"So, the Furniture Society is really going to have a conference. Cool!" I remember thinking. At $334 dollars for five days and four nights, meals included, no vacation would be that cheap. So I signed up, thinking what was there to lose?
I suppose I have always been worried about my lot as an artist. At parties how do you explain to someone that, yes, you really are an artist whose medium is furniture? So it has always been with this sort of awkwardness in mind that I ponder my biggest frustration in life. Money. I seem always to be living on the boom-and-bust roller coaster, sometimes working myself to the bone, and the rest of the time worrying where the next check will come from. I have been worried for years about my ability to stay with furniture making for the long term, and have often wondered how one begins to establish a normal and reasonably stable life in this field. It seems somehow strangely ironic to deal with clients who, by and large, are wealthy, while I drive a van with 200,000-plus miles that blows smoke and doesn't start when it rains.
For me, art has never been a quantifiable endeavor that can be structured and monitored. At a critical spot in the design of a piece it has been easy for me to agonize for hours about the appropriate direction to proceed, and it's difficult for me to imagine a boss sitting me down at a desk and saying, "I want ten groundbreaking designs in the next hour!" For me, ideas come slowly and need to be nurtured.
Consequently, being an artist has always seemed like an impractical endeavor, and the questions in my mind have revolved around the central issue, "How do you expect to pay for this life?" Everyone is familiar with the ultimate artist fantasy. You know: You create whatever you want while hordes of eager and admiring buyers shell out big bucks for the latest impulse of your genius. Only one problem. Where are the buyers and what happened to all the time I was supposed to be able to spend on being brilliant? I always seem stuck under the thumb of a reality of bills, with an annoying addiction to food. Beyond the problem of having to work much of the time on things that the world can use-things like plastic-laminate shelving and frameless melamine cabinets. I have always struggled with a feeling of isolation. I often live my life in limbo between home and the shop, as if there weren't more to the world than these two places, and it has seemed so easy to let the world become this small, to think that there's hardly anyone out there besides myself who has to compromise. There's always that sinking feeling that my growth as an artist is inhibited by financial realities.
I got into my smoke-blowing van having decided to caravan to Purchase with a newly met friend and furniture maker, Erik Wolken. We made our way up the Garden State Parkway but were finally separated at the Tappan Zee bridge by a sudden deluge of rain. Shortly thereafter, as I found myself alone at SUNY Purchase wandering around looking for the housing sign-in and watching the soccer campers play in the puddles, some contemptible part of my brain finally reared up, and I was suddenly struck by the fear that I had made a huge mistake. Having a tolerance for only a small dose of shop talk, I thought, "Oh no, what have I done? I've signed myself up for a conference that will be nothing but a bunch of men talking shop for five straight days." I had always equated woodworking mostly with men; who would have thought that a life of lifting heavy objects and breathing sawdust all day would appeal to women? Fortunately, I was very wrong.
The conference turned out to be quite an extravaganza of events, including seminars on relevant topics like "Working with Galleries" and "Limited Production," a full-blown museum exhibit, as well as many other informative and social activities. But amazing to me were the people: young people, like myself, new to the field; older people, new to the field, like myself; people who seem to have done this forever; well known people; unknown people; and everyone in remarkably similar circumstances. Never mind my self-absorbed resentment for having to do side work, as if eating and paying the bills were an inconvenient encumbrance on my artistic life; nearly everyone at the conference maintained some kind of side income. Whether teaching, making production furniture, or building work for designers, the whole field seemed wrapped in an economic struggle which had forced everyone to establish some kind of balance between their work as artists and paying the bills.
It was quickly apparent from the conference's full schedule that seeing everything was physically impossible, so I set myself the task of hitting the highlights and left myself free to wander around and talk to whomever I bumped into. The whole place seemed to me to be buzzing with the idea that we furniture makers, by getting together and establishing our own criteria for success, could collectively educate the public and change our lot in life, and it really began to sink in for me, that not only was this possible, but that a network of people already existed!
Of particular interest to me was the lunch lecture by Ned Cooke. Ned, who had curated the "New American Furniture" exhibit for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, wondered if the creation of a super gallery (the Peter Joseph Gallery) hadn't cultivated a generation of furniture superstars that consequently stifled the development of the field in general. Being new to the field I have often wondered if big-name galleries would really make a financial difference in my life and have wondered what constellation of reputation and strong, marketable work was required to get their interest. So when I walked into the session "Working with Galleries," I wasn't taken aback by most of the issues talked about. Submitting a complete portfolio package, which, in addition to slides, includes dimensions, materials, and prices, was familiar territory. What did surprise and scare me was a comment by Bebe Johnson of Pritam and Eames Gallery: "We're not really looking for new artists. We have done well with the artists we started with and aren't really looking for more." I was suddenly filled with dread, should other big-name galleries feel the same, for the next generation of furniture-makers. Do we have to create a new market sector from scratch? Is the niche full? I still have no answers, though the conference left me pumped and ready to change my life, made me want to contact local museums and talk to school kids about furniture. As artisans who require an expensive studio and who make a costly, difficult-to-move product, we are challenged, not simply in our work but in the economic context of our work. I left the conference wondering if there isn't some combination of ways to reduce our financial burdens, while creating our own opportunities. It seems clear to me now that the road into this future is one we must travel together.
So if nothing else, the conference was a place to meet others who struggle as I do; a chance to meet some of the people who have made success for themselves in this strange field; an opportunity to exchange ideas, make new friends, see old ones, stretch the mind about the possibilities of this life we lead. But mostly I credit the conference with the evolution of a feeling, a feeling of optimism and enthusiasm and appreciation for the work that all of us do. This is the food that sustains us in our daily struggle to spend at least some small part of our lives doing what we truly love.
