It's Tuli-tuli-tuli-tuli-Tulip Time!

I am a geek. I love tulips. Across the street from my home there is a Frank Lloyd Wright house, and the front yard is a field of tulips. Every year I have promised myself that I would go over there and take a ton of pictures, and every year I miss the season.

This year, I made it. And wouldn't you know that my favorite shot from the entire session is the one with the tulip that isn't part of the field! It's there, but I was drawn to that single yellow tulip, like it had escaped.

For me, the season is all down hill from here.

Promotions

The mailing is an essential part of any professional artist's routine, and building the mailing list is nearly a full-time job.

I launched my Facebook account with an eye toward marketing myself as an artist. I'm rethinking that approach slightly. It's too intimate, too personal and I find that I'm a little annoyed by people who incessantly post invitations to their shows. Once is fine. Twice if it's a long run. But two or three times daily? Relax!

But it's just so easy. And it's free. There's no discussion when it comes to pointing out that most professional artists struggle to make ends meet. For the actor/singer/photographer/writer, free is good.

But the new electronic modes of communication and promotion do not in any way cancel out the value of a good, old-fashioned mailing. In fact, I think they enhance it. A postcard contains the same information, but is less intrusive than a blaring Facebook announcement or an e-mail blast. Because electronic announcements and promotions are so easy, they must be used sparingly. And because there's a cost involved with a postcard, they have a gravitas that an e-mail blast doesn't. True, your postcard or letter might have a shelf life of fifteen seconds -- the amount of time it takes to remove it from the stack of incoming mail and toss it into the trash. It may never be seen by the 'important' person, but it stands a better chance of generating a response than does an e-mail trapped in spam filter or a Facebook announcement that is so ubiquitous that it is rendered invisible.

Mailings are simply part of the cost of doing business in the arts. Just like headshots, paint, guitar picks, and paper. Factor it into your business budget. And remember the old marketing adage: Half of your marketing dollars are wasted. The problem is, you don't know which half.

Productivity

I'm not going to lie. This winter has been a tough one. There has been so much I've wanted to accomplish...and much of it simply did not happen. I'm working on a collection of essays, a collection of short stories, and building my photo portfolio. Somewhere in March I hit a wall and everything came screeching to a halt.

But yesterday, at the end of the day and completely exhausted, I decided that enough was enough and the time had come to start back up. So, I went back to where I get my best inspiration: Michigan Avenue.

I love Michigan Avenue. When I first moved to Chicago I was completely intimidated by it. All of the bustle and chic boutiques were a million lightyears from where I started. The hustle is just invigorating. I can always find something envigorating.

Still, in all of the energy, it's great to find a breath of stillness and that's what this shot is for me. After weeks of not touching my camera to do work for me, I found this simple brick wall at the end of the day and was entranced. I love the texture, the pattern and the way the light falls. I love the lines in the background and the color. It just felt like the perfect expression of where I am right now.

I'm finding that as an artist, the challenge for me is to maintain focus. I have so many things I want to achieve and I feel the progress being made in all directions. But I'm also aware of the danger of spreading myself too thin and wonder just how successful I could be if I focused on simply one thing. Still, a single focus has never, ever been who I am.

Aaargh!

Resurrection Blues -- Eclipse Theatre -- Production

The first show I did in college was The Crucible. I had wanted to play Reverend Paris, and somehow managed to get the role. It was a gorgeous set, I had an incredible costume, and from what I remember it was a fine production -- although I don't recall myself as being especially outstanding.

But for me, Arther Miller has always been a touch didactic. I recognize that his masterwork, Death of a Salesman is brilliant, and I have loved All My Sons ever since I saw the Raven Theatre production. But his other works have sort of struck me as Shaw without the charm, or perhaps flabby Ayn Rand. I've always walked away from Miller acutely aware that he WANTS TO TEACH ME SOMETHING, and when confronted with that attitude I'm not always the most willing of students.

Resurrection Blues begins to make up for that. For one thing, it's a comedy. Not necessarily expected from Miller. And as always, expect Eclipse to unearth a forgotten gem from a master. I sat thru a run of the second act to prepare for the shoot and was surprised -- delighted even -- that this script actually had playable intentions for the actors. Or perhaps these actors are just better than I was when I had to play Miller. Froth it ain't, but it's light and the lesson is sold softly. That's probably has at least as much to do with Nat's direction as it does with Miller's writing.

If you you're a Miller skeptic like me, you're going to want to check out this show and give Miller a chance to change your mind. I may have to go back and re-read The Crucible now.

Do What You Love

See this video. NOW!

When Bad Projects Happen to Good Artists

A few weeks ago I had a shoot where everything went wrong. I was striving for an effect that required equipment I do not have but trying anyway with the equipment I had. To say that the results were disasterous would be an understatement. The results would have given small children life-scarring nightmares. I was so disgusted with myself -- because I should have known better -- that I put the camera away, and for the first time since picking it up began seriously questioning what I was doing.

I wasn't worried that I would give up photography forever. Although I haven't been seriously practicing photography my whole life, I have been an artist and have hung around artists my whole life. Crises of faith happen, and the chief benefit of age is recognizing them, not panic about the panic, and let the crises pass. It always does. And at the end, I have found, my passion (and usually my skill) is stronger. The truly scary thing is that these phases don't come with a prescribed expiration date, so while you're in it you begin to wonder if it will ever end. It does. Sometimes it takes a day. Sometimes it takes a month.

If, however, it extends beyond a month the only thing to do is to get back up on the horse, ignore the panic and pretend it doesn't exist. Start over. Start from the beginning. Be patient with yourself and do what you know.

The passion does return.

The Key to Success

I hate failure. It hurts. It happens more often than I would like.

In the early days of my acting career each audition was not just a referendum on the quality of my talent, but an evaluation of my soul. I dreaded auditions almost as much as I was thrilled by them. What I really feared was a job interview. Landing the gig that would pay my bills while I waited to become a star was more terrifying. I felt like I had no marketable skills -- and in truth I had almost none.

Less than a year out of college I found myself with a nice sparkling prospective career -- and no income. In those days, the job source was the Chicago Reader and if you needed a job, you also needed to figure out where the reader was being delivered first and snap one up as soon as possible. It came out on Thursday, and Friday was locked in pounding the pavement. Then late on Friday the Sunday Tribune came out and Saturday was mapped out planning the Monday assault. I interviewed for anything and everything for about six gruelling weeks. At the same time I had to find a new apartment and had very, very limited funds with which to achieve that feat.

Somewhere around week four, I became numb to the fear of interviewing. I recognized that it was still there, but it didn't slow me down. In week five I started getting a lot of calls for follow-up interviews, and in week six I was offered three part-time jobs. I took two of them, and in turn each one of those turned into full-time jobs, one of which sustained me and my acting career for almost ten years.

When I went into the serious job market and began climbing the corporate ladder, I again took the approach that I would interview for everything. Then I landed a job interviewing job applicants. I started out being terrified of the interview, and I ended up being the interviewer -- and a damn good one, if I do say so myself.

Not all of those interviews were successful. As an applicant, I've probably interviewed for nearly a hundred jobs. I've probably done as many interviews as I've done auditions. And not all of those were successful either. I have absolute horror stories about auditions. Auditions that crippled me in some way. But I carried on. I only stopped auditioning when the entire theatrical experience bored me. And I kept auditioning long after I should have stopped because I wanted to make sure I was stopping for the right reason, and that I wasn't just giving up.

In that evaluation process, I decided that failure is a relative term and that I did not accept failure. There are set backs. There are disappointments. But there is only failure if I allow there to be failure. Even now, as a photographer, with all the best intentions and preparations, I experience set backs that could be termed failures -- if I let them.

I know this sounds all Rah! Rah! But the truth is it ain't over til it's over. I've watched artists with mediocre talents at best rise to unimaginable heights simply because they refused to define a set back or disappointment as failure. They refused to set a drop-dead date that will define the success of their achievements. That doesn't mean they didn't have goals. It means that if the results fell short of expectations within the time frame prescribed the goal was re-evaluated, progress was analyzed, and a new goal calibrated.

Calibration is the key to success. Stamina is the key to success. Flexibility is the key to success.