Too Many Hats? Painter, Writer, Poet

Dear Reader,

Finally, an article that explores two issues of interest: Artists who need a day job that makes it possible to follow their art and the phenomenon of creative people who practice two or more arts.

Day jobs might organically support the artist’s craft. Consider composer Philip Glass, who was also a plumber. If you are familiar with his compositions, the combination makes sense. Being a plumber can be solitary work which allows time to think and absorb ambient sounds and rhythms. Clank. Whoosh. Ding. Plumbing systems are themselves compositions.

Some artists’ occupations move closer to pure artmaking, which is driven by the need to express oneself and ideally not completed for money. Ed Ruscha was a sign painter. Willem de Kooning was a carpenter. Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, David Hockney and Marc Chagall designed stage sets. Waldman wrote: “Artistic success…means earning enough money from your art not to have to take a job.”

While I was teaching, I wrote essays and books about (the art of) teaching. I produced educational materials. I transformed my dissertation about peer mediation into a book. Waldman would describe my writing as falling within the range of my “skills and talents.”

Since childhood, my passions were poetry and art. While I was teaching, I stepped into the arena with one leg and wrote poems leavened with art references. Leaving full-time teaching allowed me to continue writing poetry and to return to making art. Finally, I was all in, a privilege I have enjoyed for 20 years.

Sometimes, one art pushes the other. I call it Reciprocity when a poem inspires a painting or vice versa (Judy’s Journal 2007, November). I cannot and will not balance my time doing what has become a triple-art dance. Projects develop and guide me, shaping what to do with my days: writing a non-fiction book, making art for an exhibition proposal that may or may not be accepted, and inviting Dame Poetry to sit next to me when she shows up.

There is a lack of patience and understanding toward those of us who practice more than one art. I have heard these unsolicited comments about my work: “You’re a better painter than you are a poet.” “You are a better writer than you are a painter.” “Why don’t you just spend your time writing (or painting)?” Good thing I can just shrug and think, “That’s your opinion. I will keep on doing what I do.”

Self-evaluation is a constant, and I recognize that every paragraph, poem and painting is a work-in-process. I struggle to make my writing and art sing to me. Waldman wrote that “[s]ome artists may try to simultaneously grow both of their undertakings – and yet the balance shifts from year to year.” Understanding balance is one of the hardest things for me. Reading that sentence came as a relief.

The longer I attend readings and exhibitions, the more I meet artists/writers or composers/artists or writers/composers all in one package. Some are even composers/writers/artists. Take that, naysayers! Waldman mentions the ridicule endured by Tom Hanks, the short story writer, Steve Martin, the novelist and James Franco, the poet. Her closing question is worth thinking about: “Why do we rain suspicion on those who seem ruled by competing creative impulses? In this moment when our pieties about identity are unraveling to admit more nuance, what’s wrong with letting people do two [or three] things at once?” Absolutely nothing, Katy Waldman.