The Free Art Campaign

 it’s okay to be a “Shadow artist”

I dare you to pursue all your creative WHIMS!

They say Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, appears in your life when you’re ready to make a drastic change on your path to becoming an artist. It just so happened to arrive on my doorstep, courtesy of the brilliant writers’ group I’ve joined, Threshold Writers’ Workshop with PPA. If you haven’t been blessed with this book yet, here’s a PDF copy for your perusal.

We’ve only worked our way through week 1, and a lot of what Julia Cameron speaks on is what I talk about here with the Free Art Campaign: using your creative practice as a spiritual connection to the divine as well as a profound examination of the self. Today, I want to talk about something she addresses in the very first week of the program: “The Shadow Artist.”

A shadow artist is someone who surrounds themselves with creatives or art, or secures a job that is somewhat creative in the name of stability and support, but doesn’t pursue their actual craft. They usually have low self-worth, she says. Coupled with a fear of being seen or of the financial insecurity that sometimes comes with being a full-time artist, Shadow Artists never pour their creative power into what they secretly, truly long to do with their lives, so they settle for something like it.

There’s quite a negative connotation to this label she gives and I think it quite frankly comes from a place of privilege, but she’s not entirely wrong. So many of us give up on our biggest dreams to settle comfortably into a job that’s good enough, pays the bills, and allows some meager form of creativity. We get comfortable and choose what’s practical. It’s smarter. Be reasonable.

We live in a world that prioritizes making money over making art, and so in many ways, it makes sense that the people living in that world follow suit by suppressing their artistic dreams.

As a person who’s been a Shadow Artist my entire life, I want to point out a slightly different perspective. I have been filling the darkness with art since childhood. I don’t think walking in the shadows is a bad thing. They’re just giving us the opportunity to help our little spirits find their way back to the light.

I went to college because I wanted to be an actor, but I quickly realized that raw talent means very little. I didn’t know enough about the art of theatre to be of any use to my fellow actors on stage. Plus, my parents gave me a caveat: they’d allow me to pursue theatre IF I learned the business aspect of it, too. That was the only way I’d have a job after graduating. In many ways, they were right.

So I took acting classes, but when it came to the actual work of the theatre, I became a Shadow Artist. I dove into every aspect I could outside of performance. I started with stage management, and quickly learned I loved doing the art from the director’s point of view. I’ve stepped into every role you can imagine behind the scenes, from designing costumes to helping with the quick changes, from set and props design to being the stage hand moving them, from designing the lights to running the follow spot.

Everything came back to acting eventually, because the most important thing I learned is that every role is significant. From the chorus members to the leads to the people backstage to the producer. Knowing what goes into putting the whole puzzle together has truly changed my perspective on theatre, and all forms of art. From there, with all this knowledge from my Shadow Artist practices, I’ve even become a playwright, which I find to be the ultimate culmination of my theatre/actor/technician crafts. How else can I have the same type of career as Lin-Manuel Miranda?

By learning from the world around me, within and without the theatre, I am a much, much better actor, writer, artist, and human.

To be a shadow artist means to shed light on the missing pieces of your creative puzzle.

When you follow every creative whim that crosses your path, you’re helping the universe continue to create itself. You’re healing your inner child. You’re trying, and by trying, you can change the course of the whole universe, one tiny bit at a time. The world is your oyster, you are a God in the Chrysalis, you have everything within you to make a beautiful life for yourself.

But, but, but Andrea…what about money! Yes, I know. My perspective is just as privileged as Julia Cameron’s.

It’s hard to follow your dreams when you have to “Be realistic.” I’ve been told that over and over again, even by my fellow theatre makers. We often believe we must face the facts: Theatre is a dying art in the age of CGI films and the magic of the internet. There are no rich people paying to be my patron, so I have to get a real job or starve. Work on my art after, when I have the means to survive, and that has to be enough. We can’t all be Lin-Manuel Miranda (…though I think the world would be a much better place if we could).

I get it. It sucks. It feels impossible. Unless you’re living in a huge theatrical city like New York or Chicago, and you’re lucky enough to have a big break, it’s hard to make a living solely pursuing the arts. Often, because of social media, even my own friends think I’m living some crazy, la-vie-bohem type of artistic life where I’m wildly successful, just because I post art every day. But I don’t always make money with my art. In fact, it’s been rare for me to do so: most of the time, I’m volunteering. But I continue to create anyway, and I think that’s the most important thing. It’s our very nature as humans. It’s why we’re here on this planet, if you ask me.

But yes. Money is required to exist. It’s not evil, though it can be used in the wrong way. It’s just the means to an end.

Therefore, social media posts aside, and beyond being an art teacher, an Artistic Director, and taking the odd theatre gig, I’ve had tons of what I lovingly call “real-person jobs,” too. Just because you have to work a 9-5 to survive, that doesn’t mean you can’t call yourself an artist.

When I was 24 I worked in the Accounts Payable department of a trucking company in St. Paul, MN. An auditor came to help the company during the transition into having a new CEO. His name was Andrew, and we became acquaintances, since his desk was stationed behind mine. He saw me doodling on post-it notes at my desk and writing in my notebook to pass the time, and gave me some advice I’ll never forget:

“One way to be sure you’ll never do the things you want is to never try any of them.”

He encouraged me to take what I was creating and get to work. I wish I could tell him now, almost 10 years later, how much that advice changed me. It’s been a journey to learning to love the little stories and poems I was secretly writing on the clock. I learned to love the voice I’d sing with while filing paperwork. I learned to love the people around me, people who wouldn’t call themselves artists, but who lived interesting lives and taught me a lot about being human.

What else is being an artist but capturing the very nature of humanity? How else could I be an actor if I never studied the people the stories were about? If I didn’t even try to interact with or understand them, how could I embody the characters, or pen the tales myself? When I ask anyone to be a part of my theatre company, do I know why they’re there, and why this form of art is important to them? Have I asked where they are on their creative journey before we collaborate? If we don’t leave our little bubble of existence and speak to others different from ourselves once in a while, our art can become quite stale.

When we produce art, especially a collaborative performance art like theatre, you have to ask yourself who the audience is — is it a work for other theatre people, making an echo chamber of inside jokes and references? Or are you trying to speak to your fellow the Shadow Artists of the world, the patrons of the arts, the people who need those stories to uplift their daily life?

I think it can be a combination of the two. We all need to tap into our creative power a bit more, even while we’re all trying to survive this late-capitalistic hellscape of a society we’ve been handed.

The world outside is your best teacher, and so are your “Shadow Artist” practices.

You can be the great artist of your dreams — even if you have to pursue many different paths to get there. There’s nothing wrong with that. Above all, we should live as best we can. Do what makes you happy, even if you don’t make millions of dollars doing it. You’re allowed to make things just for you, or for the people you love. Maybe we’re just here to make other people happy, and to share in that happiness ourselves. I think practicing creativity and art are a big part of making that happiness.

You don’t even have to narrow your life down to one thing: you can call yourself a painter, an actor, a writer, and work at a trucking company to pay the bills. In fact, if somebody asks, I’d encourage you to start introducing yourself first as your Artist Self, and then as what you do for work. You’re not an Accounts Payable employee who sometimes draws pictures on post-it notes. No! You’re an artist, who studies the nature of our society through the eyes of the trucking company where you work, and brings your magical, internal world to life with your art.

It’s all about perspective.

Julia Cameron does have one really great quote I’d like to share as a final word: “Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person the artist and another a shadow artist.” So please, have the audacity to try. Remember, you are an artist if you want to be. But you are the one who gets to define what that means, and nobody else can take that from you. Even if you’re a “Shadow Artist,” you are on the path toward making your own light.

Write your own story. And when you do, I hope you remember that your fellow Shadow Artists need to hear it, so please, as always… share your heART!