The Budget question
How do you Start your Art-projects, how do you define your budgets for them?
It is not every day that someone asks me questions like these it’s not every day that I ask myself questions like that. When Ruzbeh asked me these very questions on a long overdue lunch the other week it provoked me to sit down and write it down.
Art projects start themself; I have around 5or6 different Art-projects flying around in my head they are some time, to overlapping topics and often they are also similar in their intention. They come and go and if one of them pops up too many times I’ll write it down. But even before that, I’ll talk about them with different people on different occasions. Apart from the feedback I get, doing this makes me listen to how I’m talking about them. It helps me understand what I want to say with this Art-project and deepens my understanding of what’s “at stake” for me in it.
The last point is maybe the most important one, if I can’t pinpoint the most personal core motivation that moves me to initiate this Art-project, it usually won’t work in the long run. This core motivation can be sometimes superficial and even stay in contrast with the “result” or outcome of the Art-project. But without it, there is usually no project.
With time I learned that this process enables me to spar with my Ego and free myself from the judgment and self-doubt that come with creating art and will appear for sure at one point during the work process.
After doing this comes the step of the “three Yes`s”. I need a specific OK from my environment for example OK from models/subjects to participate, Ok for Location, and more than often financial OK. From the moment of getting these OK`s its usually hard work and if I’m lucky a lot of painting.
As to the budget question (how do you define your budgets for them) …
The easy way to describe it is; I don’t, or if I would want to go easy on myself in most cases I don’t. But I am starting to. As the Art projects I’m focusing on are getting more attention and my level of my craftsmanship raises (getting older) I have no way around it.
The next Art project that I intend to work on, has already a gallery, a location, and a date set. But in the last few weeks, I realized partly due to talks I had and partly from a deep feeling that emerges more than I would love to admit, that this one is a bit more urgent and bigger than it originally seemed to be. So apart from the obvious budget points like – Martials, Rent, PR, F&B, Vernissage, and salaries (with age I learned the hard way that this point includes my salary too) I need to figure out in the coming time how I want to present the project in the first place.
And this is the tricky part. Because I relay want to do this project no matter the cost…
But here comes: I need to do it in order to sustain this one and create the space for it to impact and grow as I have the feeling it ought to.
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes 😊