S1, Ep. 1: Should I or Shouldn't I Go Full-time with my Art Career?

The stereotype of the starving artist still pervades the social conscious, but creatives know it’s more complex than that: you work to feed yourself, family, and the art. The question becomes, “How much time can I dedicate to my craft and pay rent?” Artists have navigated this question in many ways but deciding to go full-time with their creative practice is a big leap for many. Others work full-time jobs to pay the bills and work on their art around that fact. Both bring their own pros and cons. We will have two guests to offer their experiences in navigating their creative practices around the question of going full-time with their art.

Icess Fernandez Rojas is an educator, writer, podcaster, and a former journalist. She is a graduate of Goddard College's MFA program. Her work has been internationally published in Queen Mobs Lit Journal, Poetry 24, Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective's anthology Notes from Humanity. Her Houston-based story, “Happy Hunting”, was recently published in the Houston Noir anthology. Her podcast, Dear Reader, is based on the popular blog of the same name. Her nonfiction/memoir work has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, HuffPost and the Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award, a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum, a Dos Brujas Workshop alum, and a Kimbilio Fellow. She's currently working on her first novel and finishing her memoir, Problematic. Follow her on Twitter: @Icess and at her website: http://icessfernandez.com.

Justin Garcia is a time architect, influenced by the timeless connection between art and science studied by Da Vinci. His lifelong fascination with aging and how change occurs over time led him to undergo a deep self-psychoanalysis through the abstraction of his first seven series spanning over a decade. All Garcia’s earlier works are pieces of a larger puzzle. To analyze, document, and assemble this puzzle, he took two years away from the art scene, several months of which he spent isolated in central Mexico. There, he mapped and constructed a theoretical model that captures the intersection of experience, awareness, and control across time and subject matter (Humanity’s Sustainable Infinite). In late 2015, he announced the completion and publication of his first book, One Ton Goldfish: In Search of the Tangible Dream, a retrospective of his seven series in which Garcia’s personal truth carried some universal meaning that lead to the creation of his theoretical model and latest works. Since, Garcia has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, Seattle art fair, and Florence Biennale, which honored the centennial of Da Vinci. There was a guest lecture on art and science, and awarded the Medici medal for his exhibition.

Intro music: "Ike is Gone" by Nick Gaitan.

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