Question: Am I an idiot?

Answer: Yes.

I had another art show a couple weeks ago. Same one I did last year at the Tacoma Dome. Still didn’t really have anything to sell. But that was not for lack of tying! Leading up to the show I was pulling all-nighters trying desperately to finish and cast some sculptures. Having decided I just can’t sell my one-of-a-kind stuff for any sort of reasonable price I concluded my current business model should be 1. Teaching, and 2. Selling casts of my work. I’ve got number one down pat. It’s fairly easy for me now. Especially since I took my business mentor’s advice and started charging for my classes up front. Now, instead of a list with a hundred names on it that I have to solicit and end up only getting one or two actual students, I end up with a list of 4 people who already paid me and show up. But I was really hoping to start phase two for this year’s holiday season. If there is one thing I’ve learned about me and art, it’s that cramming doesn’t work out too well. Mix in new materials and processes and it’s completely hopeless. Especially with materials that have 48 hour set or dry times. So basically I ended up staying up all hours for a week or more clobbering together shabby molds that mostly didn’t work and ended up with nothing to show for it and no product to sell yet again.

“Well now, Josh,” I hear you say, “That hardly qualifies you as an idiot. Those are merely the actions of a buffoon!”

Ah, but that is only half my story. Now let’s talk about what I did for 5 days while sitting in my booth at the holiday show. Well, first of all, I was shocked to find that I can quite happily sit in one spot and sculpt like a workhorse for 11 hours a day with no breaks quite easily. Sure I took bathroom breaks and ate a bit, but usually between bites I was still working. This knowledge comforts me because I was worried that my mid-term goal of working from home as a sculptor might not be feasible due to my poor work habits elsewhere. But I see now that won’t be a problem when I’m creatively engaged. Sadly, it’s very hard to engage me creatively apparently, since I work at a freeking video game company making scenery, and still have trouble buckling down. Really, it doesn’t get much more creatively engaging than that. Well, apparently the exception is being my own art director and making sculptures of whatever the heck I want. So I’m a very lazy very hard worker.

But this is all distracting me from proving my status as an idiot. One thing I’ve complained about myself before on this blog is my propensity for starting new art before I finish my other stuff. I have at least a dozen sculptures that are probably around the 80% mark. I’ll bet I could have finished most of them off had I taken them to the art show and worked on them. That would be what a non-idiot, or mere buffoon would have done. But I’m being about as predictable as a romantic comedy now. Of course I didn’t do that. Instead I started 3 new sculptures. And of course, none of them are done.

Oooooh, but just you wait… when they are, you are going to be blown away. They are awesome. (Quoth the idiot.)