diluted

The title of this post seems a fitting one to follow my last, pushing back a bit against the expectation that I commit all my waking hours - and maybe some of the sleeping ones, too - to being an artist. Along those lines, one thing that I've been mulling over quite a bit lately, as I transition back into the reality of establishing a more robust studio practice, is this idea of "diluting" one's "brand". Search the web for something like "artists dilute brand social media" and you'll find no shortage of how-to articles and cautionary checklists (I'm an artist - I will naturally question your so-called "rules") about how to market and sell your work without diluting your brand. One could write an entire essay (and I'm sure someone already has) about whether or not artists should even think of their work in the context of personal branding, but I won't do that. Whether you think of the images you share with the world via social media a personal brand or not, I'm here to argue for artists in particular not really giving a fuck.

A day (or two) in the life of @danceswithkids, one part artist.

I think about this a lot for selfish reasons, obviously. My social media handle is @danceswithkids, after all, fully embracing sometime in 2017, the many facets of my life as a creative parent who sometimes has to do boring stuff to make money and who, in her elusive free time enjoys dancing, baking, traveling, and spending time with cats. If I have a personal brand, it includes all of these things. I won't open a separate Instagram account for any particular area of interest (or obligation). I'd like to think, instead, that I'm part of an increasingly vocal community of creative folks who embrace the idea that being an artist, in particular, can include being all of these things, not just sharing images of one's work, studio space, other art we're looking at, and so on. Less so in my case, but I've seen a lot of artists wrestle with this lately for political reasons as well.

These ideas I hope will get some steam from the late, great Ursula K. Le Guin, whose passing a couple of weeks ago inspired a surge in rereading and listening to past interviews. I had no idea she addressed so openly her life as a writer and mother. In this Fresh Air interview (from 1989!), she tells Terry Gross, on the topic of "babies and books," "there are some of us who really need to do both and are perfectly capable of doing both.” And this, via Austin Kleon, from Le Guin's Dancing at the Edge of the World: "Babies eat books. But they spit out wads of them that can be taped back together; and they are only babies for a couple of years, while writers live for decades..." (emphasis mine). And finally, from this article via Jocelyn K. Glei's weekly newsletter, second of ten things Karen Joy Fowler learned from Le Guin: "There is no reason a married woman with children can’t also be a committed artist. (This seems self-evident now but wasn’t immediately clear to me.)" It struck me that the self-evident part isn't necessarily so for visual artists, at least not yet, and perhaps made worse by the convergence of social media and our multi-faceted lives being whittled down to "personal brands" that can be bought and sold. Even the artists I follow and admire who don't have kids seem, in my opinion, unnecessarily concerned with diluting their "art-brand" by sharing images of all the non-art in their lives. This unfortunate trend I find, frankly, a little boring. Being more transparent about the juggling act at the core of being an artist is important. It adds to our humanity, and we could all use a little more of that these days.

Diluted? No. Rich in a way that those with monetary wealth from their successful personal branding may never truly understand.