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Feb. 3rd, 2004 03:35 pmDrove home from my mom's place yesterday, arriving near my apartment complex only to be turned back into the wilds of Dallas by policemen and firefighters due to a gas leak nearby. That was about the most exciting thing that happened to me.
My mother inexplicably prattled on to my grandparents about this comic I'm doing. She's apparently very impressed that I've worked out the backgrounds for the characters, lots of things that don't actually figure into the story itself but infuse and inform the characters' reactions. I'm happy, though mildly puzzled at her uncharacteristic behavior, because this means she's actually taking my effort seriously. I have this unconscious comlex where, if my mother doesn't take soemthign I'm doing seriously or indicates that it seems out of character for me, then I end up dropping it and doing something different. I started out my undergraduate career as an art major. I did have problems with some of the people in the art department -- nothing major, and nothing that any of *them* were aware of -- it was things characteristic of the painting professor who didn't actually *teach* painting; we were, apparently, expected to spend 3 hours a day in his class discovering 1500 years' worth of oil painting techniques ourselves. Another problem was having a painting of mine that was hung in a student exhibit stolen, and the records-keeping was so lax that nobody bothered to find out whose paintings were missing and notify them. I only found out when I showed up to pick up my painting, we hunted through the storage room were they'd been placed after the exhibit ended, and they eventualy told me "Oh, it must have been one of the ones that was stolen."
So while my abrupt departure from the world of art (or that particular art department) to the world of anthropology was, nevertheless, not completely unprecedented, it was my mother saying "I can't really picture you pounding the pavement trying to sell your art" that put the nail in the coffin and chased me out of that field.
Fast-forward a little over a decade, and here I am. I've just done my taxes, so I know to a penny how much money I've made from art this year. Between con sales, photographing weddings, making costumes, and the occasional commission here and there, I've earned $1035.50 income from art, and if I get off my butt this year, I can earn more. I've had two people contact me in the last week asking for costumes; I've got a wedding this summer to photograph, there are three con in the next six months, one of which I'm going to have a table at, and there are some other potential ventures in the air right now (see paragraph about comic script, for one thing).
I think I just may be an artist, despite my mother's prediction. I know that people say, when I tell them about my mother's attitude, "Just don't listen to her!" What I can't get across is that *it's not a conscious thing*. It's like my fear on airplanes. I *know* the statistics. I *know* the physics. I *know* that airplane journeys are safer than automobile journeys by a long shot. It doesn't stop me from spending the journey holding the plane in the air through sheer force of will. There is nothing I can do, short of several years of therapy, to stop this from affecting me.
Which is why I'm happy that my mother seems to be treating this comic thing seriously. My internal editor has been pacified by her acceptance, and it's not going to stop me now.
[OK, those of you who *want* me to post long meandering essays on my itnernal state of mind: there you go. This is as intimate as it gets for me, and it's all you're going to get. You have to make the effort to talk to me in person if you want anything more. :) And no, there are no private entries in my journal, and the friends-only ones are that way if I'm saying something that I think may reflect badly on someone or some organization that I'd prefer not be *generally* known.]
My mother inexplicably prattled on to my grandparents about this comic I'm doing. She's apparently very impressed that I've worked out the backgrounds for the characters, lots of things that don't actually figure into the story itself but infuse and inform the characters' reactions. I'm happy, though mildly puzzled at her uncharacteristic behavior, because this means she's actually taking my effort seriously. I have this unconscious comlex where, if my mother doesn't take soemthign I'm doing seriously or indicates that it seems out of character for me, then I end up dropping it and doing something different. I started out my undergraduate career as an art major. I did have problems with some of the people in the art department -- nothing major, and nothing that any of *them* were aware of -- it was things characteristic of the painting professor who didn't actually *teach* painting; we were, apparently, expected to spend 3 hours a day in his class discovering 1500 years' worth of oil painting techniques ourselves. Another problem was having a painting of mine that was hung in a student exhibit stolen, and the records-keeping was so lax that nobody bothered to find out whose paintings were missing and notify them. I only found out when I showed up to pick up my painting, we hunted through the storage room were they'd been placed after the exhibit ended, and they eventualy told me "Oh, it must have been one of the ones that was stolen."
So while my abrupt departure from the world of art (or that particular art department) to the world of anthropology was, nevertheless, not completely unprecedented, it was my mother saying "I can't really picture you pounding the pavement trying to sell your art" that put the nail in the coffin and chased me out of that field.
Fast-forward a little over a decade, and here I am. I've just done my taxes, so I know to a penny how much money I've made from art this year. Between con sales, photographing weddings, making costumes, and the occasional commission here and there, I've earned $1035.50 income from art, and if I get off my butt this year, I can earn more. I've had two people contact me in the last week asking for costumes; I've got a wedding this summer to photograph, there are three con in the next six months, one of which I'm going to have a table at, and there are some other potential ventures in the air right now (see paragraph about comic script, for one thing).
I think I just may be an artist, despite my mother's prediction. I know that people say, when I tell them about my mother's attitude, "Just don't listen to her!" What I can't get across is that *it's not a conscious thing*. It's like my fear on airplanes. I *know* the statistics. I *know* the physics. I *know* that airplane journeys are safer than automobile journeys by a long shot. It doesn't stop me from spending the journey holding the plane in the air through sheer force of will. There is nothing I can do, short of several years of therapy, to stop this from affecting me.
Which is why I'm happy that my mother seems to be treating this comic thing seriously. My internal editor has been pacified by her acceptance, and it's not going to stop me now.
[OK, those of you who *want* me to post long meandering essays on my itnernal state of mind: there you go. This is as intimate as it gets for me, and it's all you're going to get. You have to make the effort to talk to me in person if you want anything more. :) And no, there are no private entries in my journal, and the friends-only ones are that way if I'm saying something that I think may reflect badly on someone or some organization that I'd prefer not be *generally* known.]
