40 days of art

13

Hire Me

In 2013 I was laid off from my job as an Art Director at an ad agency. I remember my boss being distraught she had to lay me off and me comforting her because I knew how hard it is to lay off, plus I thought this was the exact push I needed to be a full-time freelancer. Because I am an outrageous person, I also decided this was the perfect opportunity to move to New York (lol without a job, hot diggity dog I was naive) 

I was going to Belgium that summer to play more gigs with Mathieu, and my flight connected in Newark, New Jersey before going back to North Carolina. That’s when I had the bright idea to get off the plane on my connection flight and move to New York. I had one suitcase that I used to tour in Europe, and I bought the bed from the person who lived in my room before me (hot tip: never buy a mattress sight unseen. I don’t know what this man was doing on this mattress but it was low-key gross).

I moved in with my old roommate Mary into a tiny room in her Sunset Park apartment where all 4 limbs could pretty much touch all four walls if I stretched hard enough. Money was super tight because I was living in a much more expensive city without a job (or clients). Additionally, in the first two weeks of living in NYC, I was hit by a car and had to go to the hospital, and my house that I was renting out in NC flooded with sewage. Both of these incidents took most of my savings, plus I was uninsured. I was having a hard time finding my way as an artist and landing clients when I got two of the best pieces of artistic advice I ever received. (You really should listen when people talk, because neither of these pieces of advice was given as traditional advice, it was just something someone said to me that really stuck).

Saleem Reshamwala: “Sometimes you have to be your own client. Create the projects you want to work on so you can have examples to get more work like that”

I was really into data and infographics, so I thought it would be clever to make an infographic about why people should hire me. It was quirky and actually really helped me get my first New York clients!!

Mary Colston: “People will go out and drop $50 dollars in a bar, but then not invest in their own art. It is your art, you should invest in it” 

This was a total aha moment and turning point in how I treat my finances and art. I self-fund all of my art projects (and I want to create an equitable work environment, so I always make sure all my crew is paid even though it comes from my own pocket and the project is not profitable). At one point in my life, I was living pretty frugally and investing 40% of my money back into producing my own ideas. 

 After a year of struggling I somehow found my way and have been able to grow a business to a point where I was not so scared that I could not pay for necessities.