The Bright Shiny Parts and the Soggy Leaves

There are parts of being an artist that look exactly like you imagined they would.

On September 11, I’ll be hanging my work at La Divina Italian Café, where it will stay through November 11. There were be framed pieces on real walls. People drinking coffee and eating gelato while my strange little creatures look down at them.

That is one of the bright, shiny parts.

And then there was Saturday morning.

I was supposed to be at the Baton Rouge Arts Market. Instead, the rain came down, everything got wet, and I eventually found myself back home hosing off my canopy bag because it had somehow collected a layer of old soggy leaves.

Also part of being an artist.

I’ve been doing markets for fourteen years now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there is no version of a creative life where you finally reach the point that everything becomes predictable.

There is no nice straight road marked ARTIST: THIS WAY.

There are good markets and terrible markets. Shows that come together beautifully and events where almost nobody walks through the door. There are pieces you think will sell immediately that sit around for years, and odd little experiments that people fall in love with. There are opportunities you go looking for and others that appear from directions you never considered.

Sometimes you get to hang your art in a lovely café.

Sometimes you hose leaves off a canopy bag.

And somehow, it is all the same job.

I think that may be one of the strangest things about choosing a freelance creative life. From the outside, people mostly see the finished part: the art on the wall, the book on the table, the performance onstage.

They don't see quite as much of the carrying, drying, packing, editing, applying, posting, driving, unpacking, repacking, troubleshooting, and occasionally standing in the driveway with a garden hose wondering how quite so many leaves got inside something that was supposedly zipped shut.

There are certainly easier ways to make a living, but I don't think I would trade the unpredictability for something perfectly straight and sensible.

Because the same life that gives you the rainy Saturday also occasionally gives you the thing you couldn't have planned.

Right now, one of those things is La Divina.

On September 11, I'll be carrying my Unbelongings inside instead of hauling them beneath a canopy, and they'll get to live on the walls there until November 11.

I like that.

Maybe that's the trick to a creative life. You don't wait for the road to become smooth.

You learn to notice the bright and shiny things when they appear.

And you keep a garden hose handy.