#socialartpractice

ROADWORK, SLEEPING AROUND, AND ART SLUTTING

For six of the last eight months I’ve been traveling for work around the country as a teaching artist, driving through twenty-four U.S. states and instructing in twelve of them. In that half-a-year, I didn’t sleep in any one place for more than two weeks. During a lot of that time, I didn’t sleep in any one place for more than one night.

As I made my way across America, I spent the majority of my evenings in a five-by-five fabric tent posted up on campgrounds, in state parks, and on private lands. I got decent sleep in the utility-blanket-padded truck bed of my car, hostel-bunked beneath snoring strangers, met plenty of house cats and dogs while couch surfing, saw several guest room twin beds, curled up next to a space heater in the shelter of an out-of-commission school bus (nothing near to the Chris McCandlesss narrative), and purchased a motel room only twice. 

I sleep around like this because 1) I’m still working on recovering the initial start-up costs of the project and 2) I don’t mind ‘roughing it’ as a means of cutting running costs.

While traveling with this work, I get a lot of questions from people I meet on the road about project funding. The ‘How is this funded?’ inquiry comes often, most frequently from other working artists. Maybe they’re hoping I’ll reveal a secret formula or dish some insider scoop on grant opportunities. Maybe they’re looking to get connected with my non-existent patron, manager, or agent. Here’s the simple truth: this project’s “funding” is what I’m earning – and in all honesty, it’s been a struggle to keep up with the actual costs.

After an initial crowd-funding campaign to acquire building materials, the first iteration of The Mobile Mill (a push-cart transported by pick-up truck) was constructed with the donated aid of family members and inner-circle friends. The biggest personal fiscal leap was buying a used truck on credit. In regards to the roadwork I set out to do, it was a necessary but uncomfortable purchase – particularly as a millennial with student loan debt. That said the investment in the automobile was what ultimately kept me going, literally and internally, firing me up and moving the project forward.

In the last three years I’ve been able to travel with The Mobile Mill on monies patched together through a combination of personal paid-work (arts-related and not) off the road, paid teaching gigs on the road, and the selling of handmade paper goods here and there. There is no scholarship, no singular grant, no award money: just me, my truck, my tools, my strong willed, figure-it-out personality, and a hell of a lot of grassroots help along the way. The Mobile Mill continues to operate thanks to the people who’ve said ‘yes’ to me. There are the people who vouch for me, make e-connections, write letters of recommendation of my behalf, repost my online content, take time to give me feedback, help me troubleshoot, and share the especially helpful ‘been-there’ bits of advice. And then there are the persons that welcomed me, put me up, fed me, entertained me, and even treated me along the way. My parents played a hugely critical role through offering me on and off again longer-term housing in between happenings.

We all know that finding an everyday job can be hard. Now wrap your head around the personal time and labor that goes into finding jobs in unknown networks in multiple cities over the course of six months – it’s tough work. This “social practice art” thing – it isn’t all fun and games. After all the cold-call emailing and networking with strangers, I’m thankful for each and every call back, for the people who took a chance on hiring me, for the folks who went the extra mile on my behalf, and the persons who helped me to fill the gaps. I will not forget the hospitality I have been shown, and I commit to paying that energy forward.

If you can find a way to get out there on the road and you want to survive the road, you sure as hell have to be on your best behavior. To function nomadically, you’ve got to be humble and you’ve got to be a good communicator…after all you’re traveling through pool after pool of strangers. On my last trek, I reckon I met between eight hundred to a thousand new faces amidst the daily-changing surroundings. Living this way entails an extremely high level of social vulnerability along with a necessary willingness to roll with the punches. In her latest book My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem says that: “The road will force you to live in the present.” I agree completely. Life on the road absolutely requires adaptability. A lot of it is about figuring it out as you go, and going on while being okay with not getting back.

As those in my age group begin to settle down in the more expected ways – partnering off, getting engaged or married, having children, putting down payments on homes, working their way up the corporate career ladders – I’ve been driving a small red truck around the United States teaching papermaking classes. It’s not glamorous, it’s not always healthy, it’s unpredictable, it can be stressful and even frightening – but it certainly is satisfying. I can’t say that I expected to be where I am, but here I am. Finance headaches aside, I am passionate about the roadwork that I am doing.

So much is learned from behind the driver’s wheel, particularly in the context of long distance travel. There is great beauty in the ever-changing landscape as well as those familiar entities which repeat themselves from town to town: Main Streets, Post Offices, dive bars, roadside grills, road signs, and black pavement with white or yellow dashed lines. I drive a lot in silence, lost in the looking while enjoying the hum of the engine and the connection to the massive chunk of metal I’m steering. When I do need other noise I tune in to local radio as to get a sense of the places I’m passing through. Regardless of my location, a haunting broadcasted memo arrives: that moment where the radio VJ announces to listeners that they’re playing the next song “to get you through your workday”.

Of course we all have to do things we don’t want to do in order to keep up with the soaring costs of our own lives. That said I’m disgruntled by the likely and unfortunate truth that there are more people that hate what they do for a living than there are persons who enjoy what they do for a living. In regards to the later group of people who do like their jobs and make a decent living here in America, we say it’s ‘lucky’, or we call it a ‘luxury’.  

Something is wrong with this picture. And can’t say I know how to fix it.

I reckon if you’re not that type person, then you are likely: underpaid for a job you love; underpaid for a job you hate; making bank at a job you hate; or not working a paying job.

While I cringe at the violence and injustice ingrained in U.S. history, and continuing to take place in this country or at the hand of this country elsewhere in the world, I am proud to be part of a nation of people who work their asses off to be here – all the more impressed by folks who do it while remaining sane, just, and considerate human beings. In you exist in the “system” or the “mainstream” of a society, you know that money is power and power is freedom and freedom is an illusion if you haven’t got any money. The ‘American dream’ is the ‘American reality’ – you can get all you want in this life if you work to the death for it. Okay maybe that’s a bit of a dramatic umbrella statement, nonetheless it’s a notion that continues to make the optimist in me wonder: What would living actually look like if everyone had a job they enjoyed doing?

It’s just about summertime in Sacramento, California – or at least the hot temperatures tell me so. Here I am, settling in to a new place of living after months of constantly moving, looking for the next bit of work that will allow me to live here. Back to a room of my own and bed sheets that smell like me, monthly rent and bills, with greener foods stocked in the fridge and a weekly fitness routine. I sleep here with similar motivations that led me to sleep around while traveling: it’s affording me an art practice.

The Mobile Mill’s first national road tour was a huge success in the sense that it happened, safely and swiftly. Now wrapped up with the journey and reviewing the actual finances of the trip, I will share this bit: I did not break even. And though I have no one to blame but myself, I’m frustrated with that outcome. Part of my job is to create value around the work that I, and others, do as teaching artists – and I need to be setting a higher bar.

The obvious error in project budgeting: I executed more unpaid work than I did fully-paid work.

Looking over my list of Mobile Mill events in 2015, approximately half of the work I did was fully paid work (meaning income that met or surpassed my actual running costs). Work that I agreed to do on a full or partial donation basis was done because: it was personally meaningful in some way; it was work with a community that couldn’t afford to hire me; or it was fun; it was part of a live-work exchange; it was for a friend; it allowed me to collect some type of experimental data important to the larger project; it translated into waived fees for a larger invitation or application based vendor event. My reasons and motivations for discounted or pro bono labor are varied but ultimately they were all executed by choice, not regretted, and only possible due to some sacrifice on my end.

Determined to make this work available to an array of education budgets, I want to keep my teaching fees reasonable, affordable, and accessible. At the same time, I need to generate viable income that will allow The Mobile Mill to go on. While philanthropy teaches us how to give, and giving is a key part of community building, the cold, hard but not-so-surprising truth is that I simply cannot afford to be doing this amount of free labor.

At this point in my life, yes, I will sleep on the ground and eat oatmeal regularly if it allows me to continue to travel with The Mobile Mill. These lighthearted sleeping and eating examples noted I’m embarrassed to say that I spent less than $200 on my personal healthcare over the course of the last year. While a just-do-it attitude has certainly been crucial to my overall art career, it is not a long-term formula that will sustain The Mobile Mill. I speculate: How many personal sacrifices do/can I make for the sake of this project before it adversely affects my individual wellbeing?

In a twisted way, the act of helping others can translate into self-damage. As I’d like to keep up work with communities that can’t meet my overhead costs, I will absolutely have to secure grant monies that make up the economic difference. Backed up by a preexisting budget, I am confident that I can continue to donate my time and energy where it’s needed.

With a goal to hit the road nationally again in Summer 2017, I make the commitment to less art-slutting. There will be more ‘no’ saying. There will be a balanced amount of volunteerism. And there will be less oatmeal.