Friday, July 22, 2011

Valuable Resource for Thriving as an Artist: Nerissa Street Shares Business Basics for Artists.

Important questions to ask yourself as a Christian artist:

1.  What good is your art if the people that are intended to see it,
don't? It is good that some know about it and experience it, but isn't
it great when more people know and experience your new
approach to God's love and messages?   

2.  How can you devote time to creating art, if you have to find
another means of making money?  Also, wouldn't more money in
your hands mean more money back into the Kingdom? 

Let's address these two very important topics:

First Topic:  Christian art is a means of worship, primarily, but it must be seen too! It is imperative to share with others the messages of our Creator that lies in our art (it is why we have the talents that we have been given by Him in the first place). Our tasks as Christians include evangelizing, providing light, provide hope, in short- highlighting the Lord and sharing how He can change people's lives for the better.  We have been given the gift to share the gospel in a new way that is relevant to a contemporary culture.  The value of Christian art, today, would be it's ability ooze out into popular culture. It is all feasible. I see the vision, but am stumped by the means by which to get started or to keep it growing.  What do we read?  What conferences or classes do we attend?  Where do we invest? 

Second topic:  If your calling is to be a Christian artist, there are ways that you can live off of it comfortably- heck maybe even make a small fortune, or dare you dream- a big one?  God wants you to be prosperous!!
In short, we need to learn about business. We need to learn how to make our "product" known.   Typically, we artists are not very good at that (we just want to be in the studio), but it doesn't mean we can't be. 

Here is a promising resource I recently found out about: 

A friend told me about "Beyond the Lucky Break".  Nerissa Street has earned a degree in both Theatre and business.  Throughout her life, she has run across many artists who had no idea how to move forward with their art and make a thriving livelihood from it.  She knew how she could best help artists, through her art and business background and has put together several valuable resources for artists.  

The website:  http://www.beyondtheluckybreak.org/ elaborates on these resources.  Look into all aspects of the site to see how the information therein can be an asset to you.  I did and I was very inspired and excited by it.

I have enclosed a short clip of a conference she held so that you can see for yourself if this is a person that you would like to help you to reach your goal of being a successful and prosperous artist. 


Be Blessed!  Be Inspired!



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Interesting blog, I realize this was posted a year ago, but seeing as I too have similar ideas regarding Christian art I thought I would comment. I agree that Christian art should inspire hope and evangelize and while there is quite a bit of that art out there where are the artists seeking to challenge people and their faith, not too ooze into popular culture but to create a new culture in itself a Christ culture. Yes I am a bit of a cynic, I'm just a little a tired of the Kincaids' out there (God bless him) making feel good art, when that wasn't Christ's message at all