On Monday April 28th I gave an artist talk to my class for my senior course as we come to the end of our projects. Today I am documenting my presentation, with some slight adjustments to the slides for online viewing.
This is the title of my presentation.
In this talk I will discuss how to be an artist and the act of being intentionally unmarketable in an age of digital late state capitalism. In 2025, the artist job market is quite horrible and unemployable. So if you're going to be an artist, you might as well think very hard about why you're doing it.
These are some of the softwares I've used throughout the years to make art online through my computer. I don't use Scratch anymore these days, I used it a lot for animations and mini-game making when I was a kid. Windows Movie Maker was deleted in 2017 so I moved to Sony Vegas Pro to video edit, but I'd use Windows Movie Maker still if I could.
Because money is a complex variable when persuing the arts, you may have to consider a second job. I wouldn't call it a "back up plan" because I think your focus should be maintaining a good and intutive relationship with your art always if it is actually your livelihood. But you will need a way to fund your life, and person. And the dark reality is that your art may not always take off, and if it does, you must be healthy about it also, because you will have bills to pay consistently.
I've considered the bedroom as a form of self-expression and as a kid I lived in a room where I had my space represent my interests deeply. I think by surrounding myself in a space like this I kept myself reminded of what was important to me. The walls were filled from top to bottom in most areas, but you will not be seeing all of that. This is enough!
I feel very invigoriated in spaces like this that surround me in things that make me happy. This is my room one year ago, I've moved since. I've moved a lot in my life. In each space I've found a lot of value in the sorts of languages that develop through decoration.
Starting with the first module, this talk will be separated into 5 modules discussing how to have fun in art and maintain your integrity in a world where making art is a fiscally complicated issue that may not always fund your survival.
It's important to remember what got you into art, me personally, I really thought I'd make my life even brighter with my ponies that were very inspired by the popular horse show. This could've been gang. Making these on my bedroom floor at 2am really did something to me.
I got into Scratch for game-making in 2014 and stayed on for the animations I could do. Scratch is designed like a simplified puzzle based code system so you can make almost anything you want on there within the limitations of 3:4 ratio and small size limit. I had a lot of fun making animations using the voices of me, my sister and my friends to do fairly stupid and fairly short skits with dubstep music playing in the outros. My videos would get a lot of hate because the mic peaked so bad and people really didn't like that.
While preparing for this talk, I logged back into my account and found in my notifications which deeply moved and affected me enough to share here. This was only made five days before I made this presentation. It affects me because 10 years later someone is acklowedging the cartoons I made when I was 11. Very bizarre. Thanks kevinator1234. I suppose earnest art will always affect someone, and time is a very relative thing.
I will always recommend that you archive all of your work. Contradictory to that, I think it's very okay to throw away work also. But all in all, maintaining respect for your past work and understanding the stages of which that have brought you to who you are now, I think is an important practice to tap into to have respect for your individal perspective.
Moving onto the next module, Forging Identity through creation and the act of expressing your unique idenity through art.
Being true to yourself in your art can be deeply unmarketable. Not a lot of acceptances, maybe a lot of rejections. You'll always be rejected somewhere, but especially when following your dreams. If chosing to do so, accept that you may have to sell out, to whatever extent you feel comfortable with, and at a varying levels of extremity when selling out. You will have to do it for sure though if you really wanna do this art thing.
I personally am still grapling with the experience of having made art about real experiences and the perspective of being a sell out in that way. I may have not made a lot of money doing so though the act of using world experiences for art can be a moral sell out that I want to uncover the reality of in a fast paced art world.
What got me into the start of creation was my sister and her early comics that inspired me to want to draw like. For a long time she was better than me, all of the work here was made by her, she was an awesome bat pony and I was a super cool neon blue pony. We had matching usernames.
Moving onto the next module, I will discuss the practice of exploring the world to make the most true and raw work you can based on your intution and what you love about living.
Let yourself be inspired by everything. Follow your intuition. Create even when unprompted. Take in sensory data and look for patterns in the world and the things that surround you. You do not have to prove yourself, just keep exploring.
Stay connected to and inspired by family. I think both chosen and blood family can be very important and formative to our experiences as artists. Stay in touch emotionally with how you feel about your blood ties and cultures that have formed you.
Moving onto the next module I will discuss liberating your identity and staying in touch with who you are so you can keep creating work that is unique to your life.
Stay inspired through love and friendship, go outside and have fun. Document what makes you happy if necessary. Joy is needed to stay healthy and create.
Create work that is unprecedented for yourself, and acknowledge how that it so. Express the vulgar and unusual in your work. If it makes you feel scared, tap into that, feeling emotions about art is a wonderful part of the magic.
Moving onto the final module of creating art that is true to you, art as a social practice. Bring your art to your relationships and allow it to interact and play with others art if you feel comfortable. Collaborate on ideas and exchange art information and language with your peers.
I have done some collaborations as a part of commission work that I've gotten. I had my work discovered through a series I made that ties back to my previously mentioned "Artist Apology" where I feel that I need to apologize for being an artist without morals. I have been able to find connections through this work though, and I feel very fortunate to have worked with people who share similar artistic languages. In these works, they are for musicians.
For my final note in art as social practice, outside of collaborations, it's important to keep yourself reminded of the media that keeps you inspired. My sphere of influence is always changing and I try to keep it related to different mediums and artists who do things differently than I do. Currently I am inspired by some different forms of music, cartooning, and game making.
My future plans for art moving foreward with an intent to focus on earnesty is to tackle the issue of Instagram Meta. It's getting out of hand, social media is not designed for earnest art consumption, and with each growing day social media demobilizes us and keeps us separated and paranoid. So I want to gather artists who understand this struggle and come together to make something beautiful.
I believe that by conditioning people to take art at face value for free in an unstable enviroment hurts art. On a platform that benefis from openly harvesting our data for AI I think that the connection of art can be lost, and I want us to feel comfortable having this conversation, and ultimately leave social media for more self-run artist websites that still honor the online experience.
A screencap of the rules and statement for application form of "Digital Universe Zine", my project that echos the ideas I've shared here.
I've been sharing my art online here for the past many years. (5 years on this pseudonym.)
I think you should make a website for your art if you share your art on social media and want to identify yourself. Even a simple or mini website through Carrd or Strawpage that is free and offers simple tools can go a long way. This is mine for now.
I think you should make a website for your art if you share your art on social media and want to identify yourself. Even a simple website through Carrd or Strawpage that is free and offers simple tools can go a long way. This is the link to mine on Carrd.
What is my big picture goal? To ultimately leave social media and maintain digital art methods through a self-run, self-made website that shares ideas of from a colletive of perspectives and unqiue experiences that invigorate art and reflect an earnest raw and inspiring experience.
My final notes and points made in this presenation about creating art that is true to yourself, and inspiring, even in a complex political transformative time for art. Thank you for tuning in.
Thank you to my professor Ben for feedback. Thank you to my classmates for engaging with my art kindly. Thank you to my friends who keep me inspired and feeling seen and loved. Thank you to all the good meals I've eaten recently.
Best viewed on Desktop, thanks!