UCKIOOD

Earn a Crust or Burn Out?

November 19 2021

When desperation to pay the bills leads to stress, illness and professional failure. 

Over the last few months, the pressure to emerge from the pandemic unscathed has been immense. Desperate both for income and to prove that we were still artistically relevant, we tentatively raised our heads above the parapet as fall started to draw in. Meticulously prepared concept proposals, budgets and portfolios were disseminated in a bid to convince galleries and public art panels of our ongoing potential. The rule of thumb is that you always apply for everything and assume you’ll get nothing. This time, every single contact came back with a yes. We were now looking at an overflowing diary well into 2022. Great, or so we thought… 

Gallery shows were an easy prospect. We had put in the hard graft behind the scenes over the last 18 months, so works could just be shipped off for exhibition. Public art was an entirely different story. The first contract on offer involved the creation of a brand new set of sculptures for which the funding had fallen through in early 2020 and left us with spiraling debt.  

Despite only giving us a very short lead time, we convinced ourselves we could do it. What was a few late nights here and there? We had worked our asses off for tight deadlines before and we could do it again. Keen to keep our financial heads above water and to show people we were still on the scene, we said yes in response. 

Several weeks in and our usually already heavy working hours were ballooning to a solid 80 hours a week with no respite. The weather wasn’t helping. If you have visited our studio, you’ll know that we are chronically short of space and a lot of our equipment and machinery is outside. Every day we drilled wood, cast fiberglass and sanded cast resin in the driving rain and gale-force winds. 

We couldn't sleep despite being exhausted. We lay awake at 3am, our minds still in the studio, obsessing over each technical decision and each material choice. We were making mistakes which, when you are working with toxic chemicals, is downright dangerous. Our immune systems were taking a battering. We were getting colds, searing stomach pains, constant headaches and crippling nausea. We were snappy with each other and in tears. We hadn't the time to buy groceries or walk the dog, and we were dropping out of everything outside of our professional obligations. Any free time away from the project was trying to keep on top of basic admin or work on our usual studio sculpture. 

Still we persevered…until one day when we finally had to wave the white flag. We were dead on our feet. We couldn’t do this anymore. Despite having signed the contracts and provided the team with shiny PR materials, we spouted some empty guff about ‘personal issues’ and told them we would have to drop out with immediate effect.

The first rush of relief was immediately drowned out by a crushing sense of abject failure. Aside from the shame of committing the biggest professional faux-pas going, we were left teetering on the edge of a personal breakdown, with an incomplete and technically substandard installation, and yet more debt. The contract had only covered material costs and basic installation fees. We weren’t being paid to create the sculpture at all. We were faced with absorbing all the expenses plus the cost of reworking the installation which was now in bits across the studio floor.

There were some harsh truths to be faced. That this entire fiasco had been of our own making. We should have said no from the outset or at least advocated for ourselves with more authority. Instead of covering up the real reason for our withdrawal, we should have told the client that the lead time was ridiculously tight, that the money on the table was far too inadequate, that to expect a high quality piece of art was impossible given the financial and time constraints - and that there were glaring safety and safeguarding issues in their placement (a story for another day…). The drive to survive in the most basic of terms had compromised our physical and mental health, as well as our confidence, our self-respect, our vision and our strategy. It had rendered us incapable of remembering the amazing professional momentum we had created before the pandemic hit.

Despite needing a break, we are already back in the studio working on our gallery portfolio. Burned by these last few months, we will probably pull out of other big projects for the foreseeable future. This means that winter, especially the holiday season, will be hard. The weather curtails much of what we can achieve yet people still expect us to post images of shiny new work on social media, as well as show up in person with wide smiles and expensive gifts.

But this is the industry we choose to work in and we should have known better. We fucked up royally, let people down and re-learned a valuable lesson in how and when to say NO.