In the visual art world, there’s a saying that you’ll get hired by the worst piece in your portfolio. What this means is not that the person hiring is going to fall in love with your worst piece – it means that you’re going to be judged by the weakest […]
Author: Rick
The Future is Trust
Most people don’t think about trust very often, unless they come across a breach of trust. Maybe it’s your boss not trusting you with autonomy and micromanaging, or clients not trusting you enough to commit to a purchase order. Perhaps what gets you thinking about trust is a stranger returning […]
Environmental Factors
Whether it’s the literal climate around you, or the tidiness of your living space, or your working environment, it’s important to understand your own tendencies and how your environment affects you. As much as you can change it, you want to ensure that you’ve created an environment that will push […]
Fear or Love?
When we choose to respond to something, there is a choice to be made. We can choose to act from a place of fear, scarcity, and a zero-sum game where if someone else wins, you lose. This choice is one of selfishness, pain, and insecurity. Alternatively, we can choose to […]
Artist vs Professional Artist
I know you may feel tempted to not call yourself an artist if you’re not a classically trained painter, or a Broadway actor, or sculpting gigantic figures out of bronze. You might say things like “I just enjoy art,” or you make small sculptures for fun, or you go to […]
A Valentine’s Day Hate Crime
Not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s an uptick in violence and harassment against Asian/Americans. It’s not surprising to me, given that my younger brother was assaulted walking home from school after 9/11 with shouts of “remember Pearl Harbor,” an entire generation of my family was shipped off to internment […]
Agency
Sometimes it can feel like we don’t have any agency at work, especially if we’re not high up on the organizational chart. You might even be pushing upwards against your manager, trying to make things better but being thwarted at every turn. But remember that you do have agency – […]
Level Setting
I like to think of skill acquisition and progression like levels in a video game. If you’re a level ten at something, you’re in the best of the world, and you’re likely celebrated and/or paid for it. If you’re a level one, you’re just starting out and have very little […]
Blueprints
Blueprints are great for constructing a building that works for when the blueprint was drawn, but if circumstances and times change, the blueprint quickly becomes obsolete. Especially in uncertain times, we want clear, tested, de-risked answers to life. And why wouldn’t we? If you could have the exact blueprint to […]
First Impressions
When I was teaching career skills at a private art university, I would often show a photo of a man in a orange jumpsuit with tattoos on his face, and a photo of another man in a surgical ward wearing scrubs. I’d ask which one of these two men they’d […]