Parents are Strange

     So this weekend, my mom and I hauled our artistic wares up to a festival in a part of North Georgia that time forgot.  It went pretty well, I think.  Attendance was not as high as we would have hoped, but because mom paid for our lodging and food, I still managed to make some money from it.  She considered it to be a mother-daughter weekend getaway, and booked us a nice room and we had dinner at a great restaurant, and all in all it was a lot of fun.  We met lots of really nice people at the festival, got lots of compliments on our work and leads on future events.
  
    None of this is strange, of course.  No, the reason I say parents are strange is how their viewpoints change over time.  When I was growing up, my mom knew that I loved art.  Loved it.  Loved to look at art, loved to create it.  I wanted to be an artist.  I started drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil and never stopped.

    Mom didn't want me to become a "starving artist".  She didn't want me to never create art again, she just tried REALLY hard to steer me away from it as a career choice saying that I'd never get anyware with it.  It was to the point where my high school art teacher sent me home with a list of art jobs and their salary ranges to show her that I wouldn't starve to death as an artist.  She was not swayed.

    For years mom said I should be an English teacher. Then for a short time, she suggested I be a dental hygienist.

    I worked a variety of office jobs, collections, medical billing, dental front office work,...then I decided I wanted to finish college.  I chose art education, as stated in a previous blog, because it seemed like a good way to still be an artist and have a steady income.  Again, as previously stated, that didn't work, and I've been trying to figure out what to do next since May.

    The only thing I know to do at this point is to keep making art.  To try really hard not to give up and go back to the office.  I joined a ceramic center,  where I go and make pottery.  I make jewelry that I have listed online and that I take to festivals.  I draw portraits, paint, or do whatever someone commissions me to do.  And I apply for art jobs like mad.  I'll be starting later this week as a make up artist at a haunted house, and I'm expecting a call back about teaching part time at an art museum.  However, for the very small sums I have made so far, it looks like mom may have been right about that "starving artist" thing.  At least right now with the economy in the gutter.

     However, instead of silently gloating and pushing me back to an office job, my mom has changed her tune completely.  Now she has this incredible faith in me that I can make it work.  I can be successful as an artist, teaching when I can, and selling my work the rest of the time.

     I was going to have to quit the ceramic center, because I really just haven't made enough money to be able to continue paying for my membership, and mom refused to let this happen.  She has given me the money to pay for next months fees and made me promise that if I can't afford to continue to go I'll let her know.  She said it was an investment for her.

     An investment?  Helping me create more art is an investment?  She really thinks I just need to keep doing what I'm doing and that soon I'll not only be able to scrape by, but that I'll be a successful artist.  Not a "starving artist", not one that is just barely able to feed herself, but a successful artist that actually makes more money than what is absolutely required to exist.

    So at the point in my life when I'm thinking maybe she was right all throughout my childhood, and that art should just be a hobby, she's pushing me on to be an artist as a career.  Yeah, .... parents are strange.