What’s your time frame?

Career path musings

It is hard sometimes to see the road ahead. Could this be particularly so for artists? Maybe.

What’s Your Time Frame? We are dreamers, imaginers. Our families have often labeled us as impractical, as though the drive to make art was a choice! I know that describes me. I did not chose art. Art chose me just as much as my gender expression did.

My career path has been long. I’ve exhibited, from the midwest, all over the United States in group and solo shows, in small alternative venues and museums. I even have artwork in public collections, some of them major.

But that is over a fifty year time frame! I could not possibly have imagined, nor planned to spend fifty years to get to this place of relative success. I say relative because, despite the extensive and at times impressive resume, I am not a household name in the art world.

[su_divider]

I’ve noticed lately that a lot of my new work is about finding the way

What’s Your Time Frame? I’ve noticed lately that a lot of my new work is about finding the way: sextants, navigation, astrolabes. There are layers to this wayfinding, to be sure. The tools I imagine I am using are old, imprecise and help traverse land, sea and sky and on out into the vast universe. Discoveries are made along the way: concrete material mastery and spiritual ah-ha moments.

[su_image_carousel source=”media: 10720,10716,10713,10710,10703,10702,10701,10579,10572,10565″ limit=”10″ slides_style=”photo” crop=”none” columns=”5″ captions=”yes” link=”image” target=”self” autoplay=”7″ image_size=”medium”]

I am still on my career path, though, and am trying to compress this remaining time on Earth into something recognizable:

A MAP and a DESTINATION

Career counselors often talk about goals: 6 month goals, 1 year goals, five year goals, financial goals.

All their talk seems to involve concrete numbers:

•Number of sales,
•amount of money in my bank account,
•number of galleries representing me…by particular dates.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you probably know I have a teensy little problem with numbers and calendars. While I can operate them functionally, keeping track of where I should be and how much money I have…it does not come naturally to me. Numbers do not fundamentally communicate meaning to me. They just are operations I must do to remain housed, fed, medicated etc.

But MAPS? They are physical. North, South, East and West don’t always work for me, but I do get where I am going just fine and have fun along the way. I just physically orient the map to point in the direction I am going so I know when to turn left or right! Drove my husband nuts! But it was the only way I could find my way around Detroit in those pre-GPS/ smart phone days.When I am moving in space with materials in hand, the world makes sense to me. (Did I mention that I am a sculptor?)

Do you remember when road maps had little mileage markers on them?

I used to get Triptiks from AAA for road trips. Each page would tell me how many miles, how many turns and how long to completion and they were always oriented to drive forward. Never had to read the those maps sideways. BRILLIANT! Even the folding maps had numbers between the intersections on most of the routes you could follow. Add up those numbers and you had your distance. Divide by a speed limit and you had your time frame…sort of.

My maps have been curvy and chaotic throughout the years. I have mangled all the possible folds in all the road maps in my glove box, turning them every which way and inside out. But it seems to me that although I am a wanderer by nature, following my intuition around every available corner, it might be time to target specific destinations on that map and and find the shortest routes, set some time frames.