THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 132 - SELLING ART

Once I figured out that I could sell what I wanted to do, this unlocked my ability to generate as much work as possible. The main thing that prevented the usual dilution of content & quality that most money driven things was/is my inability to compromise my vision. This formula is probably impetus plus form equals product. The impetus is the thing that drives me, the nagging desire to express myself & have people pay attention to what I do. There is no reason for this if I’m not expressing myself. The form started out as drawing, the first thing I sold to other students was Origami shirts that I drew on. This was quickly replaced by printing my own comics & then zines. Printing helped me duplicate my work. Each discovery opened up a new world. Money was looked down upon in most of the social circles I ran in in the Bay Area. Even though I feel that money is obviously similar to air, water, food & blood & the like as far as a pervasive thing. A lot of people have an issue with it, but I think it’s just an inevitable feature of a society that has any degree of complexity. If you ignore money or have an issue with it, it’s just going to generate problems for you. There are lots of people who have never lived without money who have lots of really judgmental opinions about money that just shows that they have this limited life experience. So, my take on it is that money is inevitable, necessary & so what you do in life needs to be monetized. Not everything obviously, I suffer from that. But enough to pay your way. The other thing is that building sales into your work produces the natural emphasis on art being a communications medium. So many artists seem to think they can exist without these two things, & the fragmented nature of our society emphasizes this. Because you can survive without being whole, people do that & then we have this epidemic of incompletion. The artist serves a role in society, which is to show people what they can’t see, hear what they can’t hear, taste what they can’t taste. Present an experience of the inexperienced world, expand the boundaries.

x SEAN

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