Motivational Monday 5

Part of being an artist in your early twenties, I’ve found, is trying to “get out there,” trying to collaborate with other people, and trying to bring a new art scene to the town you live in. In other words, part of being an artist is wanting to feel like part of the art world. A couple months to a year ago I thought doing these things were way over my head. I didn’t believe I had what it takes. I was finally able to put these goals into perspective.

You have to start small. Start a blog and pretend you have people you’re talking to, pretend that what you’re saying is a big deal (because it probably is, people just don’t know it yet.). Get together with some of your artsy friends and pose for a photo shoot, put together a zine, or do a giveaway of your art and tell everyone you know about what you are up to! I’ve come to find that telling your small life community about what you’re doing is the first and quickest step at gaining a following and support.

Attend art events. This Summer I told myself I would try and attend as many Art Festivals as I could manage around Michigan. For this, you may have to do some research. When you first start searching the web for events in your area, the searches will be very broad. There’ll be websites strictly about the events themselves, but you’ll eventually get so far into the web that you’ll get more personal posts about the events. You’ll find social medias of people who are part of the event and are surprisingly around your age. A lot of the festivals I found out about were through people on Instagram that were people just like me.

The next thing you can do to help you get your foot in the art world is to contact these folks! Whether you do it in attempts to befriend them or to strictly figure out how you can be where they are, talk to them and ask questions. Ask them if they need help with their current art endeavors! If they don’t have anything you can help with at the time, there’s always the chance that you could collab with them.

Get in contact with your community. I’m almost positive that every town has a newspaper, so get one in your hands and feast upon it frequently to see if there are any advertisements that relate to the art community. If there’s little written about that, consider starting up your own newsletter that includes all of the things about your town that you admire. Get together with friends for this, take tons of photos, showcase local art and writing. Distribute the newsletter to local businesses. There are other people in your town with your same interests, they’re probably hidden in their house with their head in a book, a paintbrush in hand, who knows! They patiently wait for what you have to offer.

There are always going to be people who want to hear what you have to say. It’s up to you to find out how you want to speak and with who, but once you find out this, you’ll be taking your first steps to feeling like part of the art world.