Artistic Motivation and Watching Artists Be Artists

Part of the pleasure of watching Bravo's Project Runway is to watch artists doing what they love. The phrase "be true to yourself" is so overused as to immediately evoke some Dr. Phil vibe, but the designers on Runway seem to mean it.

The sincerity of Daniel Franco showed through regularly and now on his MySpace account he has begun Art Star, an open dialogue about what inspires an artist. I plan to visit regularly to see what moves people to do anything creative.

I'm always quickly turned off by someone who gravitates to the arts as an avenue to simply seek fame or wealth. You see it in school a lot these days. I've heard of students in these classes whose questions are not about craft but the first thing they want to know is how much money they'll make and how fast.

Back to the Runway, I remember an interview with Nick Verreos where he complains about students who are rich kids who think that they don't have to work hard to get somewhere. I've heard of this too, as an example a student in their first hospitality class who introduces themselves with the name of the hotel chain their father owns.

But back to the positive, I've narrowed down my own style to: working fast and cheap on projects I care about for people I like. And like several people have already added on Mr. Franco's project, music that creates mood is my most consistent motivator. I also like to read books about or by artists along with watching biopics or documentaries for motivation.