whose life is steady, immovable and fixed? Certainly not mine!

In my more enlightened moments, I understand this but enlightenment - like balance - constantly slips from our grasp. So here we all are, balancing on our thin little lives and constantly shifting our weight from one side to the other. Maybe we’re smoothly adjusting to the airflow around us or maybe we’re juggling plates on the high wire, frantically wobbling and worrying that we are about to fall off!

I once saw a short film that involved a man standing in front of a sign. One arrow of the sign was labelled ART while the other, which pointed in the opposite direction, was labelled LIFE. The man hovered indecisively and anxiously between them, running off first in one direction and then a moment later running back the other way. Back and forth he went at varying speeds and for varying lengths of time, occasionally slumping against the sign in utter exhaustion. Art/life, life/art: a constant struggle, a constant search for balance. The audience, largely made up of artists, was in fits of laughter, all of us clearly experiencing comedy of recognition.

As I grow older, I realise that, as John Lennon said, “life is what happens while you are making other plans”. This is my life: this muddle of half tended garden plants; a child who needs new school trousers (even though he said he didn’t!); a messy, neglected studio; a house in a state of flux from bouts of decluttering; emails left unanswered; blog posts unwritten; a head full of half-baked art ideas and always more things on my to-do list than my health can truly handle.

Yet I still walk across that beam every day; some days feeling the cavernous drop beneath my feet, some days seeing that I am really only 30cms from the ground and perfectly safe. And I think perhaps you do too…