Above: working in the studio this past winter

Being an artist in today's world whose life is marked by being a digital adaptor in the late '90s to witnessing the nearly full absorption of daily life into digital capital is WILD, to say the least. Artists have always had difficult times with basic survival in terms of monetary and other material support. In the 21st century, the dial has been turned up to 1,000 with the proliferation of social media platforms and the more recent aggressive insertion of AI into almost every aspect of our lives. 

Just this past week, I wrote about how social media has made it very difficult for artists to maintain a sense of balance in their studio practices. What's happening, based on personal experiences and observations of how people are dealing with social media platforms, things are pretty bad out there. There seems to be a non-stop outcry from art students and creative people at all levels about how ravenous the hunger for content is on social media platforms. Almost every day, I come across someone posting about how frustrated they are with the lack of engagement they're having on their posts and how much of a time-suck it is. 

The ideals that online influencers put out there around "how to game the algorithms" and so forth are ridiculous time-wasting endeavors. I'm seeing more and more artists, including myself, retreating from posting so much because it's just not worth the time. We're led to believe that posting more and at certain times and, and, and...that we'll get to the pot of engagement gold if only we did this one more thing. 

The thing is, how much do we need to know and how much do we need to show online? This is the question that leads my latest blog post. How much energy and time should we devote to social media? My answer to that is very little. The return any artist gets from social media is mostly negligible. Sure, some people may have found an engaging buying audience through socials, but for the most part, I feel like it's a losing proposition. There's too much time involved when you could be making the work instead of setting up your phone or camera to record your process. 

My reaction has been to pull back from certain types of posting on social platforms and I've been spending way less time that aspect. I rarely make process vids any more and only post once or twice a week on my main feed on IG. I post whenever I feel like it, basically. I started doing this a few years ago and it lifted a big weight off of my shoulders. 

You can read my full post here: How much do we need to know, how much do we need to show?