I've just listened to a podcast called "I like your work" they bring up the issue of having little to no professional practise induction into the real world, or examples of what to do once you leave university and how to pursue your artistic career.
We had professional practice courses at university where we were encouraged to make samples of our work to send to galleries, we were encouraged to brand ourselves or make ourselves in to a brand and basically apply for everything that we could.
The first time I graduated was in the 2008 recession so when I left University there were no jobs There were no opportunities and no one knew what they were doing, whether their gallery would survive, if their practice would survive and sadly many did not survive.
The second time I graduated was in 2011. I took a master's course because my boring normal job was killing me.
As a masters student I really would have benefited from some sort of guidance on what to do in the artistic world. I already have some work in a gallery but it was not a lot of work and it was only one small gallery.
It was also work that I could not make at home.
So I bought a kiln and started making smaller versions of that work which led me to realise that the pricing system that I put in place at university did not apply any longer.
I had to rethink my process, my prices and my ability to actually create the work whilst working another temporary job.
At the time I had a weekend job working in a clothes shop, who would change my hours weekly and expect me to show up regardless and have no other commitments.
When I needed to take a large piece of glass to be acid dipped and I got stuck there for several hours I couldn't make it to my shift, I got a disciplinary and essentially after the temporary term was up they did not keep me on because I had absences. Totally worth it.
In the long run it was better for my career but at the time I liked having some form of stable income... and discount on clothing.
Something I learnt whilst I was making pieces for this small gallery (which were large cast glass sculptures) was that the gallery owner had completely unrealistic expectations about how long it took me to make a large glass piece.
Basically she had a customer who wanted a specific colour of the sculpture before Christmas. She had given me 3 months, so I reluctantly agreed but because I had to rush things through and have a piece made before Christmas it ended up costing me more than usually would, not to mention petrol, running around, stress, etc and I managed to get it to her three days before Christmas. I later found out that she did not give it to the customer until 2 weeks later so I had rushed for nothing. I ended up just covering my costs making that sculpture.
Things like this made me realise that I needed to set clear boundaries on how long something would take to make and adjust pricing accordingly for creating work outside of a University environment. I had not taken in to account that I had to order a lot of casting crystal from another country before I could start, or factored in hiring a large kiln because I didn't have access to the university kiln.
I was hindered slightly in that someone at the university told me I could hire the kilns once I'd graduated as an alumni but when I tried to actually initiate this I was told that there was no such protocol for ex-students hiring kilns or equipment. So I had to go and find a kiln large enough that I could hire elsewhere. The hire of the kiln cost me over half the price of the sculpture so that's basically where I lost all of my profit.
I hope that I can benefit someone by making these mistakes first, or maybe, I don't know, creating a lecture or something to help people when they are first starting out in the art world.
Because not every opportunity is quite as great as it might seem at first glance.
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