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In 1983 I decided that I could no longer make frogs. I was bored and very dissatisfied with my work. What I hadn't yet realized was that I was actually bored with clay. I began using Plexiglas as a medium and had the intention of only doing a few clay pieces on a commission basis, but found I had a sketchbook of "unfinished business" that I needed to end cycle on. These were mainly large food pieces without frogs which I made up until 1993. So, for a while I continued to work in clay and simultaneously started working in plexiglas. And then I dropped the clay.
I couldn't get shows with my old galleries. They wanted clay from me and I just couldn't do it. And then I got a letter from a gallery asking how to be a famous artist and how to promote art so that the art world would notice. And it focused my thinking. Here is what I more or less wrote to them.
I read an interview with Bill Gates a while back. The question was asked, "Don't
you feel it ironic that you tell kids to stay in school, yet you're a college
dropout?" The gist of his answer was, "Yes." But he went on
to explain that he was in the middle of a paradigm shift at the time he left
and meant to leave for only a year while he "explored" it. But
if you're not as lucky as he and other people of that time were, then staying
in school could possibly be a good idea.
Michael Dell's, of Dell Computers, story is similarly interesting. To make extra money, he bought computer components and built computers which he sold to other students. He got so well known that he started hiring other students to help him and they took orders over the dorm phones. And then he gave the bad news to his parents. As I recall, the deal was one year to make a go of it or else back to school.
Personally, I don't think college is worthwhile, unless, a like-minded group of people happen to be there with you and you all work together, you have a lousy work ethic and need the deadline of term projects to get you into a better work ethic or you meet people who are sufficiently interested in your work that they show it or buy it and help you continue. College can't teach you how to make art. College can teach you art history but you can get that on your own. What really matters is surrounding yourself with the materials and doing the do.
But, this brings us to the "quick" answer of how to be a famous artist and make money.
The Quick Answer.
I was like-wise in the middle of a paradigm shift. Clay was becoming a media
for actual artwork. Voulkos and Mason were part of the first shift in clay
and the TB-9 students, Melchert, Shaw, et al were part of the second shift.
Prior to this, clay was a material used solely for pottery or maquettes for
bronze or stone sculptures. 
Yes, yes, there were the occasional exceptions
like Gauguin, but for the most part clay was not a serious medium for sculpture
in and of itself. It was more like scratch paper for sculptors.
So, the short answer is that I was lucky. I was part of a paradigm shift. That's how I became a "successful artist". The time was right and I walked into it. Artists, collectors, gallery people and art historians were all moving en masse in the same direction that later formed the paradigm shift called Bay Area Funk Art.
In other words, you need to work. And be lucky. And maybe, there's talent involved.
Now for the long answer.
I believe that you make your own luck by working and talent is having the skills you need for what you want to do faster and better than most people. But if you work long hours you'll get the skill faster and better. I believe that you can have luck and talent by working hard. So, here's the other answer, the long one, which I hesitate to include because people just don't believe it. I happen to be a Scientologist and most of what follows (my thoughts) is from a book Introduction to Scientology Ethics by L. Ron Hubbard. If you decide you want to read this book, make sure you get a new 2007 edition. But, here's the long answer.
Ethics.
That's all.
Keep your ethics in and the money and junk and stuff come in all by themselves. And you don't even have to have any attention at all on the money and junk and stuff if your attention is on ethics.
Ethics are basically doing the right thing at the time you notice it needs doing. That's the big picture and oddly enough, the little picture, too. I wasn't happy with clay, I wasn't growing. It was an ethical decision for me to change.
The
big picture is that the goal in art is to make pieces that communicate to people.
It has been my experience that the easier it is for people to interpret your
piece the easier it is to sell the piece. However, the easier the piece is
to interpret the less satisfying it is spiritually. In other words, it's harder
to sell an abstract painting than it is to sell a painting of a clown, but
the painting of the clown is less satisfying to create and ultimately to have
on the wall. And it's easier to sell a toaster than a piece of art.
Money is not a goal in art. In fact, money is not a goal in anything and that includes the stock market. Money is a symbol for goods and services. Money is the score card. The goal in art is artwork, more specifically, communication often through symbols. That's what makes art so fun to have. As students, we used to have what we called, pot sales, to make money. (Yes, yes, you're making your own jokes about pot sales, but dope dealing is unethical and economic downturn is always linked to unethical activity.) Anyway, we'd make pots, bowls, and cups in exchange for money. But really, money was not the goal. The pot or cup was the goal and we knew they would sell if they were made well enough or cleverly enough. They were fast and easy, not very satisfying spiritually (making art is after all a purely spiritual act), and people did buy them. The goal of the pot sale was a sellable good; a pot, a cup or a bowl-well or unusually made. We exchanged that good for a symbol called money which we then exchanged for another sellable good like food, electricity or a service like car repair. Pot sales enabled us to persist in art long enough for people to catch on to the art we were making and to introduce the public to our work on a very gradient scale. Your audience does not require you to perform great spiritual acts. It is up to you to give it to them anyway. Since people most readily buy things that are easy to interpret, they can become annoyed when you ask too much of them. Tough, it's part of the artist's job description. So, first you sell them a cup, then a clever cup, then a piece of frogfood, then maybe a sculpture with a frog in it, then something a little tougher (more symbolic) to interpret...
Fame is not a goal in art. If you work towards fame you end up being a thing,
the machine that produces wha
t
ever it is you produce. And people will treat you like a thing or even worse,
a possession. Example: most rock stars, many actors. These people are often
treated like things by their handlers, their fans and their "friends".
They become machines that produce entertainment and no matter how broken or
tired this machine becomes they get used until they are so broken that they
can no longer be used and then a new one gets built and the cycle starts over.
Alcohol and drugs only prolong the agony.
I could have continued to make frog stuff but I wasn't evolving. I could actually make a very decent living for my family and me by just making frogs. But it got to the point where I just couldn't stand it any more because I was in danger of becoming a machine.
If you identify the right goal, money and fame automatically attach and come along for the ride without your having any attention on them at all and hopefully by the time the money and the fame do come to you, they are inconsequential because your attention is on the doing of the work; in other words, the creating.
Creating is the most excellent thing we do. And there are lots of things to create whether it is creating a business, a composition, artwork, a home, a dinner.
Example: We had a 14 year old who plays the piano. (We still have him and he still plays piano but he's no longer 14.) When he first started out, the performances were way too important to him. My wife had him examine his goals. It turned out that he wanted the audience to love him (fame). She pointed out that that was a wrong goal. First of all, you can't make the audience love you. Second of all, who cares if the audience loves you? The first point was real to him the second was not. So, we told him he couldn't do anything about making the audience love him. That wasn't in his control. What he could do was study his theory and practice his pieces. That's all. Those were the only two factors in his control as far as we could see. He came up with another; listening to CDs and attending concerts. So we added that and realigned his goal to playing his pieces very, very well with a short term goal of being really ready for each lesson. I also told him that the reason we want our children to play a musical instrument is that reading music and playing an instrument are part of personal excellence and we don't care about performances. We like to listen to the struggle of learning a new piece and perfecting it. The performance is boring compared to the practice.
Having arrived is boring. The journey is what makes life interesting and worth living.
Our son got his ethics in by studying and practicing on a regular basis. This
attitude leaked into his other studies. He also started helping around the
house more. He became personally excellent. When he had the slightest feeling
that he should be practicing he went and practiced. If he didn't understand
a musical term he 
looked it up. He read about the lives of some of his favorite
composers (found his place in history). He started composing. He changed to
a new teacher when his first teacher said it was time for him to move up. My
wife contacted the new teacher and asked if he was interested at all in having
our son as a student. This teacher told her, "That's like asking me if
I want to drive a Rolls Royce". So, he's achieved "audience love" without
having it as an actual goal. The interesting thing is that audience love is
no longer important to him. What has become important is the practice and study
of the piece or the creation of the
performance. The performance itself just comes along by itself.
You can't make people love you, you can't make people love your work and you can't make people buy your work. The only thing that's under your control is to create the work as excellently as you can.
Pay attention to the small things. Ethics is actually doing what should be done in the time you notice that it needs doing. For most of us, ethics does not mean don't rob banks or don't kill people. Those sort of things don't apply to the vast majority of the people on this planet. The ethics that do apply are the smaller things like "clean your room", "don't steal office supplies from work" or "pick up the litter in front of your house even if you didn't put it there ". If the piece isn't looking right, fix it; don't just leave it. OR destroy it. Never be afraid of destruction. There is a balance that needs to be maintained between creation and destruction. If you need to learn how to draw better, learn. If you feel like you really should be working in the studio instead of playing video games, go to the studio and work!! If you're bored with your own work, move on to something that interests you. Fame and fortune come by themselves as long as you persist in creation.
Created 01 June 2004
Last Modified 06 September 2007