Could you give it up???

“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.” 

~Robert Henri

Postcard - Impressions of Niagara

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/postcardimpressions-of-niagara-lianne-schneider.html

Over the past few blogs, I've written a lot about motivation, marketing and how to avoid burnout, particularly if our artwork isn't selling. As a result, I got quite a few personal messages from fellow artists who wrote about discouragement, about all the ways they were turning themselves inside out to be successful (financially) as artists, about the frustration they experienced when they saw work by artists they didn't feel was as good as their own selling well while they sold nothing. Most of these heart-wrenching letters were completely sincere and not a few people suggested that perhaps it was time to throw in the towel and either take some period of time off or get out of the art world except to putter at home for their own enjoyment. These friends had honestly tried everything they knew to market themselves. That's not to say there might not be other sites or methods out there that would work but at this point, they'd tried everything and had come to the conclusion that no one really wanted their artwork hanging on their walls. 

The truth is that no matter how hard we've tried, most of us are NOT professional artists. I know a few of you who truly are but most of us are not. We're rank amateurs regardless of whether we have fancy cameras with $5000 lenses, a complete studio with stacks of canvases and $200 brushes, pens and notebooks full of ideas for our next story or poem, or the best kiln and clay on the market. What we're trying to do - most of us anyway - is market our hobby. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. But we should not expect the kinds of results that a professional artist expects and strives for. And we should not be so frustrated and disappointed when we don't achieve that level of success. 

I say hobby because being a professional artist/writer takes enormous discipline. It has nothing to do with how many courses we take or how many positive comments we get on the work we present to the world. It has to do with whether we cannot let a day go by without working at our art - not just for an hour or until some distraction comes along - but literally setting aside a good portion of our day to create. It has to do with writing or painting or sculpting even if we feel no inspiration today at all (and believe me I've gone through months where I complained that my muse was on vacation!). The wonderful writer, May Sarton, and the much loved Annie Dillard both wrote about writing for hours every morning after a walk - even if at the end of those hours everything they wrote went in the trash. It has to do with working through lunch if we're on a roll. It has to do with believing in ourselves enough to be persistent in marketing ourselves through every possible means. It has to do with not comparing ourselves to anyone else - or their success - because we believe in our gift and our talent. It has to do with knowing that no matter what happens - we could not give up what we love to do.

There is a lovely succinct little blog post that struck home to me when I read it and I think you might enjoy it too. Doug Hoppes wrote recently, "However, in my mind, if you really are meant to be an artist, you won't give up.  It's part of who you are.  Rather than having the fancy paper or pens, you'll get a ream of copy paper and a ballpoint pen and draw.  Rather than having a fancy studio, you'll work at your desk... or dinner table... or wherever you can sit.  Making art is not about having the fancy materials.  It's about expressing yourself in only the way that you can imagine the world around you." Read the rest here: Ever felt like giving up? | Doug Hoppes Fine Art

If writer/artist is who you ARE, there's no way you could give it up and go back to being something or someone else. Be courageous (which means to have a strong heart) and be persistent and believe.

 

...my kind of town...

"It's not necessary to go far and wide. I mean, you can find  

exciting and inspiring things within your hometown."

Daryl Hannah

Buffalo South Entrance Light

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/buffalo-south-entrance-light-lianne-schneider.html

I've noticed a trend in recent blogs - at least among friends whose blogs I follow - to focus on images and stories relating to their home town or to nearby areas - a way of celebrating the beauty close to home, an opportunity to brag about local history or attractions in the area or maybe just a way to promote and boost interest in a city or town that's fallen on hard times. While I don't live right in Buffalo, NY, I still call it home as it's the nearest metro area to me and there's a lot to be said about a place called "the Queen city" for a reason. So while I won't be doing one post a day for 100 days on Buffalo and surrounding areas, there is a lot that is beautiful, historic and inspiring within a 50 mile radius of my true home town (a tiny village actually that if, as the saying goes, you blink you'd miss it) which is about 20 minutes from downtown Buffalo, NY. Certainly the area has inspired some of my most creative works of both poetry and art and I'm willing to bet that you can find plenty right near home to do that for you too!

Information for this blog post is from Lighthouse Friends - http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=295

Buffalo South Entrance South Side
Buffalo's emergence as a bustling port continued well after the 1825 opening of the Erie Canal. The city quickly outgrew its first lighthouse erected in 1818, and the 1833 stone tower still standing today was superseded by a breakwater station in the 1870s. Still, the volume of ship traffic necessitated another expansion of the harbor, and a lengthy breakwater was built south of the main harbor. According to the 1900 Annual Report of the Light House Board, on June 6, 1900, $45,000 was appropriated for establishing suitable light and fog-signal stations to mark the main southern entrance of the new breakwater at Buffalo, N.Y. Plans for the light towers and fog-signal house, including foundation and pile protection work were completed, and plans for the keeper's dwelling are being prepared. Soon after the plans were finished, the breakwater where the light towers were to be erected was badly damaged by two severe storms, forcing the plans to be modified to provide greater strength to meet extreme conditions of wind and wave action. It was ultimately determined to place both a fog signal and beacon light on the south side of the southern harbor entrance, and an accompanying, smaller light on the north side.

The new south entrance beacons were especially important to turn of the century Buffalo, as the city became the world's leading lumber port and grain-milling and storage center. The southern entrance was also located near the recently completed Lackawanna Steel plant, which would be acquired by Bethlehem Steel in 1992 and become the world's largest steel mill during the frantic production accompanying World War II.

The Buffalo South Entrance South Side Lighthouse is a unique tower with a brown cylindrical base, a white, conical midsection, and a black lantern graced with glass panes in a diamond configuration. The tower's interior is furnished with fine wood wainscoting, and its lantern was originally equipped with a fourth-order Fresnel lens that produced the repeated sequence of two white flashes and a red flash, each spaced by ten seconds. The arch-roofed fog signal house adjoining the tower was painted brown. The station's original fog siren was replaced in 1934 by an air diaphone, which produced a two-tone air blast of three seconds, followed by a silent period of twenty-seven seconds.

A radiobeacon was established adjacent to the South Side Light on April 4, 1939. The tower transmitted a dash followed by three dots, Morse Code for "B."

Automated in 1962, the Buffalo South Side Lighthouse is currently inactive, having been replaced by a simple, modern post light that is very convenient to maintain. The old beacon's fourth-order Fresnel lens was removed in 1967, and after having been on display at the Coast Guard's Buffalo Station, in 1987 it was mounted in Buffalo's cherished and more centrally located 1833 tower, where it is decoratively lit at night. A 300-millimeter optic was mounted on the gallery outside the lantern room upon the removal of the Fresnel lens. This optic was active until 1993, when the current navigational was established on a nearby pole.

The closure of most of the Lackawanna steel plant has had a large economic impact on the Buffalo area and greatly decreased the amount of freighters calling at the port. A large portion of Buffalo's grain-milling and storage facilities have also shut down, but there was still an active General Mills plant in the harbor as of 2007. (During our boat ride through Buffalo Harbor, we were treated to the aroma of Cocoa Puffs.) Today, Buffalo Harbor is kept busy with fishermen and recreational boaters, and the city is planning on further development on the waterfront near the present Coast Guard station.

In July of 2008, the Buffalo Harbor South Entrance Lighthouse was offered to qualified groups through the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, passed in 2000. Two groups, the Buffalo Lighthouse Association and the Maritime Activity Interyouth Network, submitted a letter of interest by the September 23, 2008 deadline and followed up with a formal application. The deed to the lighthouse has been transferred to the Lighthouse Association, and an $850,000 restoration is planned. Fundraising for the first phase of the project, a $185,000 stabilization and safety phase, began in 2012.
Head Keepers: Delos Hayden (1903), Edward Van Natta (1903 - 1904), John Burns (1904), George Codding (1904 - 1913).

It's just my personal opinion, of course, but the Buffalo Harbor is beautiful and plans to develop the Erie Basin, Canalfront and the Outer Harbor into a state park with a public beach promise a renewal for this city once dubbed "the most beautifully laid out city in North America." The city boasts some of the most beautiful architecture and some amazing parks specifically designed for the city by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux between 1868 and 1896. This coordinated system of recreational spaces is the oldest such system in the United States. Don't sell Buffalo short!! We're making a comeback!!

This digital work is hand painted from a reference photo of my own.