Stephanie's day Zehn in München

Reflection on earning a living.

I'm definitely a bit lost on days, I know I'm not the only one who is! So I THINK today is day 10, but the more I check the less sure I am. Whatever day it is, first thing we went to visit Laura Deakins’ boyfriend Davo Phillips, also a jewellery artist,  in his bike shop Guten Biken. 

This didn’t overly surprise me, as I had come to understand that only a few Jewellery Artists are able to make a living off only their jewellery – relying instead on part-time jobs, in Davo’s case another passion, to fund their living while still making. I was definitely sympathetic to Davo’d predicament – his jewellery was suffering because he had to make money to live – but luckily enough biking is equally as much his passion as jewellery. I, myself, have found myself in the same quandary. In order to fund my art making, I seamstress for money, but not many people look for one when there’s a seamstress available at their dry-cleaner. This means I get a lot more design work that, like Davo’s bike shop, I could easily turn into a proper business and take up full time. It’s a passion of mine the same as jewellery, so it becomes a question of balance. When asked, I will always say my passion is art, and although I thoroughly enjoy conceptualising and philosophy, I know I am first and foremost a maker, an artisan, as Ted Noten rightly says, I have fallen in love with my tools and materials, I love dripping paint I’ve mixed, sewing silk from my own pattern, finding a new pickle that turns the ring I’ve just made white. There’s a physicality to making that become emotional, something intrinsically satisfying about being able to ply your trade well – to be able to marry thought and reality seamlessly. It’s the fulfilling quality of reality that disagrees with Keats’s “pleasure never is at home,” because the “fancy” version: the concept that is all at once too ethereal, too spectacular and too unsatisfying to the senses. That being said, my first material love was and is fabric. Though, clothing has the functional and conventional context that means already so many people are competing (as much as I dislike the truth of it) for their chance to own their own moment of relevance.  This, as much as anything made me shy away from a future I had convinced myself I’d fail in. As much as I love jewellery –having been able to expand my thinking as well as the chance to discover something I’m truly coming to love, I sometimes wonder how I let myself be talked out of something I love to do. If money and earning a living was out of the question, what would we do with our time? More than anything this trip has forced me to ask myself all these questions, to a point where I’ve had to begin redefining myself. The silent moment of contemplation before another maker answers your question of “what do you think of yourself as?” comforts me. I’m sure they’re still working it out too.