Where The Value Is

You can find it about 16 paces to your right.

Wait. I mean 16 miles.

No, that’s not right…

10012162166_cde34d427e_z

The greatest value is not found. Nor can you literally create something that is valuable. Take for example, a novel no one has ever read, no one knows it exists, it has yet to have a value attached to it.

This is a common mistake I see in artists, writers, and those alike. So much of their intention is to create something valuable that, in doing so, they forget 1. their original motivation for creating (commonly to induce social change) and 2. that most items perceived as invaluable are so far off the paved, beaten, and forked road.

The fault is in trying to create something that fits a current valuable perception.

The answer to create something that does not fit any current valuable perception. (In all irony, that’s exactly where the most valuable perception is.)

I can’t help but think that, right now, there are people walking, driving, flying, and swimming in parts of the world that so few people before them have been. Surely, some are exploring areas for the first time. I envy them. No, I’m down right jealous. They are in the most invaluable places on earth.

Fortunately, art is not limited to the landscape of the earth.

 

Stay Positive & There’s Enough Space In Art For You To Be The First There

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

 

 

Art Is War On The Human Brain

making bank

Elusive graffiti artist, Banksy set up a stand in NYC selling his signature work for $60. Normally his work goes for about $40,000, to $200 thousand and up.

This says less about what art is worth and more about what we perceive as art. Reporters are not doing Banksy any justice by not reporting on why he is establishing residency in NYC one day at a time through the movement he dubs “Better Out Than In.”

This has two positive, but counterintuitive results.

Banksy’s spray art has always been to communicate a message. That message is up to each individual to decode and then act on. Since news reporters are failing to report on the messages of the work, it is completely left to the individual who sees it to make their interpretation and the mass are failing at it. This is why Banksy only made $420 from selling his work the other day.

Many would blame Banksy for not creating work that convinces people to analyze it. To that I would ask what art work does do that?

The other result is if the media did begin to analyze his efforts and voice their interpretation of his artwork, that closes the value of those who interpret Banksy’s art different from how the media says to interpret it. Banksy

For example, the media could pawn this piece off as being purely humorous, when, in fact, it could have hundreds of different purposes beyond simply invoking a chuckle.

It does not matter that Banksy sold his work for $60 a piece. What matters is why he did.

All the same, it does not matter that Banksy sprays his art work around NYC. What matters is why he is.

It doesn’t seem like the media is going to give us any answers on that. However, by the end of the month, I imagine Banksy will.

 

Stay Positive & Perhaps It’s Better That The Media Doesn’t(?)

Garth E. Beyer

The Faults Of Overtime

5011477848_84669d30ff_z

The fault is all on you.

Quite recently in my career as a journalist, I decided that I would not do an interview that goes over an hour. Collectively, the interview may take more than an hour, but the total would not be one continuous effort to get all that I could out of it. I also hold this rule for team meetings or anything one does in groups.

When the hour is up. It’s up. Not a minute over. Sometimes – and preferably – it ends a few minutes short of an hour.

People are exhausting. So is caring, listening, and interacting with other people. I’ve come to the conclusion that speaking for an extra three minutes or asking people to stay late or staying on one topic when it was scheduled to change 10 minutes ago does more harm than good. Why does this matter?

Think about your work. What do you do? There are very (very!) few jobs that don’t require you to interact with another person or group of people. (For those few jobs that don’t, I guarantee they would only benefit by having human to human interaction.) The thought behind this is that while an extra two minutes may mean nothing to you, those you interact with may view their time as more valuable. (Not to mention, your inability to recognize this leaves those who you interact with with the impression that you don’t care about them, which is exactly what you set out not to do.)

To stay parallel with my recent writing on consumerism and positive emotionalism (that people buy products that make them feel certain ways and sacrifice leisure time to do so), overtime needs mentioning.

The concept behind normal working hours and being paid a larger amount if you worked over those hours (overtime) was introduced in 1937 by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The development overtime has taken in the workplace is outstanding, both in terms of higher pay for working overtime and pushing employers to heavily restrict the ability for workers to work overtime. In turn, offering workers more leisure time.

I argue that with this additional leisure time, people still participate in overtime. With “overtime” being defined as our pursuit of that which makes us feel the way we want to feel through working more than is reasonable and beyond meaningful. (Work, by my definition, is anything that we put effort into doing without passion.) One does not need to have a full-time cubicle job with benefits for one to be considered working. Many times, just doing dishes and vacuuming is work.

The pivotal point here is that overtime is an average object covered with a cloak of hope. Hope that if one works hard enough, that what is under the cloak will turn into something that makes them feel better; be it a bigger car, a better type of coffee brew, or just new dishes.

What puzzles me most is that we work overtime to perform this cloak-covered magic when we are better off performing the real magic of working with passion (making art).

The wand is in your hand.

 

Stay Positive & You Don’t Need An Object Just To Wave It

Garth E. Beyer

Ironically, Seth Godin touched on part of this post this morning. Full disclosure, I had the idea and began writing about this prior to my viewing of his blog.

Photo credit

Art Isn’t For Squares

and this story isn’t only for painters. We’re all artists.

whitespace

Being an artist is simple:

1. You have something that you use

2. You have something that you use it on

“But the painter’s basic challenge, the manipulation of colors and forms and metaphors on the flat plane with its almost inevitably rectangular shape, is no longer generally seen as art’s alpha and omega, as the primary place in the visual arts where meaning and mystery are believed to come together,” said Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic

The square canvas has become the sign of an amateur. So has PowerPoint slide themes and fill-in-the-blank business plans and pre-written sales dialogues.

I’ve written almost exhaustively about the age of redesign that we are in. Artists of all kinds are experimenting not only with what they use, but what they use it on. I have noticed a fault, though. There’s a whitespace that needs to be filled.

3. Something new to say, express, or feel.

Michael Levenson, writer for The Atlantic said, “Brilliant new forms are good in themselves. But they’re even better when they inform new ethics, showing us how to acknowledge our contradictory modern selves and still marry for love (Woolf), or how to go on when you can’t go on (Beckett).”

Art isn’t for squares,

but it is for people who understand their “how” of making a difference.

 

Stay Positive & Find Your Whitespace And Fill It

Garth E. Beyer

Here are two articles that compliment one another.

Photo credit

Talent, Finishing, Conversing, And Starting

You have no clue just how talented you are.

The two best things you could be doing with your talent is finishing and conversing. These two actions not only compliment you by expressing how talented you are, but they precede growth.

You learn best from finishing. When you finish something, you have the choice to keep it quiet, stick it in the drawer, erase it entirely… or share it, talk with people about it and get feedback. (Both are positive, but you know which produces the greater result.)

The tragedy is that you may also not know how untalented you are. The fear this ignites when faced with being part of a group is enough for you to stop considering it all together.  So, you finish and that’s it.

That was okay to do prior to the connection economy we are in now. 25 years ago, you could stockpile your art and still leave a legacy. Now you never hear of a person who kept everything to herself and became a legend.

I encourage you to get together with someone or a group of people.

In a world that demands you to finish, don’t forget to start something incredible along the way. Eight people getting together to converse about what they have finished. That in and of itself is incredible.

 

Stay Positive & Go

Garth E. Beyer

A Fair Place To Find Passion

You can write and talk about a lot of things you like, but it’s difficult to do so without sounding like you are promoting it.

When searching for passion (in writing, in creating, in art), find something that makes you angry.

I’ve noticed hundreds of exceptional products made because the inventor was angry that things were the way they were.

Sure, you can find something you love and add to it so that you love it more, but I can’t sense the passion when you do that.

If you communicate to me that you added more frosting to the middle of an oreo, great, I’m sure some people will like that. But, if you get frustrated that they don’t offer enough variety in terms of the flavor of frosting and then go out and create a new frosting, you will certainly get a lot more attention.

(Now is a good time to read about Cheez-Its.)

Remarkable change and creation stem from passion, and who is to say that anger is not a fair place to find passion?

 

Stay Positive & Count To 10, Then Do Something About It

Garth E. Beyer

At The End Of The Day

Your imagination is not kaput. Your creative tank is not drained. Your intellect is not exhausted. Your talent has not waned. Your skill has not faltered.

At the end of the day, what is stopping you from continuing to create what you create, from doing more of what you do, is willpower.

We only have so much willpower each day. If you find yourself with little to no willpower at the end of the day and you spent it on your art. Well, high-five to you. Not many people exhaust their willpower on a daily basis, let alone on what’s truly important to them.

 

Stay Positive & Tomorrow Is A New Day (with your willpower restored)

Garth E. Beyer