Street artist: the game
Getting a street artist is no unique than anything else in life. It's a game.
All games have guidelines. If you want to win, you have to know the guidelines and play by them.
If you don't like the guidelines and want to transform them, you nevertheless have to know the guidelines.
The guidelines of a game are like gravity. Absolutely everyone is subject to them whether they recognize it or not.
The more you know the guidelines, the more you play the game, the far better you will get at it.
As you play the game you gradually progress from getting a beginner to the intermediate level. Some go on to grow to be masters of the game.
A master does not just obey the guidelines. They rise above them. They have a tactic. Getting a tactic is when you creatively use the guidelines to overcome the game and the other players.
Those who have mastered a game comprehend the guidelines on a unique level than novice players. Novice players see the guidelines as limitations. A master sees the guidelines as freedom.
When you observe a master play a game, it looks effortless. That's given that he or she has made the guidelines an internal part of themselves, like breathing. They no longer have to assume about guidelines. For them, it is not perform. It is play.
Masters only reach that level of freedom by continual practice and continual learning.
The winners of a game are in most cases not the players with the greatest natural talent or the most advantageous background. Rather, they are the players that had the greatest desire to win, practiced the most, learned the most from the most beneficial sources and created the most beneficial tactic.
Confidence is also a necessary ingredient for achievement. As the Roman poet Virgil wrote: "They succeed given that they assume they can."
Some games are played as an person, though other individuals are team efforts. In team efforts, you win or shed each as an person and as a member of a team.
In the street artist game, our achievement or failure to sell art is the result of person effort alone.
The effort to win our rights and preserve them, is a group effort. We all share in the achievement or failure.
Just as each person cell is totally dependent on the overall health of the human physique, each person street artist's achievement or failure to sell their art is ultimately dependent on the ARTIST group's effort to win and retain our collective rights.
Even though the person cell may very well not even know it is part of a larger physique, it is nevertheless totally dependent on that body's continuing health to survive. The fate of the physique, will choose the fate of each person cell.
If an person street artist is rather talented and extremely skilled at selling, but we shed our rights, that person will fail at the game right alongside the least talented and least productive street artist.
There are unique levels of playing in any game.
There is in most cases an painless beginners level, then more and more complex levels requiring greater learning and practice. The degree of enjoyment and achievement that can come from playing a game increases in direct proportion to the level you are in a position to play it at.
In the street artist game, the simplest level of play entails just understanding the simple vending laws - the guidelines about exactly where, when and how to legally set up an art display on the street or in a park. These are described in, "The Basics." [1]
Most street artists do not know this beginners level rather properly. They play like a person who only bothered to read the 1st 3 pages of a 10 page rule book they know some of the simple guidelines properly, other individuals incorrectly and the rest not at all.
To play in this way is a good personal disadvantage.
Like a baseball player that only knows how to hit the ball, but can not catch it, you will eventually end up in trouble. That trouble will come in the form of summonses, confiscations or even an arrest for breaking the vending laws.
As significant as understanding these simple vending law guidelines is, they are a lesser aspect of our game. A street artists' person income-making activity is totally dependent on a further, totally unique level of the guidelines.
That second level entails politics.
The NY Times described this in four editorials as, "The Street Art Wars." [2] They weren't describing vendors fighting more than a spot.
In this level of the game there are two sides. We street artists are all together on 1 side trying to make a living.
On the other side are true estate interests, City Councilmembers, State Senators, the Mayor and the BIDs. These are the only "other players" in this game. They are your true competition for achievement or failure. They are playing to win, and their "win" completely depends on you losing your rights.
Most street artists and vendors mistakenly assume that other artists and vendors are the "other players." That's like thinking that the other players on your own baseball team are the opponent. Can your team possibly win if you see your own teammates as the enemy?
If you don't comprehend the guidelines of a game, you cannot possibly win. If you don't know who the other players are or which side is which, your efforts (if you make any) will be useless or worse.
The ARTIST group has largely focused our resources on trying to get street artists to comprehend, and play, this second level of the game. That's a high quality tactic given that our person economic achievement or failure totally depends on this other level getting won.
The "guidelines" in this level involve proposed new vending laws, not just the existing ones.Our opponents want to insert new guidelines in the game so that we will not even be allowed to play. They hope we will not even notice until it is too late.
Ignoring these proposed new laws is like ignoring gravity. Gravity is invisible, tasteless, odorless and makes no sound, but it has a massive effect on you whether you know it or not.
Understanding this second level demands 1 to grow to be familiar with these proposed vending laws and to be at least somewhat familiar with the players behind them.
Playing this second level of the game is all about trying to outsmart, outmaneuver and out strategize our opponents, the BIDs and their City Council fingerpuppets. To do that we send out emails and faxes, make phone calls, hold protests, display signs and otherwise discredit, expose and confound our opponents' efforts.
For us, the game is about selling art.
For them, the game is privatization of all public space.
Our right to freely use these spaces is the most important obstacle to them winning the game. It is a multi-billion dollar endeavor for corporate manage, and your tiny eight foot stand is stopping it.
This level of the game is a whole unique type of play (and enjoyable) than just selling on the street - and it is 100% what makes our ongoing right to sell on the street or in a park possible.
If you are preparing to be a street artist for just 1 day or 1 week, you may very well be in a position to ignore this second level of the game. Then all you need to have to concern oneself with is, "The Basics." [1]
The reality is that most street artists - regardless of their belief that this life style is just a temporary issue until they are discovered by an art dealer - will be operating on the street or in a park for years to come and that is a high quality issue!
Not even the most beneficial gallery gives you the exposure to the public that a second-rate street or park does. No gallery can ever compare to freely showing your art on West Broadway, outside the Met, in Union Square Park, in Chelsea, in Times Square, in Battery Park or any of the quite a few other places street artists congregate in.
Even though the mainstream art world may very well look down on us, the reality is that virtually just about every artist who tries to sell on the street makes sales, and most manage to earn a living at it.
Even though pondering how hard your life undoubtedly is in this economic downturn, recall this: most of the artists who ever lived by no means sold a single perform of art in their entire lifetime. Most by no means got to show anywhere other than in their own property.
In spite of the entire NYC government and the entire NYC true estate and organization communities desperately trying to take away your rights for the past 15 years, you can nevertheless display and show your art 24 hours a day seven days a week in almost any public space in the art capital of the world. Getting the streets and parks of NYC as your "gallery" literally makes the entire world your stage as an artist.
You have cost-free access to 8 million residents and 30 million yearly guests who can see your art, speak to you, commission you to generate one thing for them or obtain your existing pieces. This is literally the crossroads of the world. No other artists have what we have.
You get to set the value. You pay no commission, pay no fee, need to have no license and need to have no one's permission or approval to engage in this activity. Unlike showing in a gallery, no 1 gets to judge if you or your perform are "high quality adequate" to be seen.
The entire history of art, of freedom and of culture have led up to this exclusive moment in time. You are the beneficiary of the perform of hundreds of generations.
Will you play the game like a beginner, who barely knows the guidelines or the history, or will you aspire to be a master?
Will you leave this right stronger than you located it, or make a thousand excuses why you need to have do nothing to preserve it?
It's only a game. Only you get to choose how you will play it. Let's play to win.
(c) Robert Lederman, President of
Links TO ALL THE Information YOU Will need TO PLAY THIS GAME Properly
[1] You can get "The Basics" from a quantity of sources.At the ARTIST web-site you will obtain it in the FILES section./group/nycstreetartists/(only subscribed members can access the supplies)It is a summary in plain English of the vending laws that street artists need to have to know.
You can also straight obtain it as these internet sites:/k/robert-lederman/selling-art-on-the-street-the-fundamentals/2coa09aae21h9/2#
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[2] Those NY Times editorials and a rather massive quantity of other supplies for street artists are offered here:Folder name: ARTIST materialsWebsite link: /folder/be38676c5f033d6b61d4646c62b381cb0bcb1c795186e103ce018c8114394287
Almost everything you could want to know on the BIDs (Home business Improvement Districts) and their 15 years of effort to destroy street artists' rights (your rights) is here:/SUNSETPARKBID
List of Restricted Streets for artists/?wwmmknmjynj
60 page DCA copy of the vending law with legal citations for artists/?exdgynyjmex
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