Photo by Khara Woods on Unsplash

This is the third article in a four part series from Meta about the beautiful and clumsy work of making art… and then trying to tell people about it. Find Meta’s website here!

Artists love to make art. They are pulled into a rhythm that is other worldly, where the pressure of deadlines and pay structures and an intended audience fade away. The making is playful and generative, less concerned with the finished product than the beauty revealed during the creative process. 

But professional artists can’t stay in the making stages of art all the time or forever. Eventually they have to come back to reality to share a product and get paid. They have to put boundaries around what they are making, even if it still feels wild. If the art was commissioned or conditioned, there is a season for critical feedback and edits. They are asked to explain it, to make practical sense of what might not want to be practical!

For all the ways an artist is called and gifted to create art, sharing it with the wider world might not be intuitive or part of a learned skill set. In fact, for most artists, it’s the most clunky and frustrating part of the process. And for some, it’s soul crushing. 

I didn’t think of my earliest freelance writing projects as art. They were articles and stories I cranked out for a little extra income. But the first time I pitched a book idea to an editor, that felt like art. I had an idea that had roots in who and whose I was. Some of the project was already written and I was using portions of it in my pastoral context. What I’d written mattered differently because I knew it needed to be born. I was holding it and protecting it, talking about it like the editor could only have access to it if she loved it like I did. 

Seasoned preachers experience this tension. Sometimes we’ve prepared a sermon that has required something new from us and we have already been transformed by the craft of preparing it. When we step into the pulpit, we hope that the people will hear what we want them to hear, that they might be changed like we have been changed. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. All we can do is tell the truth and let go. 

It can feel a little like grief to say goodbye to a sermon or a work of art that has already worked a miracle on us as the maker, to share something that means so much to us with others who may or may not love it like we do. 

You’d think that nearly two decades of Sundays spent preaching and letting go of what I made with the Holy Spirit would make me more comfortable and resilient when it comes to sharing my art with the world. But every project that comes by way of commission or advance is a rollercoaster ride with hands up highs and stomach dropping lows.

Bad News, Good News

Deadlines

Signing a timeline and payment plan for art you haven’t made yet is a risky thing, especially if this art is your main source of income. Deadlines are for the sake of an end product, not the art itself. But for artists who need to be paid, promoted, and given time for the next project, deadlines can be the boundary you need to let go and keep making more art.

Blocks

You never know when writer’s block will hit or whether you’ll be able to transcribe that instrumental part onto paper. Getting unblocked can take hard work and time when time already feels scarce. But the best ways to get unblocked require that you re engage with your inner artist and embody energy that does not let commerce have the last word on your creativity.

Overexposure

Another round of edits? You can’t bring yourself to read the manuscript one more time or you might decide you hate it. Some stages of production require attention to detail when you just can’t pay attention to the little stuff anymore. Maybe you’ve already started working on another piece of art that’s in a more generative stage than these final touches. Hopefully, you have a great team to pick up the slack and give good care to what you can’t. If you’re already hearing from others that the project is wonderful and important, it can revitalize your commitment and interest.

Asking for Accolades

As you’re getting ready to make your art public, you reach out to people in your professional and social circles for endorsements, feedback, and help promoting what you’ve made. Some of them should be aspirational asks, people with much bigger followings and famous mediums that might want to lift up your work. Asking for help from other people and platforms is vulnerable, but the results can be so positive and encouraging. Your artist community will grow, your work will find a wider audience, and you’ll get to return the favor.

Another Skill Set

Sharing your work broadly is a heavy lift for any artist. Most of the time spent marketing, networking, and building a public presence costs money instead of creating revenue. Even if you have this skillset, professional connections, or a publicity team, sharing your work with the world means branding both your art and your artist. It means making a commitment to your public identity and developing a strategy that keeps your art relevant and meaningful for others. 

Many artists can’t afford this important part of the making and sharing process, or they are not willing to spend time and energy branding themselves for the sake of a public conversation. They just want to keep making art! 

Imagine all the music and written word and visual art and artistic movement we are missing out on because artists don’t have the systems they need to share what they have made with the wider church! 

I wonder how the body of Christ, all of our institutions and communities, could be an ecosystem in which new art is always being nurtured and noticed, patroned and set free, commissioned at a living wage and carried into the world by many instead of depending on the weary one who made it. The one who is already dreaming about the next season of making. 

It might remind us that we all have a share in the art because we are all artists. And thanks to our creative God, there will always be more art to make and let go and share and discover together.