Let's Start at the Very Beginning...Again

Art is my third career, and I just got started. No art degrees. No design internships. In some ways, I'm used to this. Writing, my second career, may be as long in the tooth as my first career (clinical research), but it has very little to fill in a CV. At least there I could point to memberships in professional writing organizations and conventions & courses attended. As an artist, though, I don't have a whole lot to make a resume pop.

As I start applying to various markets and fairs and calls for artists that require resumes and bios and artist statements...I just don't have much to draw on. Thankfully, my education and clinical research career help me out just a little. If I'm going to claim in my bio and statement to have a scientific bend to my style, then highlighting those bona fides makes sense as I work on building up my experience in the art world. Also, the work I've done last year to join a local organization that supports entrepreneurs, take their classes, launch my own business, etc., that's not nothing.

But it does make me feel humble, young, anxious, and green trying to write up all these professional documents with so little data after years of experience in another field. There's a double-edged sword in a fresh start. No Big Bag O' Mistakes to lug around...but no paired Lessons Learned either.

So here I am, staring at a blank page.* It's as familiar as it is daunting. I'm doing the work to transform it, fill it with interesting, relevant, exciting experience that gets me noticed in various artist applications. I'm looking forward to watching the metamorphosis.

*Quick note about the image used for this post. It's a photo of the inside pages of a book called "This Little Book Contains Every Reason Why Women Should Not Vote" published by the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company in 1917. Yes, the pages are blank. I believe I will use this image whenever I need a "generic" blank page. Seems excessively appropriate for numerous applications. Some pages should stay blank, some books aren't meant to be filled, some are calls to action to fill other pages and other books.