Embroidered Collage

A profitable art business is no longer one of my goals.

You probably wouldn't have noticed anything different if I didn't tell you.  I will be creating and blogging and selling on Etsy with a professional attitude and doing a certain amount of promotion, just as you've seen in the past.

All of the differences are behind the scenes.  I have invested a great deal of time into figuring out how I should build up my art, fitting what I want to create into what will be good for the customer, from selecting price points to keywords to subject matter.  I've researched and considered, abandoned and retried, and made long-term plans.  All this with the goal of making a profit, even just $1 after expenses and deductions, within the next five years.  I just haven't blogged about much of it.

I won't be doing that part anymore.

I never actually dreamed of being an artist.  I never seriously considered making a living this way.  I was intrigued by this microcosm of a business for the same reasons that I chose to pursue my MBA.  I wanted to achieve a profit for reasons that had little to do with the art itself and that, well, that gets into the problem of "making something that no one needs and few want," as I read somewhere a few months ago, and the general difficulty of the path.

I did and do dream about creating beautiful and amazing complex artwork with embroidery and collage.  I would love to be written up in FiberArts magazine someday.  This is going to take a great deal of education, practice, and growth.  I need an outlet for what I create in the meantime and want people to enjoy my art and occasionally vote with their pocketbooks as to its value.  But I don't need to be making a profit overall in order to do those things.

I will still be creating art, but I will also be doing something else.

I have dreamt of being a writer at many times during my life, not of novels, but of non-fiction.  I considered taking technical writing for my next career path before I chose to pursue the MBA.  I still want the concept of communication to be a backbone for my future studies and career, whether in a corporate organization as one aspect of my duties or as the core of my being self-employed.  Building up my abilities and reputation is just as slow a process as becoming a profitable self-representing artist.  There are just as many fears and doubts associated with it.  But there is the benefit of more income potential and the advantage of being a business I actually want to run someday.

Writing and arting will hopefully remain sidelines and essentially hobbies for many years to come as I pursue my primary career objectives, but they will both be present.  I'm not giving anything up.  I'm realizing where my priorities lie.

An additional plus for the art side is that this decision has freed me to think a little differently about what and how I'm creating.  I'm expecting more embroidery in the future and also an emphasis on samplers, although I'm not 100% sure about that last yet.