I hope, dear readers, that you don’t suspect that artists are busy drinking cappuccinos and adjusting their berets, too self-absorbed to get a real job. Rather, the costs of being an artist are high; financial rewards are speculative. For emerging artists, renumeration is nominal and rare.

Like Thoreau in Walden Pond, I’d like to tell you about my expenses. But unlike the Romantic recluse, I can advocate a downscaled lifestyle in theory, but not in practice. Being an artist requires that I “think big,” and that means that I “make big.”

I have to struggle against my penny-pinching instincts when it comes to art materials, because being too cheap is terrible for artmaking. Inadequate materials will undermine a work before it even gets off the ground.

To give you a sense of what being an artist costs, here are some figures I’ve tallied:

A recent project, an edition of 170 Miniature Multiples, cost over $200, or $1.35 per Miniature, in supplies alone:

$75 paper
$26 tape*
$9 glue
$60 paper cutter, blades*
$30 printing/paper
$30 stamps

*Of the purchased supplies, the paper cutter, a tape dispenser and some double-stick tape are the only leftover supplies I’ll have for future use — everything else has been depleted.

But the cost of making art can pale in comparison to the expense of showing art. Preparing for a recent show, I spent well over over $400. (This figure is actually modest—think of photographers who make large prints, video artists who utilize digital projectors, etc.) Here’s where the money went:

$138 frames, plexi, museum board**
$155 installation materials and tools: drywall, lumber, painting supplies, drywall tools
$20 cleaning supplies
$24 shelf & brackets
$26 respirator for re-sanding during de-installation

**The cost of assembling five low-cost, ready-made frames is barely equal to the cost of one professional frame.

Yet these supply expenses are relatively small compared with the cost of labor, education, and other self employed overhead (such as health insurance).

So why even bother?

I decided to be an optimist because I believe optimism is necessary for maintaining a life as an artist. I’m confident that the rewards of being an artist–which are personal, but potentially also professional–are worth the costs.

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How to Support Artists.

1. Show up. Go to the shows. Look at the work.
2. Tell them when they’re doing something neat.
3. Tell others when they’re doing something really neat.
4. Buy stuff. If you hire artists, compensate them for their time, training and overhead, as you would accordingly for any other profession. You can’t pay rent with exposure.