Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Fred Ragland on July 03, 2006, 04:05:29 pm
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It was a pleasure to read Part 2 of Alain Briot's "Being an Artist in Business."
He proves that with determination, hard work and the right kind of support you can make lemonade from lemons. "Unto thine own self be true" runs strongly through all that he writes.
His journey led me to thinking about the many others I've known whose career paths were rocky and anything but straight and narrow. My father and his father before him learned an occupation and reaped the rewards of that career for the rest of their days. Today, many of our friends have been pummeled about through numerous careers.
Alain is an example of what can be done. By training he's a French educated painter. By choice, he's a U.S. southwest landscape photographer. By necessity he's been a salesman, marketer, bookeeper, printer, framer, packager, travel agent and teacher. No doubt he would argue that list is too short!
Through it all, determination and focus are seeing him through.
For me, the take away from his article is the need to step outside today's ebb and flow to check focus. Answers to questions like "What am I doing here?" and "Is this really me?" will give us confidence in what we're doing, or direction to where we need to be.
Thank you Alain. I'm looking forward to Part 3.
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What struck me was how well his relationship with his wife has been through the thick and the thin, good for the two of you!
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Yes, many thanks to Alain for sharing with us his journey with great candor and insight. In fact, many aspects of your operations did not make much sense to me until I read this essay, while now they become crystal clear. However, Alain, I still don't understand why you didn't hire one or two assistants to help you during the Grand Canyon period. Obviously cash flow wasn't the problem. I know that you had to produce the artwork and be present at the show, but how about the printing, framing, packaging, shipping, invoicing etc... ?
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Alain, I still don't understand why you didn't hire one or two assistants to help you during the Grand Canyon period. Obviously cash flow wasn't the problem. I know that you had to produce the artwork and be present at the show, but how about the printing, framing, packaging, shipping, invoicing etc... ?
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Can't do that in Chinle! There is simply no business help available, be it from the standpoint of temporary workers, accounting, suppliers, you name it. Certainly, there are people there, but they don't have the training. What we do is very specialized and requires a high level of training and practice to do it right. The situation is very different now because of where we live. All the business help we may ever need is available, and that was one of the factors in deciding where to move to.
You should take a workshop with us some day to Navajoland. Seeing where we were will make the point better than I can ever explain it.
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Can't do that in Chinle! There is simply no business help available,
Thanks for the reply. Galen Rowell was doing fine in Bishop (pop 3000 or so vs Chinle's 5000). Prints made at Calypso imaging in the SF bay area... But it's not Navajoland, and I am sure rules are different.
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QT...Chinle is a real dirt bag Navajo town. I mean literally the paved streets are half covered with dirt. Trash blowing everywhere like a lot of other Navajo towns. Go to Shiprock sometime...same deal. Cows standing at the edge of the road just waiting to step in your path.
Obviously the Navajos were screwed by the US government like the rest of us.
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QT...Chinle is a real dirt bag Navajo town. I mean literally the paved streets are half covered with dirt. Trash blowing everywhere like a lot of other Navajo towns. Go to Shiprock sometime...same deal. Cows standing at the edge of the road just waiting to step in your path.
Obviously the Navajos were screwed by the US government like the rest of us.
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Doug,
You ain't seen nothing till you've seen the plight of the Aboriginals in Australia.
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Thanks for the reply. Galen Rowell was doing fine in Bishop (pop 3000 or so vs Chinle's 5000). Prints made at Calypso imaging in the SF bay area... But it's not Navajoland, and I am sure rules are different.
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Population isn't the main issue. Yes, both are small towns, but you forget that Bishop is NOT on the reservation...That's the difference. I would have bought a disaffected bank building like Rowell did, except you can't buy real estate on thre res... or any property for that matter.