November 13, 2008
Books I have read and highly recommend.
TAKING THE LEAP
by Cay Lang
Synopsis
Based on artist and teacher Cay Lang’s popular seminars, TAKING THE LEAP teaches artists how to succeed in today’s complex and competitive art world. Offering inside information on how to show at galleries, nonprofit spaces, and museums, as well as a host of nontraditional venues, this behind-the-scenes look at the art world reveals how decisions are made and what artists can expect and how they can create their own art scene on their own terms.
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FEARLESS CREATING
by Eric Maisel
Eric Maisel’s interests are creativity and creativity coaching, mindfulness and mindfulness training, the art of making personal meaning, existentialism and freethinking, and the psychology of the creative person (including our challenges with depression, anxiety and addiction).
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ART & FEAR: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Synopses Publisher Comments:
“This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people; essentially-statistically speaking-there aren’t any people like that. Geniuses get made once-a-century or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the workings of genius removes this intimately human activity to a strangely unreachable and unknowable place. For all practical purposes making art can be examined in great detail without ever getting entangled in the very remote problems of genius.” –from the Introduction Art and Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn’t get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The book’s co-authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are themselves both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is experienced by artmakers themselves. This is not your typical self-help book. This is a book written by artists, for artists — it’s about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do.
An excerpt: Today, more than it was however many years ago, art is hard because you have to keep after it so consistently. On so many different fronts. For so little external reward. Artists become veteran artists only by making peace not just with themselves, but with a huge range of issues. You have to find your work…
Thanks to Andrew for recommending this book!
Unfortunately there is not a website for these authors.