Today, I want to talk about the frustrating ways that the worlds of art and business do not always mix well (AKA how artists are taken advantage of and don't know how to protect themselves). I have realized that if you are a working artist of any kind, then you HAVE to be a business person as well. It doesn't matter what kind of artist you are--whether you are a designer, a musician, a photographer, an actor, a visual artist, etc. If you are an artist, then you are your own business. And you are the only person in the world who will look out for, and can stand up for yourself.
All week, I have been having flashbacks to June 2011, when I was laid off from my job at Performance Space 122. Being laid off was a complicated thing that made me feel a couple of things very intensely. First and foremost, I felt taken advantage of. It hurt that after years of working grueling weekly schedules at that theater, often above and beyond my job description, I was easily and unceremoniously let go when they didn't "need" me anymore.
I know that they would argue: "But you were paid for your time!" This is true, and this is not true. What was I paid? I was paid $20 an hour over the entire four years that I worked there, with no raise of any kind, ever. If they had to hire an extra person for a day, then they always got paid the exact same rate that I did--$20/hr. As you could probably guess, I never received any kind of health benefits or vacation time. Although I spent well more than 40 hours in that building every week, I was treated as inferior to the "regular staff"--it was constantly reinforced to me that I was just an "hourly employee." I was a line on the budget, I was someone not worth investing too much in. I was replaceable, and therefore, disposable to a degree. If I didn't like the working conditions, then I could just leave.
And so, for four years, I put up with all of this for one main reason, which was that I really, really loved that theater. For all its faults, I believed in that place. I believed in its mission statement and in what it was trying to do for theater in NYC. I spent so much time at PS122 that the place really did feel like home to me--I thought of my fellow staff members like family. And so I justified all the crappy conditions to myself, time and time again.
Looking back on it all, I was so, painfully naive. To think that the people I worked with were my family, or even my friends! How many of them even called me after I lost my job? Just to say hello, to see how I was doing, just to check in? I can tell you how many--no one did. Not a single one!
It has been almost a year and a half since I lost that job, and I'm really not bitter anymore. Losing that job taught me a lot of good lessons about how to stand up for myself in the world. It also taught me not to be so invested and distracted by how much I love the art, that I allow myself to get taken advantage of in the process.
Today, I really have moved on. I'm in a happier, more self sufficient place now in my life. I have a good life now--I see friends regularly, I am doing something that makes me happy. Things are generally good. But sometimes something happens that pushes on the bruise that was left by PS122. And that is what has happened to me this week. And all over again, I am struggling to figure out how to best stand up for myself as a working artist, in a business-minded world. It is so hard to walk the line between those two worlds, with one foot in each, without getting lost in either. I am well aware that all of these situations do not happen only to me--they happen to almost every artist that I know. I wish that I could fix all of this for everyone--but honestly, I can barely figure this stuff out for myself!
Thanks for listening to me rant...I feel about 10 pounds lighter now :) Are you a working artist?? How do you navigate the business world???
