More things about Art

Art is everywhere. Everything you use and wear is art, a lot of foods are art. But I feel like most people take horrible advantage of artists and what they do. A lot of companies out there today don't pay artists who work for them. A lot of people expect artists to work "just for exposure" because it's good enough to just "get your work out there". Here's a twitter account that collects tidbits about this from craigslist and other websites people look for artists on.  It's really horrible to see these kinds of things, but what's terrible is that our culture tells artists that's okay. We're told that to work for exposure is great because "art is so useless" and that there's no other way to get your art out there. If you tell people they should make art for free just to get themselves out there, other people think that's okay. And when they do pay artists, it can be SEVERELY underpriced. Most graphic artists (illustrators/animators) take commissions in high school/college and continue to take them even if they get a stable job. I've personally lowered my prices on my art before because I just wanted work, I wanted exposure. It goes back to what I said earlier, society and culture tells artists they should work just to get out there. I don't know why but it seems like for the past 30 or 40 years we've perpetuated a stereotype that artists need to just work up to being famous in the sense that their name is said in every household, or that your art will be worth something when you're dead. I guess to end this I just want to say, if you ever have to hire an artist in the future, pay them. Don't continue on this standard of "for exposure"ing/underpaying your artists.

I think one of the things bugging me the most lately has to deal with, big shock, issues of being Queer in our society! Just a quick little thing however, since I am a queer person, I can call myself queer! I can say the queer community, i can say i have queer friends. Personally however, I don't think queer as a label should be used by people who are heterosexual/cisgendered. Sorry, but the word has a history of being used derogatorily towards people who are queer. Also realize that there are parts of the community who don't use queer to identify or don't like to use it as a term, I personally use it because it's an easy term. NOW to the point I wanted to talk about!

Allies. Here at DHS our GSA (known here as SAGA) has done a lot of work with ally week and trying to promote being an ally for the Queer community. I'm really not...okay with this? Allies do matter, but they aren't the people who get to make all the decisions and have all the rights to speak for queer people. I really don't like the "we need straight people to help us because there's more of them" mentality that happens often in the queer community regarding allies.