[Woodcarver] I need your help

[Joe Dillett]

 How do you define success?
Fellow Carvers,

I need your help. I'm on the board of the SEA Conference (Self-Employment in
the Arts) and I'm working on ideas to help organize another series of
practical talks to help artists get started and stay in business. The idea
I'm working on is that sometimes we need to peal away all the layers of the
necessary day to day activities, that surround our art, and define or
redefine what we call success.

I feel it is important, especially in our art, to have a clear idea of how
we define our success. If we don't have a clear definition of our success we
'll never know if we are successful. I'm not talking about the achievement
of all your goals but rather some target you aim for as a level you would be
happy to achieve. I feel it is important to define what we feel would make
us successful. If we don't have a clear idea we have no idea were we are
going and we can't develop a map on how to get there. I also feel it
important to our self-esteem to celebrate our success when we have achieved
it. As our art matures so does our definition of success. That is why we
need to periodically redefine success and recognize when we have achieved
success.

For most of us, success is one or a combination of the following goals. 1)
make money, 2) find your artistic voice, 3) being able to do what you like
as often as you like, 4) to be proud of your work and have the courage to
share it with others, 5) being able to show your work in exhibits, 6) to
fill your world with things that you love to do or people that you love to
be with, 7) to leave a legacy that hopefully touches people in some way, 8)
to promote the advancement of your art through teaching, 9) to break into
and have an influence in the "accepted" world of art, 10) to become famous,
11) to use your art to spread a message 12) to just be able to carve that
one object, and many more goals you may want.

****** What I would like to know from you is how did you defined success
when you began carving and how do you define success today. ****** This
would be helpful for me to develop ideas for the SEA Conferences. Most of
the attendees are college seniors or recent art graduates hoping to learn
about business. The next largest group is the professors and art teachers.
Then there is a smaller group of struggling artists wanting to improve their
business. These kids have a Mega portion of talent, filled with dreams,
ambitions, high energy, a burning desire to make their mark on the art world
and a hope of not having to get a regular job to pay off their student
loans.

When I began carving as a kid my only goal was to be able to whittle that
toy gun or that toy sword. They were very short-term goals with no thought
of art in mind. As I grew so did my goals. I found I liked carving so much
that wanted to sell a few carvings so I could buy more tools. That worked
out so well that I thought I would like to be able to carve full time
without having the family suffer. In the last 6 to 8 years my goals have
gotten more into improving my art skills as well as promoting the art of
woodcarving. I found as I set new goals, revising my definition of success,
that it was important to celebrate achieving the old goal before I embarked
on the journey to the new goal. These celebrations of success, I feel was
important to build my self-esteem, which is so important to fueling my
enthusiasm and energy.

I would love to hear your ideas on how you defined success in the past and
how you define your success today. I would like to hear your ideas if you
just started carving or if you've been carving a long time. We all have
ideas of success. This would be very helpful for me to come up with a core
idea to build our seminars for the upcoming year.

Thanks for your help.


Joe Dillett
The Carving Shop
645 E. LaSalle St. Suite 3
Somonauk, IL. 60552
(815) 498-9290 phone
(815) 498-9249 fax
http://www.thecarvingshop.com
jdillett at thecarvingshop.com
http://www.carvingmagazine.com Carving Magazine web site and Readers Forum
http://community.webshots.com/user/joe_dillett
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