Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Exploitation in the Suburbs

So most of you who know me, know that I have this job...

I manage a "Painting Party Studio", which means that I teach bored housewives how to paint K-Mart dorm room paintings for $40 an hour. I get to drink at work, I get to practice painting every day, I get to make a living off of being a commodified creative. 

There are two main employees, I being the senior of the two. Both of us are blonde, tattoed, artist typecasts. Although I live in Kansas City, a city that embraces artists and the artistic lifestyle, I work in the suburbs outside of my city, where the people only venture downtown every other weekend, to hang out in outdoor malls and go to concerts at the Sprint Center and eat food that the actual locals can never afford. Because the suburbs wont fund bus routes to the well paying jobs, to keep the riff raff where they belong. 

But I digress....

The thing about my job is that most of the time I feel like everything about me is being whittled down to its most basic aspects, to sell me as a product, while simultaneously using me to make these suburbanites feel like they are living on an edge that doesn't exist. So they can drink wine and get immediate satisfaction, by copying off of someone else's artwork that has been guided by a market of cheap, replaceable junk that means nothing. So they can take pictures for Facebook next to a girl with tattoos, holding a paintbrush, which they will later throw down in frustration because they aren't getting the perfect painting, right away, in twenty minutes after spending thirty years bragging to their friends about how they don't have a creative bone in their body, and "can't even draw a stick figure". How dare things not turn out right for them right away? Were they not promised that life would give them what they wanted? They've never had to work for anything else, why is art different? If they could just sign their name to the bottom of someone elses painting and have their photo taken next to it for Facebook, they would walk away with a better experience. When did it become cool to be ignorant? Walking around and bragging about who is more terrible at art, is a very thinly veiled way of bragging about being above the artist. "Oh, I can't even draw a stick figure! I'm just so right brained." This usually precludes the line of questioning about what my "real job" is. Why is it so uncool to try? Why is it so fashionable to be a dumb woman? Why is it so acceptable to brag about being inadequate? What is so cute about selling yourself short? "Oh, I have never picked up a paintbrush." Well, why not? I don't like playing sports, but that doesn't mean that I just never tried. Why is it okay to just write off the arts?

Lately, I have put on my normal ten pounds of winter weight, which I am struggling to drop. And suddenly, I feel as if I have gotten fewer shifts, as if I am not quite the perfect visual representation of Suburban edginess, because tattoos and piercings are edgy, but being overweight is just lazy. I am accepted for who I am when I fit comfortably into the predetermined mold of how suburbanites view "people like me", but not truly accepted for any physical or mental flaw. 

We start shooting for Painting Parties.com this week, and I couldn't be less excited. All of a sudden, I am the "alternative" Bob Ross of Internet commodification of the arts. Pay $20 online and you can learn how to paint cute little owls! I imagine giant banners on the websites, western fonts, and pictures of me in too much black eyeliner, being toted about like the Kat Von Dee of fake bullshit Pier One Imports artwork. 

Making a living as an artist, but at what cost?