From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 07/04/01-01:48:46 AM Z
On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Karen McCall Pengra wrote:
> Judy,
> If you're in the mood, I'd like to hear more about "unhooking your
> livelihood from your art" (offlist if you wish) it is something I have been
> STRUGGLING with!!! I have been a graphic designer for years and years and
> if not for the joy I get from photography, I believe I might have "gone
> under" a few years back (!)...so, I have kept the two very separate, not
> wanting to force the thing that is my 'joy' to make money for me to live
> on, yet some people seem to do well that way...
>
> So, how do you support your "art habit" or does it support you?
Karen, you don't know what you're asking -- because I could use up all the
bandwidth on this list with reply... In fact I have notes for a book (one
of several) titled "Landlady of Maya Deren." Anyone know the name? She
of the bongo drums and 17 (unaltered) cats?
As briefly as possible, in MY case, what worked could be called Real
Estate and Starvation. Long long ago, we bought a derelict (multiple
dwelling) house & fixed it up... ourselves, mostly, before the term "sweat
equity" was coined. Everybody told us how foolish it was: the city was
tanking, the house was collapsing, the block ended in warehouses & truck
depots.The "engineer" we hired to check it said NO WAY, and he didn't even
find the termites -- with mud tunnels all over the support beams in the
dirt floored cellar. Frankly, I didn't think of any of that. I just knew I
didn't want to mow a lawn.
In the event, given the vicissitudes of NYC rent laws, we didn't/don't
make much profit after 44 years of sweat, but it's a roof over our heads
that no one can sell out from under us. And yes, I know people doing it
now (and those laws were why we got it cheap). Not in the heart of
Manhattan any more, but all sorts of other places. I talked to a guy in
the gym today who has 6 houses in a depressed former resort town, now blue
collar, with fine old victorian houses going into foreclosure. He fixes
them up and lives off them... he's a musician.
And with all the crises and pitfalls, saving an old house is a swell thing
to do. But buy in an UNFASHIONABLE neighborhood, and then of course you
have to be lucky. Preferably the worst house on the block, when you fix it
up you have got a better neighborhood. And don't worry about condition (if
the foundations are firm)... Even a perfect house is in constant entropy.
You're buying the land & the school district, that is, assuming some
income to help with repairs.
The other basic necessity is food. Pretty cheap in this country -- if you
cook carefully. My food budget was about $8 a week for 2. You don't buy
readymade anything -- we lived on barley and bone soup.
Then you simply drop the "standard of living" to below zero. Standard of
living is in your HEAD ("art"). Mercifully I hate most factory-made
consumer goods. They're ugly. For about 8 years (until worst of renovation
was over) I bought nothing, reading was from public library. I travelled
by foot and bike. The kids wore handmedowns. We ate in. The phone cost
maybe $9/month, but without call waiting, etc., not that much more in 2001
dollars. We lived for about 6 years below the budget for welfare... but
it was surprisingly liberating.
Great satisfaction in doing it -- and some perks. Society EXPECTS,
actually demands, that you do certain things. Shuts 'em up when you say
"we can't afford that." However, you can't carry this out so well in an
income-horizontal suburb. Much easier in a heterogeneous city. Or a REAL
rural area. Inbetween your kids could be pariahs and the local watchdogs
insist you paint & repair the fence.
Health care is of course a problem today if you drop "off the grid."....
best to have a "partner" with a job that provides. In those days they'd
hardly invented health care so it hardly mattered. At age 30 I was an
"elderly prima para." But they didn't have amniocentesis (now $1000) or
sonograms -- or pap smears for that matter, or as I recall mammograms
either.
As noted, much easier with partner, since as long as you're not into life
style, vacations, consumer goods, etc. two CAN live as cheaply (almost) as
one. Husband had a day job, got home at 6 & changed clothes for a night of
work. I scraped paint, pulled nails, & breathed plaster & volatile liquids
(also lead dust, but who knew?) all day. This was before Restoration
Hardware, so we haunted demolition sites (of which there were many) &
junkyards.
Attitude of city was "these old houses should be torn down," mantra of the
inspectors every time they arrived to give us another 10 violations. But
EXACTLY going against the conventional wisdom (and, as noted, Lady Luck)
is what makes it economically possible. (Do you buy a stock after it's
been touted in the NY Times?)
When the kids were born, I was a stay at home mom. NOW that's utterly
declasse. Then it was the norm. But do the math: Figure the cost of the
"nanny" -- the cost of the commute, the extra income tax, the "business
clothes," another mouth to feed, AND whoever is doing the shopping will
NOT market as carefully as you will. So I ran the house & really had fun
in the PTA (it was the '60s, we sat in at the Board of Ed, and got
community control & tormented the principal, loved the teachers, etc.) and
went off duty at 9 PM... could do "art" as long as I could stay awake
(origin of my nightworking habits today). When the kids went to school I
got working time during the day. I also did very occasional assignments
for former clients -- enough to pay a sitter to free me a few afternoons a
week when the kids were little. Today you could be a stay-at-home dad...
or maybe a partnership with no children. I've heard of folks taking turns
earning the money.
Circa 1948, when I was in college the girl talk was full of the
then-conventional wisdom that you educate a woman to educate a family, and
a woman's highest happiness is making a good man happy. (I'm NOT MAKING
THIS UP.) When I said I wanted my own life, they thought that was
monstrous. Then, 20 years later, the woman who had duly become
"housewife" was symbol of pathetic nobody (& probably divorced). Which is
to say, you can do it economically, if you can do it psychologically. But
when I was doing freelance illustration steadily, I couldn't paint, even
on days off. It came too much from the same place.
None of this was planned in advance, we sort of muddled through &
improvised. I see young couples starting a similar route now, with
an "income producing property" they also live in. One young friend said it
was becoming a "bonding experience" with her "significant other."
BTW, those warehouses and truck depots are condos now -- I liked them
better before, less traffic.
Cheers,
Judy
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