As a mature fine art student, I do my best to learn new skills, find inspirations and enjoy the course as much as I can. However, there is an essential fact which is unavoidable and we have to face it, how can we make money by art? Or could we make money by being an artist? Or how can we be famous? The creative of art is flowing in our blood, when that passion has a fighting with reality world, would we still keep chasing our dream?
Luckily we have a chance to hear a famous local light artist Raphael Daden to share his experience about how to balance art and reality, how his works can be successful.
(Under the Water 2012 )
" Skills are important for create things"
Before Raphael became to a light artist, he learned different skills at school, especially the wood carving. Inspired by a public sculptor Brancusi's works, he created his own sculptures and placed them in the open space. I think the reason why he has confidence about to create large size works is because he has his skills to support him from day one. His experience also telling us that we should learn all the skills we can and one day they all will be useful.
(Ghost Bus 2014)
" the world could be boring without art"
Raphael created public arts which also playful and also welcome to people to join it. Such as the Ghost Bus above, people go inside the bus, the shadow will reflect and we can see the silhouette from the outside of the bus, the audiences became a part of this art, it's joyful and interesting. For my understanding about this part is, as an artist you need to find out what kind of art is your strength. Raphael is good at public art, then how he could make his public art better than others? Then you would think how to define a successful public art? Bringing the fun into the city, making people thinking when they walk pass it and site in a correct location. However, even you got all the elements already, such as, original design, unique skills, right location, then you can set everything up by yourself? So, there is another important part of an successful artist is team work.
(Endless Pattern 2008)
Raphael's success is worth us to learn that's indeed. However, he also said everything changes now. We don't have the same facilities as what he had in the past. The reality world is more scary than twenty years ago. To be honest, the talk actually killed a part of my passion of studying and creating art. Even there is right time, right place and right people, I don't think I never could achieve that he already achieved. The is an uncross able distance between me and him. Only thing I can do now is, keep doing what I been doing, do not think about how to make money, at least not right now. Take our works to public when we have the opportunity, the rest of it I guess we only could leave it to time to decide.
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