Here we are, almost a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century, and parents are still doing that weird thing where they try to discourage their children from pursuing artistic training, and artistic careers. What’s that about?
I mean, it’s true, the average doctor, lawyer, and electrical engineer all earn six-figure salaries. But so does the average art director, and unlike physician and electrical engineering careers, growth in art direction as an occupation is keeping pace with the rest of the economy. (And art director jobs are not rare; there are more art directors in the U.S. than family physicians.)
Are we really still imagining that our children will be literally starving in a garret, painting delusionally away at some mad genius vision while their fingers get chilblains for lack of money to buy so much as a single lump of coal? The image needs revision: You can set your little Picasso up in an actual Paris garret for less than the price of four years of your local public college, and then they’d own real estate in Paris, one of the most desirable cities in the world, where the social safety net is more robust and risk of starvation seems markedly lower than right here in River City.
(Admit it: You didn’t even know what a garret was — or how to spell it — until you Googled just now, didn’t you? And you know even less about what it might mean to be an actual working artist in America in 2023.)
The reality is, “artist” is not one single career. Look around the space you are sitting in. Is there any fabric in it? Someone designed both the colors and patterns on it, and the shape it took when someone sewed it together. Any dishes, cutlery, ceramics? Someone designed those, too, drew or painted or sculpted any images or decorations you can see, designed each piece of furniture, wallpaper, book covers. Whatever is around you right now? An artist, or maybe several different artists, were paid to create the way those things looked and worked. What about anything visual on your computer or on paper around you — any advertising or decoration of any kind, the font choices, the artwork? All created by artists — graphic designers, illustrators, surface pattern designers. There might even be art on your body somewhere, art created by makeup artists or tattoo artists or clothing designers. Your home or your office might have been designed by an interior decorator or designer, and artists were involved in everything on your walls and floors and windows. And if you’re listening to any music, or watching any movies or shows? More artists, at every phase of the process. Not just the performer or songwriter or screenwriter or actors, but the scenic artists, the propsmasters, the set designers, the lighting designers, the sound designers and producers, the costume designers and costumers, the filmmakers, the writers, and on and on and on. And then there are all the people who trained all the artists we’ve already mentioned — the art teachers in schools or in art centers and workshops, the art professors, the art therapists. Yes, when you go to a museum and see a piece hanging on the wall or in a vitrine? An artist made that, too, probably while doing other kinds of artist work (and they in turn were helped by the curators and art preservers and frame makers who are yet more artists supporting that work in the frame on the wall). Artists are everywhere, working all the time.
It’s just not true that that the only artists in the world are the museum masters whose madness or genius you’ve heard of and built into a scary myth. (Although it might be true that even those guys had disapproving parents: Even Michelangelo’s father, a failed banker, thought art as a profession would be a disgrace to the family and beat his son for ignoring his studies in favor of his artwork. Some things never change, I guess.)
A huge number of artist jobs are good jobs, even union jobs, like any other job. They come with health insurance and 401Ks. Because art is undervalued, even more are gig economy jobs and freelance work, and yes, that is unfair, that your talented kid might have to rely on a day job or a partner for health insurance for periods in their career. But artist jobs are diverse and permit a whole variety of career paths, including ones that pay well by all the traditional career metrics parents want for their kids: stability, salary, security, advancement. You honestly have no idea what artist jobs are even available. For example, let’s look at the art department credits for The Last of Us (the show, not the game). There are 118 people working different art department jobs on this show alone, and you’ve maybe never even heard of some of the jobs they are doing. Did you know that TV shows have a “greensperson,” and that that person is responsible for the plants or really anything “natural looking” on the show? Union rules can mean that if a prop falls over and breaks, making a mess in the grass, both the propsmaster and the greensperson will have to be summoned, because the propsmaster is not allowed to fix the grass, since that’s the greensperson’s job. Maybe your kid’s fullest artistic potential would be achieved by being the greensperson, not the propsmaster, on the next hit show, and you’ve never even heard of it. Do you know what the proper training and career path is for a greensperson? Where’s the best college, or if college is even the right place to start? Do you know how your kid could set herself up for success in this field? Should you be discouraging an artistic career when you don’t even know what that is?
If your teen is a budding artist, instead of knitting together your eyebrows and telling them to quit drawing and finish their geometry homework, maybe help them figure out what that means and how to get there. Are they imagining being an illustrator or a jewelry designer? A museum artist or an artist who teaches kids? A tattoo artist, or a graphic designer? A fashion designer or an interior decorator? A furniture maker or a ceramicist? A greensperson or a propsmaster? Can they identify people doing the kinds of work they’d like to do? Can you expand their list of possibilities from one into many? (Oh, your child wants to be a fashion designer? So, is that a fashion designer for Target, or for Dior? A costumer for the Last of Us, a costume designer for Disney, or a dresser and stylist for Taylor Swift or Michelle Obama? Fashion designer can mean a lot of different things…. what do you mean, fashion designer? You can expand virtually any kind of artist job in this way. There are designers who design nothing but wigs for Hollywood.)
How many artist jobs can you think of? How many can you name? How many have you never even heard of? Help us imagine different arts careers in the comments, and as always, if you like this content, share, like, and subscribe to keep it coming.