Moving Day

The other day I had to move out the last items from my wife's old apartment. I hired a kid with a van. Turns out he was a graduate of Julliard. A clarinet player from Bulgaria. He was asking me how I succeeded as an artist in New York City. I told him how I initially started out to be an illustrator. But making it in manhattan is no easy task. Money is a huge issue in order to survive here. I landed a job in advertising because they needed someone who could draw. So I was being paid to do what I love best, sketching all day. Over time I was lured into being an art director and coming up with ideas and designing print ads and making television commercials. The more I succeeded the more dough I was given. It was very exciting . People thought I had the most interesting artistic job and in some ways they were right. Now looking back after 20 years I realized I had to give up a lot of things to make it in the Big Apple. The most important thing I gave up was my dream of being an illustrator. But that dream has been resurrected from its grave and I feel really good about that. The young mover was listening intently to me. He said he knew exactly what I was talking about. He sees how impossible it is to get into a philharmonic somewhere in America and that his life is now filled with choices. At some point because of financial reasons he may start to choose to not follow his dream of being a clarinet player. After listening to me he said he was goiing to fight on no matter what. In my case making too much money lured me away from my dream, making too little could be what lures him away from his. Talking to a young person like him starting out made me look a little harder at myself. I hope both of us succeed.

There is a new interview of me at The Extra Finger which is an art blog in Italy. Check it out here.

Also I recieved a Three Thumbs Up Award the other day. I was very excited. Check it out here. Congratulations also to Ben Schlitter, Steve Rolston, Irisz Agocs and Holly DeWolf.