Both after much living are successful at supporting themselves with their art. Both achieve their desires from a long journey including preparatory business experiences combined with various learned skills which ultimately help to shape their art.
Their similarities mostly end with their entrepreneurship skills. Pete originally wanted to be a commercial artist but his teachers stirred him away and he studied fine art at two prestigious art schools. His formal art training was with teachers who were encouraging to his outsider tendencies. He retained his own playful, intuitive, imaginative imagery for making art. He made work only for his own satisfaction for many years. An example is a very large scroll painted over many years. It is a detailed colorful painting of his imaginary world crowded with detail.
Kristy had no formal art training. She studied engineering until she found she would not be doing any hands on building. Woodworking was her first passion. She then went to work in a California furniture workshop featuring natural woods and fibers. She married a manufacturer and learned the business end of a craft industry. After separating from her husband on her own, she made a living by starting her own business of importing art supplies for her children's school. One supply was wool fleece for felting. For only the past three years she has started felting and promoting herself as an artist and art workshop instructor. Her techniques are self taught. Interestingly my first response is wonderment at how she engineered perfect right angle joints in felt. The mystery of her work methods is bait for students to take her workshops.
Pete, after years of making art that was not marketable, he finally just a year ago found a satisfying approach to being economically viable as a full time artist. Some of his work lends itself to designing it while leaving the labor of making it to others. His biggest commissions are his drawings enlarged to gigantic proportions by commercial vinyl laminators. Also on exhibit are his small Sculpey clay animals he hopes will be commissioned. He envisions them as monumental bronze sculptures. His diverse directions include some hands on art work like his delightful colorful "Jellies" that are made of found plastic kitchen containers purchased at thrift shops. He screwed them together to look like jellyfish. The "Jellies" were commissioned by a charter school and a dentist.
Kristy Kun's method is tactile. She has a very general idea when she starts and is open to having a conversation with her materials, interacting with them as she works. Her work is intensive but never a labor because of her love of the wool. There is nothing she rather do than work on her art. When a problem in handling the material occurs, one of her approaches is to take a short 5 minute nap. After separating her mind from the work, she wakes up with an idea on how to solve the problem.
Pete loves the business end. The first work he does in the morning is business. He spends 90% of his time doing the records and applying for public commissions working in partnership with his wife who polishes his proposals. Pete Goldlust, like a commercial artist of his boyhood dreams, made proposals showing exactly what his piece will look like. Those who commission work want to see what they are buying and no doubt his explicit proposals were a prerequisite to success. When proposals are accepted most of his work is already done and the actual making of his huge wall hangings is done by the vinyl laminators. His challenge is to research the needs of the projects and come up with ideas before the deadlines.
I asked Pete when during the day does he get his best inspirations. He immediately said happy hour. After a good laugh by the audience, the conversation was moved towards questions of who in his past inspired him. I am left with a vision of him drawing on cocktail napkins while socializing with friends and family. Maybe the joyous feelings of the occasion transferred to his drawing late into the night.
I imagine that if an artist is spending most of the time on business the intuitive subconscious would not be easily stimulated to produce ideas. But Pete's early practice continues to enrich him while he meets the demands of seeking commissions for public art. To Pete's advantage, he has kept a scroll of tiny imaginary beings and environments which could inform him for years.
A period of freedom is very important in an artist's early development away from the demands of the marketplace. My professor Frederich Heidel at Portland State College told me I should keep my early work and not sell it. Having early work as a reference is vital in having a rich art development. I took slides of my work but that is not the same. Interestingly Frederick Heidel and Pete Goldlust studied at one of the art schools in Chicago, a savvy oasis for steering students away from the pit falls of marketing and encouraging the intuitive? My Woodrow Wilson High School art teacher, Henry Heine, said art making must be fun. When making it is not fun, people quit making it. He also went to the same art school at the same time Heidel studied there.
I come away from the Arts Center feeling like celebrating the importance of these two artists being in a sweet spot where their original desires are satisfied. They are making art that is true to themselves and are solving the dilemma of being true while making a living.
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