You Know Who You Are

Just finished a two day 'Artists in Action' stint up in one of the big resorts here on the Coast. This event was started in 1999, after I did the first ever 'Whale Festival' poster and sat in the hallway between the Wick restaurant and the Natn'l Park Interpretive Center. It turned out to be so popular that I ended up organizing an event around being an artist and demonstrating your work for the last 10 years. Brought lots of local artists on board and got the local resorts to participate by loaning a space/room for the artists to display and "action" in. Obviously if you were a chain saw carver that didn't work, but we had quite a roster of creative folk.

Anyway, this year I stepped back from organizing because of my Dad's precarious health and not knowing what was going to happen, so a good friend and fellow creative soul took on the organizing. I did hear from her about the woes and workload though (preaching to the converted) and it was interesting to see it all from a 'sidelines' viewpoint.

Now I've organized a fair number of art events in my career and dealt with lots of egos but I have to say the one major thing that I find most reprehensible in artists as a whole, is the irresponsible attitude displayed when at an event. And the most major of all is a lack of commitment to being on time and staying the advertised hours of the show. I'm sorry to report that in my experience, artists up here just kinda breeze in whenever or maybe show up, unless the weather is sunny and the surf is high, or maybe it's too much after a night of partying and, well, if sitting there and being bored is getting in your face, then they are gonna leave early too.

I'd like to add it's not just locals being slackers, as there have been some pretty well known artists cancel out at the last minute. Thanks for that.

So putting aside the fact that the time and effort of organizing (volunteer by the way!) and having major resorts donate space to the artists for free so they have a venue to sell and get seen; this lack of irrresponsible unprofessional behavior adds into the whole mythology that Artists are lousy, lazy, slackers.

You know who you are and you deserve the title.

The rest of us artists who can and do act with professionalism are pretty fed up with you. Our time is just as valuable to us.

Wake up to the fact that how you conduct yourself will come back to haunt you.

OK that's it from 'Mom'.

Painting is: 'Selbstportrat Mit Lampionfrucchten' by Egon Schiele......which I loosly translate to mean - "Self Portrait with Chinese Lantern Branch"...just think the expression is so perfect as an illustration to this piece.