Introduction

‘An artist’s life used to be a vocation, a calling, often demanding sacrifices or renunciation of worldly values. When professionalism replaced vocation, artists started wanting art to serve their careers rather than seeing themselves as serving art.’ —Suzi Gablik 1

rmed with our BAs in fine art/graphic design, the Carnegie-Mellon graduation class of 1973 moved out into the world more or less assured of earning a good livelihood. With some discipline and an ongoing commitment to producing high quality work (and with maybe a little teaching on the side), we could expect to live from our creative abilities. The phrase ‘Good work finds its own way into the world’ had meaning then, and truthfully, this is how the first stage of my career as an artist proceeded. For six years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I made my living from calligraphy and design commissions, from juried art fairs, and teaching adult art courses. All of this unfolded without the need for any branding or self-promotion, or social media (which didn’t yet exist).

Relocating to the Netherlands in the 1980s when I was 33 years old was the beginning of a very different experience of being an artist. In Pittsburgh, I hadn’t realized that the ease of my success was also due to being embedded in several communities in the city, and that most of my work came from within those warm networks. From being a rising star in calligraphy and fine arts in the United States, I landed as an unknown foreigner in a vastly different cultural landscape than the one I had known. Alongside the usual challenges of integrating into a new country, there were other factors at play which made picking up my interrupted career exceedingly difficult. My specialty, calligraphy, was negatively associated in the Netherlands with the World War II German occupation and their use of Gothic script, which had dominated city streets during those years. Additionally, ‘calligraphy’ was firmly relegated to the hobby corner. While accepted in the US and England, the concept of calligraphic art as a branch of contemporary graphics and art was — aside from a handful of practitioners — virtually unknown here. Graphic design in the Netherlands of the 1980s was ever so avant-garde, all

minimal lines and slashes. When I showed my portfolio to design studios, my work, which was warmer and more decorative, was labelled as ‘too American’ (whatever that meant) and ‘too traditional.’

In addition, the international fine arts scene, already seriously compromised, had by now become completely commercialized. As visionary and art critic Suzi Gablik wrote in the 1980s: ‘Trapped increasingly in a situation that seems both hopeless and inescapable, artists have become increasingly dependent on the ‘bureaucratic machinery’ which now organizes and administers the consumption of art in our culture.’ 2 For the first time I was confronted with a reality where doing good art wasn’t enough. It not only had to fit with the new times and culture I was living in, but above all the artist had to be a skilled entrepreneur to even get noticed, let alone earn a living.

And so this book began as a search for meaning in my path as an artist. I was attempting to understand what I was experiencing all around me as the arts and artists were being devalued and marginalized. As society moved toward the commoditization of everything, I was questioning what artists could do, and what their purpose might be if they refused to produce art solely as a product. During the almost twenty years it took to write this book, many doors closed for me. I discovered that though I was passionate about much of my work, putting it in service to building and maintaining a career was unfulfilling. I didn’t realize it then, but in my heart there was a calling which was not being heeded. I gradually withdrew from art as a career, and began to question what art could mean not only for my individual life, but also for our collective lives. And over time, new doors opened.

So this book is partly the chronicle of a personal journey; it starts with a successful life as a professional artist, and takes us through a search for meaning in an international spiritual community in Scotland, eventually landing as an outsider in the Dutch culture, establishing a career there, working as a healthcare artist in hospitals, and a gradual discovery of purpose beyond the selling of art and oneself. Some parts of the book were written during a period of transition between my old familiar way of life and a not yet discovered new one. It was a time full of doubt and isolation, yet I knew I wasn’t the only one experiencing this. I wanted to share how I navigated a limbo period that went on for years and what I learned from it. I wanted to write while I was in the middle of it to describe the terrain for others who might be experiencing a similar situation.

Choosing to write from an uncertain, constantly morphing period of life goes against the current formula of ‘how I succeeded despite everything’

books. There seems to be a new kind of myth that describes a process of overcoming obstacles to become the ’success that one is now.’ I can tell you early on that this book doesn’t follow that formula. Success can be defined in many ways. By veering away from a profession, the attributes of success changed from money and status to a set of other rewards. These only became evident after giving up the chase, and after a complete overhaul of my ideas and aspirations. In the end, I discovered that the period of feeling lost is necessary when you are radically changing your direction. Like the creative process, once you embark on it, there is no guarantee as to where you’ll end up. Though my life has moved beyond the years of limbo, I see that period as a necessary part of my story.

I also found there was no way to tell my story without taking into account the enormous societal and cultural changes happening all around me. The scope of the book has expanded beyond the personal to consider new areas opening up for the arts and artists. It is not just a chronicle of how one artist had to change with the times, but also a story of the search for a more whole and connected sort of life generally. My artist friends were asking themselves if there is indeed a place in the world for them, and if there is any meaning in that path. I wrote this to get things clear for myself in the hope that others may also benefit from the insights gained along the way. This journey, including an ovarian cancer diagnosis during the writing of the book, has led me back to the rhythms of my own heart’s path, and a deepening connection with the soul of the Earth. Though the book is written from the perspective of a visual artist, it doesn’t matter what your area of work and expression is — creativity and creative thinking can be applied in every field.

The artists you will meet in these pages have changed the rules. By following their calling with integrity and creative passion, they have each forged a unique path that others may in turn follow. They are strengthening the emergence of the “new arts” — arts done in service to the community and the land, and fully integrated into mainstream life. There are books I’ve read which have profoundly changed me: they have opened a door or taken away a worry, or sometimes lifted me so far above my little personal world that something in me just healed up which I didn’t even know was broken.

This is the kind of book I wanted to write, and I hope for some of you it is. —Sarah, Autumn 2018