The happiness trap: How to win the battle between money and meaning

“If you’re using your passion and skills to help others, but not making money, then this is solely a hobby or pro bono work, not a business.

If you want to build a business, then you can’t avoid the fact that you’ll need to start making money. If you battle with charging for something you love doing, then you have work to do.

If you’re in this group it’s time you started to act, and think, more like an entrepreneur:

• Develop a different money mindset

• Learn about different business models

• Discover proven approaches to boost your income

• Get access to some simple yet powerful tools

“Money is like a mirror, showing you who you want to be. In the mirror you see the reflection of the free you, the secure you, the enabled you. So you believe money really is those things. You see those powers when you look at money.” Tom Nixon

The game

Putting the work in the middle, has always been important to me, because otherwise whats the point, right?

As a lover of data and flow charts, I been trying to find a work model that is clear, repeatable, scalable, and long term. Basketball seemed like a good metaphor for the game.

How do I use this chart?

Sometimes when I have to deal with different disciplines i get confused or overwhelmed. looking at the chart brings a sense of order. its ok to take care of a store / dealer/ student/ dealer / project issues all in one day, just same of the same list. It also reminds me that the prize is the work in the middle …

Giving form vs giving birth

I learned about natural birth through five labors .

I never thought this could be of any use in my art blog but here we are.

I was invited on FB to a group called giving form and than It clicked - how did I not see it before?

yes, its the same.

why how where ? ??

kind of everything about it really.

take the famous pushing scene from all the movies. its false.

In natural birth we let it flow like the river. you are not to push, it comes out by itself, you are to not disturb, find the position most comfortable and make room for it.

Art? Birth? same …

about work

Dealing with form color and scale as a path towards sustainable liberation, my process is a funny one because I’m actually a perfectionist doomed to fail, over and over again. Hunted by the powers in play, I choose submission over the illusion of having a choice. When not complaining I know I’m a surfer riding one of the most amazing waves there is, When I do catch a good one, Its connecting me to eternity, Universal knowledge and all my previous and future lives, worth it. so here I am, doing the only thing im good for. catching waves.

Space

same lines different context - different meaning

Thomas Nozkowski in his own words.

“the idea of knowing what a painting is going to end up being just drives me crazy. That’s absolutely against the rules. I want to be happy in my studio. I want it to be exciting, and I don’t want it to be a job.”

Untitled (MH-5), 2014

“For political reasons, I found the kind of large scale, macho-man abstractions of early SoHo beneath contempt.

These were painters that I liked and admired, and I remember going to shows and seeing a painting that was 20 feet long—it’s like the 800-pound gorilla that sits wherever it wants to sit.

I didn’t want to paint that way, and I decided I would paint at a size that was scaled to my friends’ apartments, that could hang in a three-room walkup tenement on 7th Street.

That was the first big decision. “

“The idea that you can work very quickly is crucial. Another component is the idea that you can have these things in your home, that it’s not a special project to have an art collection. You can have 10 paintings hanging on a wall—what a feast! On a practical level, you can carry them around with you. I have a house in the country and a house in the city, and they fit in the backseat of the car. The issue is to be able to keep working, to be able to pursue your dreams for lack of a better term. This allowed me to do that. “

“The nice thing about the world is that everything stretches out to touch everything else, creating these references and connections beyond the visual scene at hand.

There’s a painting in this show with some Matissean curvy shapes painted in a Matisse blue—that’s not an accident, it was a decision to draw upon that blue for that particular move.”

“I just don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. When I first started working this way, I thought that if I was as absolutely, painfully sincere as possible about what I was doing I would within some short period of time develop a signature style.

I thought that somewhere deep inside was this signature style that would come out if I just let it. To my amazement, no such signature style came to be! I’ve come to understand the signature style as a weakness—that’s as far as you can go. It’s not where you want to go, it’s where your system takes you and stops. It’s like the Peter Principle, “failing upwards.” How far can you fail?”

“I do like the idea of saying “look, every question is different, every problem is different, why shouldn’t every painting be different?” You don’t want to get carpal tunnel, always doing the same damn painting!”

As a painter, you have a project: there’s a thing in the world you want to make a picture of. How do you make a picture of a feeling, of a mood, of a quality of life, even of something like a sunset? The answer is that you just start, and you do it as well as you can. At a minimum, you will succeed in having a picture of how well you could do something. You’re reaching for that sunset. 

I work every day. I have a little less stamina as I’ve gotten older, but here’s a thing—all of my ideas about why I make work, why I think other people should make work, are up for grabs. It may or may not mean anything. But what it does mean for me is it gives me a reason to be in the studio that I find compelling. I’m fascinated by being in the studio. Sometimes I’m not happy about it, it’s a real battle. But for me, there’s always something new to find, something new to do. I certainly hope that lasts forever. It feels like it will. It’s been 40 years

RIP

“Intimate Landscape” in 7 steps

First some Context, this project was conceived for PAC, a local spring contemporary art festival of Marseille Provence Métropole, our village is included, and so I am kindly hosted for this occasion at “la voûte rovellotti” An experimental sculpture gallery space run by claude-agathe and her family. Thank you !

The show will be open on the 18 of Mai at 14h- 20h

This installation was an adventure. It started with lots of unknowns,

here is a 7 steps description of how it became:

1. Plastic protection for the floor - the floor in the space is a hand made mosaic so we covered the 5x10meter with plastic protection.

2. Paper rolls taped - to cover such a surface I wanted a paper that will be fancy white but also super strong, I ended up taking rolls of renovation papers, that are 10 meter long and 1 meter width

   - Thanks Thierry, Sara and Caro

3. painting - painting in a space that is long and narrow, I had to create two centers, so the blue main spots and than worked around them, I had 4 black spots on one side and 2 XL arches on the other. I started with 11 liter of white building up with red and yellow, than light blue and finally the black

4. video - Painter’s porn, is a term I use to explain how to shoot my work. beautifully executed by the amazing Julia Gat as always.

5. Screening composition tryouts - Together with Victor journet the Curator, we did some tryouts before we reached the final composition.

6. Music - I downloaded my son music from band camp, I really like it, and I feel it carries the space well check him out here

7. ready set go - join us on the 18 afternoon Paris time, we will be live streaming on insta… https://www.instagram.com/yifatgat/
   

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists:

# 1 - 2:31 Daily work

# 2 - 5:51 Volume, not perfection

# 3 - 8:40 Steal

# 4 - 11:46 Conscious learning

# 5 - 15:50 Rest

# 6 - 19:02 Feedback

# 7 - 24:09 Create what you love

Ted nelson

Living in an interconnected constantly changing world, its so nice to actually hear people talking about it

Here is Ted on the big screen for the first time-- interviewed by the great film-maker Werner Herzog for his 2016 movie about the Internet and its consequences. The interview is brilliantly edited to present a seamless train of thought selected from Ted's sweeping complex of ideas.

Ted Nelson is one of the original prophets of the information age. Here he talks about about the birth of personal computing, the web, and how to think beyond the currently possible. Read more: https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/geek-life/profiles/extended-directors-cut-ted-nelson-on-what-modern-programmers-can-learn-from-the-past