Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art?

What a lovely essay. The list, of course, could go on: Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby were teachers, Dostoyevsky and George Saunders engineers, Ian MacCaye (et al) of Fugazi ran (and run) a thriving record company. Another question we might ask is why must art be renumerative? Why must it be a profession? Perhaps it is an orientation that translates lived experience “into something rich and strange.”

…and Werner Herzog worked nights as a welder. I tend to idealize the artist grounded by contact with humanity, even when the truth may be somewhat more complicated (such as Steinbeck writing the “Grapes of Wrath”). In the first part of the 20th century the prospect of getting rich from making art was remote, to say the least. Georgia O’Keeffe thought she would spend her life as an art teacher and most of her art education was undertaken with this career in mind. Now we have the model of the disgustingly wealthy celebrity artist lingering in the minds of art school students. At least within the visual arts, I think its fair to say that much of what is shown in the big museums and galleries is becoming less relatable and more dependent on questionable conceptual merit rather than intrinsic artistic value. Particularly art-gibberish laden exhibition labels have me contemplating if the artist might have benefited from a day of manual labor. A bone-weary day of contributing something useful to society can be a great cure for one beset by excessive thought.

My mother trained as an artist, but once she married Dad, she became the fulltime wife-and-mother, raising four kids while he was at the office or away on frequent business trips. Every year or two she moved us to another city, supporting Dad's promotions - more than 20 times while we were growing up. (Dad was always out of town on moving day). I remember Mum painting once or twice a week when I was very small. But eventually, she just gave up trying. Even after Dad retired, he'd interrupt her painting to have her make his lunch. Women artists like Mum have had fulltime jobs for centuries. Why aren't they in this article ?

Hmm. I was convinced the author meant to contrast Williams and Eliot. (How is it possible not to?) In fact, Eliot was only at Lloyd’s for seven or so years; the rest of his professional life was spent in publishing and academia, i.e., what you’d expect of a writer. Williams, on the other hand, made a true career out of medicine, and it informed his self-conception as a (doctor-)poet unlike banking and Eliot. It shows in their work, right? Eliot had been hailed as the greatest poet of his generation, but it was Williams who prefigured the next generation of poets. He had his finger on the pulse of contemporary society and the everyday man while Eliot was removed to ivory towers and the company of Pound and Joyce.

for many years, i held a full-time job working in, and running, small law offices. i enjoyed the work and was paid sufficiently, to also pursue an artistic career and writing. but working in small firms did not pay for benefits, or saving for my still elusive retirement, art work and writing continued to be only a sideline, and i was basically forced into taking employment at a large corporate firm. while the hours are standard, the work is no longer challenging or engaging, i am older and i find myself exhausted, discouraged, and unable to put in longer hours working at my creative endeavors. also, as i am single, there is no one else to help take up the financial, or household maintenance slack. i never claim to be an artistic genius, but i do wonder if my talent and creative urges are being drained away in the daily grind of working for "the man."

"In 2017, a day job might perform the same replenishing ministries as sleep or a long run". Try telling that to an actress in Los Angeles pulling 60 hours a week at Starbucks to keep the roof over her head, or a New York playwright finishing a 12-hour bartending shift at 4 am. The romantic souls in your article are not representative of the majority of artists out there trying to break through, not by a long stretch.

Katy Waldman asks; Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art? I guess you could ask, does living your everyday life outside of the studio lead to making better art? The myriad of daily stimuli that bombard the artist can obviously lead to inspiration. A day job probably is on the lower level of stimuli affording ventures. That an artist succeeds while having a day job is most likely not fueled by the job, but rather by their perseverance to not let the job distract their artistic vision.

In Bali, everyone works, and everyone is an artist. Working can force you to concentrate your limited free time so that you get more done, instead of endlessly staring at a blank page. Work can also make you get out and see people, which is good for your mental state.

As an artist and (non-practicing) attorney, I’d say that it depends on the job, and it depends on the art. It also depends on the temperament of the artist, and the artist’s gender. Some jobs can kill the soul of an artist. Some are ones that are difficult to leave when one goes home at night. Some - like the manual trades that pay a decent wage per hour - are difficult for women to break into. And as another reader pointed out, some art making requires blocks of uninterrupted time and concentration to get anything done. I know many artists who have chosen to go into “production”, to dumb down their work to make it palatable to sell to a general audience and thereby pay the bills. After 40 years of observation and personal struggles with this issue, I’ve known very few artists who have full time jobs and who do artwork of any depth, or of a kind that is very time consuming. Not to say they don’t exist, but they’re the exception. The article is subtitled “The Artist’s Life”. However it needs to delve a little deeper before it earns that description.

I thought of the prehistoric cave painters at Lascaux, France-- eons before it was Lascaux---reading this piece. Lives in which art sprang and predators sprang and wildflowers sprang into being at turns, appearing in the same space, to devour and commune with one another. And when I got to the line "the trope of the secluded creator has echoes of imprisonment and stasis" I thought of myself, at home, with the rain outside, drawings imagined but undone, bills opened but unpaid, my dog asleep on the couch beside me, dreaming of a walk in the real world. Thank you for the piece, Ms. Waldman. Thank you for the last two lines, they may yet just save my life.

This is wonderfully written. As someone with a master's in literature and eventual goal of publishing a manuscript, I think that it's easy to fall into the trap of not self-validating your work because you have "sold out" to your position. Working for a local government has, in my opinion, bolstered my breadth of experience, understanding of narrative, and gifted a greater power of observation. I think that we often assume and promote this idea that artists live in a vacuum but that vacuum can fail to understand the broader human experience. While balancing both is an issue of time management, I actually feel more liberated and creative knowing that my car, my home, and my health insurance are not riding on my artistic abilities.

I like the way you phrase this question, because, like almost everyone else who wants to make art, I have to have a day job. This puts such hopeful suspicion behind what is usually phrased in the reverse: My day job is killing my art dreams. I dreamed for decades of quitting my day job, but not much anymore. Now I think its all about finding/keeping a good day job that allows for your life and art to flourish and having that balance. "Do what everybody else does, get a job and work on your music in your spare time." - Steve Albini Thank you, j http://jasonmolin.net

The premise of this column is a fallacy. Only in a corrupt capitalist system with scant arts support could a question like this be asked. With the advent of the baby boomers the US educational system “professionalized” many heretofore craft disciplines in order to make education a profit center. It’s why your kids liberal arts degree will pauperize them. Now we hear this nonsense how STEM education is the answer no matter how inappropriate. We are conformed to the lie that we must serve capitalism and then, if there is time, create. Such a waste of a nation's talent! And now here in he digital age we are asked to surrender our work for almost no compensation whatsoever. Many creatives are multi-disciplinary because the skill and mind sets are fluid and apply across media. Commerce wants us in neat little boxes because merchandising demands it. When I was young, self-publishing was referred to as a "vanity project" because some patriarchal entity didn't validate us. Back in the 70s we rebelled against that and called it DIY. But the media behemoths co-opt the artist's struggle to sustain a living and deprive the artist of income at every turn. Now the cutting edge is all underground. We’re all working under the radar or expatriating ourselves. US culture is collapsing right before our eyes and this column is simply further evidence.

It really depends on what you do all day. Staring at a screen, seeing so many images, is very tiring to the brain. And if you're coding, forget it. You're fried. I temped for years to support my art habit. Now I have a real job. It's awful, but whatayagonna do nowadays? I'll keep it until the president goes away and we get socialized medicine. (I know, I will dream on.)

Artists traditionally flocked to cities like New York because they offered cheap real estate alternatives where artists could live the life and scrape by while enjoying art offered for free viewing in museums and galleries. Libraries beckoned as beacons for research and an education was still theoretically available from City University for free. Even during economically perilous times like the 70's, CETA offered jobs in the arts that often provided a more creative way to scrape by. Now, the 'gig economy' has combined with 'social media' to devise ever more ingenious ways to appropriate creative thought after normal work hours for commercial monetization while real estate has pushed most of the young outside of city limits. And it never hurts to know how to switch out and upgrade your harddrive to an SSD without darkening the door of an Apple Store where they will only try to sell you a new macbookpro without any peripherals that is wholly web-driven and subscription dependent.

Uh, Michelangelo?

Trollope wrote for a couple of hours each workday morning before heading out to his postal service management job. His stories include brilliant and timeless (and so funny) scenes and plots from life in a bureaucracy.

Thank you for using "she" and "her." Much appreciate it.

There was a book that came out several years ago: "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow." Or something like that. Not necessarily. And when it doesn't, you have to do something else to make a living. Many people give up that something they love and that's the end of that. The few creative people who continue, continue because they MUST "do their thing." They find a way, often by working at a debilitating job, or in a job that is ,one hopes, related to their skills such as teaching. Artists are often considered to be a bit crazy. No wonder. It's a strange "business model," if you will. Work like hell at your art for little or no remuneration and then keep on working at it. But, there is a kind of "remuneration,": the satisfaction of doing the thing you were meant to do even if hardly anyone notices.

Having a day job is actually a good thing. But, We (artists) Ridicule celebrity actor- come fine artists- because we resent that they are taken somewhat seriously, without putting in any of the work and study. Whether they make good artwork, or what seems much more common - very naive, thin work; “real” (insider artists) feel like our identity is being coopted and our passion and profession cheapened. Because of their stature, they get profiles on television shows and other press, they often get exhibited quickly- which makes people who are “serious” artists who study art for a lifetime feel like their effort, work and labor is less valued- and it highlights, and reminds us that the art world (and real world) is not a meritocracy. All too often, These imperfect avatars, become how the public learns about art and artists, and they perpetuate the myth of the “weirdo artist”, who yowls like a cat, hops around in a mania, wears goofy outfits. Celebrity artists are too often slinging paint like they just invented abstract expressionism, and it diminishes and trivializes “real” work by extension when they play the role of “artist”. I don’t pretend their job is easy, the same way I wouldn’t insult a teacher, or plumber, or xyz. But I suppose this gets at the question who gets to say they are an artist? Who is a hobbyist and who is a professional? I’d say, anyone who makes art, is an artist. But, does not mean that art is necessary, thoughtful, good or important

I very much agree with Katy Waldman that theoretical and creative pursuits in art can be intertwined with practical trades. The best artists that I know are grounded in the realities around them, and their art is a response and commentary on those realities. I totally object to the idea that art and the Ivory Tower are not the "real world" since the creative and academic lives I know are very real--if different--from a 9 to 5 life. I don't think there should be a divide between pragmatic technical trades and elite creative work: people simply produce in fields where they have the most skills and therefore the lowest opportunity costs. A person who can fix 10 plumbing problems faster than the next person has a comparative advantage in that field, so she should consider becoming a plumber. So the person who is an artist simply has a comparative advantage in making art, but isn't trying to escape reality. And people shouldn't romanticize tortured writer geniuses, but just accept that those poets or novelists had comparative advantages in artistic self-expression with words.

As is the case in most things, there's this ideal taught to kids that you can grow up to be whatever you want. What the people pushing this idea often forget to mention is that if you plan to eat and live indoors your career options are actually very limited. You can be an artist all you want so long as you can fit your art making time in between cooking dinner and preparing tomorrow's clothes for actual job you'll spend the majority at your time at. Unless you live off of a trust fund, you're massive famous because of a wealthy benefactor promoting you, or work as an art professor at a university, art will always be your hobby and your real job will be accountant. We should start teaching kids this so they won't be so cynical as adults when they figure out the real world isn't the ideal we adults tell them about.

Thanks for the article. I actually prefer to run my own side business that allows me to work anytime, anywhere. I've one client that allows me to work one day a week, which pays me about as much as teaching full time would; two clients would mean two days a week and would equate to a very good professional income. It's taken a while, but I enjoy the left brain/right brain activity of the week.

This is something I've been saying for years as it evident to me a great many modern artists are clueless about living in the real world. While it may seem more pure to live in poverty surrounded by lofty abstract concepts, living like that life leaves one out of touch with the reality of real people. Experience is the cornerstone of good art, and the deeper and broader the experience the more benefits it will provide.

As a full time artist, I spend only a fraction of my time creating art. The rest is business-related. The likelihood of earning a full income from one's art is slowed and diminished, critically, by any time removed from either of these two sides of an artist's life.

Teaching used to be an obvious choice for practicing artists, until many universities decided to employ people with MFAs on a contractual basis so they could avoid paying benefits. Students are the losers here in a system where handed-down knowledge is essential and because it becomes impossible to make a living on what is basically a minimum wage job.

I'm an artist, and have had shows and sold my art for years. Yet I have some family members who assert that because I have to hold down a regular job to pay the bills, and buy art supplies I'm "not really an artist". I try to ignore the negativity and turn it into an "oh yeah? watch this!" moment. This article was a great validation.

This is a complex matter. I began in my youth as a starving artist. I was ‘found’ by commercial work and gladly focused on it for a quarter century doing art on the side when I could. I paid my bills, had kids etc. But you cannot ‘kill the flame’. Two years ago, I was ‘found-back’ by art. I didn’t give it much thought and pursued the opportunity primarily because I always embrace life with a big YES. My newly found endeavor into art has been incredible and all signs are pointing me towards it. For now, I can afford the art making which, as all people commenting about this article know, it’s expensive, time consuming and confusing when it comes to find viable sales channels. Most importantly, I’m closing a loop I had opened 25 years ago. And yes, not much has changed since then. You still have to follow your heart and believe in yourself and art as a tool to make the world a better, more inspired place. What I find disconcerting, is how cities have become so unfriendly in supporting the lives of their young artists. I’m not one of them, but I share their difficulties in the search for spaces and the need to be near the ‘center’ of things without having to work 3 jobs simultaneously. All I see around me, is speculation and greed, while the emotional souls that have made cities great are being pushed out further and further. Too bad.

Men,men,men,men.....it’s 2018 let’s up the journalistic bar - not to always be obsessed with so-called great male writers, artists, mathematicians, scientists et al.....just saying. It’s become very boring and often times irrelevant to many women and girls.

This article assumes that artist is an occupation like lawyer or waiter. Creativity is in every one. Whether or not we recognize a person as an artist or give them money for their product they still give us art. Go to the county fair. The art created by junior high kids, amateurs, and waiters is on display. Give them the same respect given to folks in big museums. Van Gogh wasn’t considered an artist of repute in his life. Now his paintings sell for millions only to be locked away from public view by some corporations. Soviet propaganda art is still a creative venture. Let’s not slap labels on people. Just let them create no matter what the financial outcome.

Great food for thought here, both in article and so many insightful comments. I am a graphic designer, but also a painter and musician, and had a run of several years where my most creative season (Autumn) was dominated by 70 hour workweeks for an annual pharmaceutical conference. By the end of the project, I was bursting with repressed ideas, and at least part of my fatigue was offset by a heightened industry and efficiency carried over from work routine. I certainly think "day jobs" are instructive in what it is to keep busy and part of a system, i.e. "business". But just think what American creativity is stultified as our cruel brand of Late Capitalism makes artistic passions, let alone hobbies or procreation, an endeavor for the privileged class.

It would be interesting to see an actual scientific study done on this. This article raises interesting questions, but it does not really give any concrete answers just conjecture based on a few artists' lives. And what exactly counts as an artist anyway? Is a scientist an artist of sorts? If people are interested in this topic, I suggest this book called Rest. I have no affiliation with the book, but I recently read it and found it helpful. It explains different methods that have scientifically been proven to help artists (and others) accomplish their goals such as: walking, napping, exercising, rest, and deep play. I am sure working on something other than one's art helps some artist, but it must also inhibit others. Again, I would love to see a scientific study done on this topic. My only other point of contention with this article is I feel it reinforces this stereotype that artistic work isn't work. Artistic work is true work that takes lots of energy and concentration (and time), and asking artists to work two jobs seems to be intimating that somehow the artist job is not a true job; artists should not have to work multiple jobs. You wouldn't tell an investment banker, hey, maybe you should get a job as a painter, as that may help with the investment banking. No, you may suggest he/she get a hobby as a painter. It's a double standard of sorts. And I wish it would be fixed and not perpetuated.

Lots of writers nowadays teach. I trained to do that, but ended up founding and running a software company while publishing poems and criticism whenever I could. It's an open question whether teaching promotes or inhibits the production of creative work. J. S. Bach was a music director, and part of his job was to write music, but another part involved teaching Latin to kids - which he hated. Melville was a customs inspector. Edwin Arlington Robinson was given a sinecure by Teddy Roosevelt so he could write - but it turned out to be the least productive period of his life. The moral? Artists are as various as everyone else. And a day job is not necessarily a bar to good creative work.

Really good article - after realizing I'd never find financial payoff as a writer or composer, after many years I made a reluctant peace with working day-to-day and found tons of great ideas for plot lines from what I experience on the job or observe commuting or at lunch hour. In 2003 I hadn't written a song in over 6 years when I observed someone during an outdoor meeting with my department and had an idea for an amusing lyric - I've written nonstop since. Making lemonade from lemons.

Charles Ives contended that his day job in insurance (He essentially invented what we now know as estate planning.) gave him the independence to be as iconoclastic as he was. "If I had to depend on my art for a living," he said, "my music would be at the mercy of everyone I wanted to commission or perform or publish a work and would inevitably bend to their tastes."

If memory serves the 19th century was full of curious people who wrote, drew, read, adventured and invented. I wonder if the onset of industrialization, with its segmentation of skills and knowledge into assembly line positions, isn't the culprit here. Many artists today work in a multidisciplinary way. It may be because they are synesthetic. It may be born of necessity. Or it may be a drive to reclaim the fullness of experience from the demands of an increasingly powerful corporate world.

This article happily skips over the negative impact of day jobs upon art making. Some work requires sustained levels of concentration which becomes nearly impossible with full-time work. It would have been worth addressing the number of hours worked. Rents have increased significantly over the past 30 years which surely affects the number of hours artists need to work. While working 30 hours may complement art making, working 50 hours a week full-time with 2 to 3 weeks of vacation a year makes sustained, concentrated efforts in the studio difficult to achieve. This article is glib.

I've had a job since I was 12. I'm now in my 50's. I have mostly had jobs that were really boring and mindless. My body is paying the bills while my mind is working out sculptural problems. Having that freedom to spend hours a day thinking and not having to worry about money has made life easier and my art better.

A lot of visual artists make very little income from sales, maybe $10K annually, if they’re lucky, so unless they’re independently wealthy, they need another source of income. Having a teaching post provides many artists with their primary source of income, and this can be supplemented by funds from fellowships and awards. It’s no great secret that many of these fellowships are intended to support women and minority artists. Similarly, art schools are compensating for past discrimination in hiring practices by aggressively hiring women and minorities in teaching positions. I am a supporter of affirmative action, as long as it’s wisely applied, taking into account class and economic hardship (as well as artistic talent, it should go without saying). Whether you support affirmative action or not, the consequence for a lot of white male artists is that they are at a considerable disadvantage in finding alternative, related sources of income, so they get stuck in a lot of unrelated, menial jobs that deplete their creative energies. Once upon a time, it was possible for artists to work occasional part-time jobs, before returning to their studios, but in today’s insane real-estate market (where rents are unaffordable) and more brutal employment environment, the amount of time that must be spent cobbling together jobs leaves little time for creativity. I think a lot of artists from economically-disadvantaged backgrounds just give up.

I started out as an artist, but like everyone else who wasn't able to make ends meet financially from my artwork alone I had to do a few other things to get by while I met family responsibilities and kept food on the table. In my case it wasn't by working for others but by running a series of businesses, sometimes more than one a time...marine towing and salvage, manufacturing, environmental consulting and more. But once the house was built and my sons were out on their own I knew it was time to concentrate on the main program of making meaningful art, and much to my surprise I found I couldn't do that while keeping my eye elsewhere, even part-time. The full-time job of thinking & making may not pay much financially, but it's rewards are enough to keep me at it, despite living below the (monetary) poverty line. I still enjoy other activities like rebuilding an old log skidder on weekends in the shop, because they keep me engaged with people and issues outside the art world(s).

I agree with the author’s central point and could mention numerous examples -- Wallace Stevens, for instance, worked at an insurance company. But I find many of the examples are from another age, when people could make a living at an eight-hour-a-day job. Eight hours allows people to pursue outside interests. Not so long ago, the MTA pointed to a new technology -- communications-based train control -- to justify cutting subway conductor jobs like the one that's supported Sujatha Gidla's writing. Those jobs were protected by a strong union (and by rider advocates who cited safety concerns after 9/11). Most workers have not been so lucky. I have never worked in a good job that required only eight hours a day. Usually I’ve had to work at least ten hours. These days, most salaried positions demand even more time, and many of the old temporary gigs are gone. Philip Glass -- who also appeared in this column -- drove a cab, but a recent MIT study found Uber drivers earning just $3.37 an hour. That's why so many artists now work in academia. Yet even the universities are relying on a new class of worker -- freelancers and adjuncts. The universities make money, of course -- just as many corporations are making more than ever before -- but a large part of their workforce don't share in the profits. The degradation of the American worker has affected the quality of our nation’s art.