Artists are workers

By Priscilla Guy
Co-Founder of Intersection Project

Art Jobs are Jobs, Too....but how do we make it clear in people's mind? In 'our' minds......?

As an artist, I wish for my work to be recognized as 'real work', as a 'real job'. I am a professional dancer, I am an artist, I am a worker. I contribute to the economic development as much as a librarian or a taxi driver. I work hard to create and teach. I perform for audiences. I get paid, I use my creative mind to solve problems and create pieces of art. I constantly train and push my knowledge. I am a worker. But Jeffrey E. Salzberg's article expresses well how sometimes the larger society and artists themselves don't even think of art jobs as 'real jobs'.

To me this is the heart of the problem: as long as artists do not feel confident about the nature and relevance of their work regarding the growth of society, it will be impossible to envision art as an essential element of everyone's everyday life. Art, or 'Culture', is a crucial element of a society's development. We need to stop thinking we have to choose between funding Education, Health or Culture, for instance. They are all important to the economic, political and social development of our societies, and the challenge should not be to choose which one of these elements is more important than the other.  Many people are trying to establish what should be a priority, although the real challenge is to find a way to support all elements that contribute to the grown of our population and make sure these elements support each other, as oppose to compete.

I think there is something simple, yet incredibly powerful we can do as individuals, or as artists, to initiate that change in the mentalities.

A few months ago, while writing a text for Fabienne Cabado's Blog (Montreal, VOIR.ca) about the voice of artists in society, I decided I would change something crucial in the way I talk and think about my art practice as a professional artist: no apologies anymore about doing what I am doing, no guilt feeling anymore about being an artist.

I decided that because I have noticed artists tend to apologize for doing what they do when comes the time to share their research and practice with other people. As if we are being lazy, and selfish, caught up in an individualistic process when making art, and we feel we have to apologize for not contributing to the evolution of our society. However, art making reflects common needs, questions and hopes members of a society share. Art making is an act of sharing, an act of communication, and when communicating an idea or a concept, we do communicate it to 'another person'. So, in the end, art making is not an individualistic activity; it is ultimately turned towards others.

I decided, for my part, that I would stop nurturing this idea that artists are self-absorbed and individualistic people; we do what we do because we believe it will find echo in other people's head. Art making finds its nature and roots in the community, not in the individual.

Some artists tend to talk about how they are 'lucky' and how they feel 'privileged' to be artists. First, I don't think artists are 'lucky'. They made a decision, at some point in their life, to concentrate their energy toward creating art that conveys their beliefs. No artist is "lucky"; luck is a random thing that happens to someone despite themselves. To be an artist is not a chance; it is a decision. Second, even if artists feel enriched by expressing themselves through their art practice and even if they are rewarded by seeing audiences enjoying their work, it is no different than a doctor who feels rewarded by seeing their patient getting better after healing them. The processes that led to a successful creative work or a successful surgery both included struggle, hard work and talent. Artists are not more 'privileged' to feel rewarded and get that inner richness from the work they do. Many workers feel rewarded from what they accomplish everyday, and still we consider them to be 'workers'.

Several artists study at a post-secondary level to acquired knowledge in their field and master their artistic discipline. They develop this knowledge and when comes the time to share it, I would not say they are 'privileged'; I would say they are workers that nurture the society from the inside by providing it with a greater understanding and practice of its cultural components.  Artists reveal sensibility, beauty, violence, courage by evocative poetic images, through their art. They bring important concerns to our minds by crafting them in their own language. Nobody gives artists the "privilege" of being artists; they decide to do so, and they work hard.

So in the end, if each of us who believe in 'Culture' and 'Art' as an essential components of a healthy society could envision art work as real work, and art jobs as real jobs, that could make a huge difference.

As artists, we could wait for everyone else to acknowledge the nature of our work, we could wait for everyone else to consider us as workers who contribute to the larger society. Or, we could simply claim it ourselves. What do you think?