Artists, Social Media, Exposure, and how I feel about all of that.

An excerpt from passage 36 from the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu. No copyright infringement is intended.

    As you may have noticed, I'm not continually adding new things to this site. The best that I could do to let people be sure that I didn't die is move the blog to the front page so that SOMETHING is updated on it from time to time. On top of that, I don't blog for the sake of blogging, so even the blog itself doesn't get an update unless I feel like I have something to say. The reason for this is that I don't like to over expose.
    For most creative people, the idea of exposure is almost as important as the initial stirrings of their muses and geniuses to bring the ideas to them in the first place. If you make a thing, and nobody sees it ever, even if it's an awesome thing, that kind of hurts. Artists will do a lot of things for exposure - work for free, compromise, collaborate ( sometimes with someone they might never collaborate with, but who is a "bigger name" than they are), create websites, social media pages, schmooze, make elevator pitches, etc. because we NEED that feel that people are seeing what we did. I remember something my dad said when I told him I was doing some work for way below my rates for exposure - "Well, don't forget you can DIE from exposure, too." That thought, albeit morbid, is a pretty important consideration that I am hoping to inspire in other artists that might read this.
    Anyone following  a few artists on something like Facebook or Instagram can see that there are varying levels of content released by each. Some show a few shots of what they are doing, some (like myself) won't show much at all until the work is nearly done, and some just go bananas.
    I'm writing here to make an appeal to the latter of the three. You want to generate buzz, I understand. You want people waiting and salivating when you get to the end of the creative process, I DEFINITELY understand. You feel like the best thing to do is a pictoral from blank canvas to cleanup - that's where I gotta tell you that I think you need to play it a little cooler than that.
    Much like dating, eagerness can be a liability. Even your biggest fans who geek on your work don't need to see all your steps. It can feel good to score a few "likes" but I think that is where we can get carried away as praise junkies. Soon we're showing off every decision to add a new highlight here, or do some more line-work there, and before we know it, our audience is bored of the project before it's on the wall!
    Working on the Ellis Deck took a very long time, and I was tempted to post every card as I finished it. The reason I didn't do that is because they were all parts of a bigger project, and I didn't want the buzz of the small to steal the thunder of the overwhelming finished product. I know for a fact I'm a praise junkie myself, but I also know myself well enough that if I start getting praise on something that's not done, I'm much less likely to finish it. A friend of mine, Seth Bellamy, who works as a carver has a quote on the wall of his room - "Delayed gratification pays off EXPONENTIALLY" and I'll leave you with that rather than go on for a few more paragraphs.

Cheers,
Taylor