Artist Myth #9a: Artists are Flakes

Myth Nine: Artists are flakes
Art as an item for sale isn’t the same thing as a vacuum cleaner or a hamburger or a pair of socks. A piece of artwork, regardless of the medium, is a creation that an artist has a very intimate connection to. It’s created using a great deal of intuition, emotion, and abstract thinking; things that don’t figure into a world which is based mostly on quantification and measurement.

When the two worlds of business and art collide, it can look as though artists have a difficult time finding their place and coming to terms with how they fit in. Being on time and keeping track of finances may not come easy to every artist, but there are things in the artist’s studio the general population would find extremely hard to do as well. As my marriage counselor used to say, “Before you make an assumption, consider the source.” People generally have a lot more going on than what meets the eye. And with artists especially, this process isn’t necessarily linear.

Jeri Goldstein, artist consultant and author of the book “How to be Your Own Booking Agent,” says, “ I’ve found that artists may be specifically challenged in regard to certain business aspects, but it’s not because they are disorganized, it’s usually because there are certain knowledge gaps in their business skill set.”

Jeri Goldstein is a former music agent and manager who is author of the award-winning self-published book How To Be Your Own Booking Agent (now in it’s 7^th printing). The book is used as a text book in music business courses at Universities across the US and in Canada and by musicians and performing artists world-wide. Jeri is also a performing arts consultant who offers strategies and techniques on booking tours, negotiation techniques, marketing, music business and performing arts career development. www.performingbiz.com.