Part 1: There is no money in art
The guy crushed my dreams of being a filmmaker. He was a recruiter from the Hospitality and Tourism College in San Juan. I met him in high school at a career day when I attended his session while accompanying a friend of mine who was interested in tourism. He spoke about hotels, tourism, and being a chef. Professional cooking caught my attention. I didn’t know one could go to college to learn how to cook! At the end of the talk, my friend and I spoke with him. My friend was more interested in the hospitality side of things, and I only ask a few questions about the culinary program. As a recruiter, I figured he sensed that while I was asking questions, I wasn’t very committed or sincerely interested in his program. He then asked me, “what do you like to do? What do you want to do after high school?”
“Oh, I’m interested in filmmaking. I want to make movies,” I said.
He faked a smile and said: “that’s neat, but there is no money in art. If you have a degree in cooking, you can always have a job.”
I wanted to be a filmmaker immediately after watching The Making of Jurassic Park in 1994. I was captivated by the process of making movies and telling stories. In Spanish class, during junior year in high school, we had to create a play based on one of the novels we read. I didn’t want to do a play, so my friends and I suggested if we could make a movie instead. I jumped onto the director’s role (of course), and we shot the movie with a camcorder and edited the thing with two VHS. We focused on action scenes and incorporated some Aikido moves into them. The movie turned out awesome (or so I remember); it was silly and funny with all of our terrible actings. The experience of making this silly home video further cemented my desire to become a filmmaker.
As my high school years were coming to an end, most of my friends had clear career paths in mind: dentist, engineers, business.
I wanted to make movies. But, back then in Puerto Rico, there wasn’t a dedicated film school. The only way to formal education in filmmaking was through a communications degree at one specific college that was kind of far from where I live. I wasn’t quite sure that was what I wanted to do. Senior year was ending soon, and I still didn’t know where I was heading to college.
I deeply thought about what the recruiter had said to me, and with a few months left before graduation, I was heading to the Hospitality and Tourism College to earn a degree in Culinary Arts. My Culinary journey is subject for another day, but I wanted to tell you this story because early on in my life someone said to me that there was no business in art and I believed him.
Fast forward almost a decade later; I sold my first calligraphy in 2002 or 2003 ( I can’t really remember) for pennies. Up until then, I had been gifting my calligraphies to friends. I knew in my heart that my calligraphy wasn’t that good and I felt bad taking money for it.
One day I wanted to purchase a large zen style calligraphy brush that was about $100. I said to myself: “maybe if I sell a few calligraphies, I can use that money to buy the brush.” I put together a binder with calligraphy samples with words and phrases I was comfortable brushing. I gave the portfolio to anyone who was interested (this was pre-internet days) and shortly after I was at home brushing my very first commissioned work.
That work went to a dear friend of mine. I brushed O’Sensei’s motto: masakatsu agatsu, and she still has it framed and hung in her dining room! Another commission went to a gentleman at the dojo who asked me to brush something I don’t quite remember. He told me he had it framed and hung in his office, which I was happy to hear. Then, sometime later, he came to me and said that he had the calligraphy looked at by an Iaido teacher who told him the calligraphy had a lot of shortcomings. He said it looked like an amateur brushed it. My first reaction upon hearing this was to be defensive and stand up for my art, but genuinely I felt like someone had called me up on my bullshit, and that my calligraphy wasn’t good enough to charge money for it.
Truth is it wasn’t. I had no formal training. Even though friends and family praised it, I knew it was because they didn’t know any better either. I stopped selling my calligraphies and a few years went by before I even picked up a brush again because there was no money in art.
The sour experience of attempting to sell my art and failing at it made me realize that before I ever try again to sell my calligraphy, I have to be good at it. There was only one way to accomplish this. I needed a teacher to teach me Japanese calligraphy formally. This learning experience revitalized my love for Japanese calligraphy. I realized how bad I was at it, how little I knew. I forgot everything I thought I knew. I let go of all delusions that I knew what I was doing or that my calligraphy was good. Maki Sensei deconstructed me and slowly started to put the pieces back together. She was unimpressed by my sloppy splashes of ink I called Zen style calligraphy and confined me to a rigid grid, stroke order, and composition. I found comfort and inspiration in her structure.
By the year 2010, I had been training under Maki Sensei for a while but mostly practicing now on my own. I brushed a lot. But the calligraphies weren’t going anywhere. I gifted a few, stored some, but threw away most. The drive to create was strong. Realizing how much different my calligraphy was looking compared to the days before I met Maki Sensei, made me wonder if I could take another shot at selling my calligraphy. The world was much different almost eight years after I sold my old stuff. I saw an opportunity to challenge the recruiter and figure out a way to make money with art.