The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love,   ISBN:9780306816529

Customer Rating: 

This book is an essential tool for the artist who is "on the verge" and ready to make the leap into a professional art career. Before I read the book, I felt like a talented artist who was staring through an impenetrable wall of glass into the illusive and cold art world. I felt I knew no one, and had no leverage. After 10 years in NY loving looking at art in galleries, I felt there was no way in. I felt like artistic success was a lottery situation, not a real job I could pursue systematically. Randomly researching the myriad art periodicals I was subscribing to for submission opportunities had me overwhelmed and stumped. My time was disjointed due to my new baby and busy life. I would have wasted a lot more time and overwhelmed myself while missing opportunities in the future without the guidelines and descriptions in this book.
This book provides the tools and most importantly the mindset needed to get on the right track to build your career. It's the most empowering book I have ever read. After a first read through, I transformed a small local cafe show I was having -which had me depressed and feeling far behind and out of touch -into a major opportunity to network and start building a serious series with purpose and tools to get it out to bigger venues. Two months after completing the book, I have a successful show hanging, new friends and contacts I never would have had without following the advice in this broad minded creative approach, and lots of positive feedback from people in the art world. There are powerful tools out there at our disposal, and this book specifies them.
There is time to do it ALL by including your life's responsibilities right in with your art ones. And this book tells you how. There are many dimensions to handling your career, and this book covers them all. As a successful artist and mother herself, Jackie Battenfield inspired me and got me on my path with this book. It is a priceless resource I will be referring to constantly for years to come. This book is like a warm supportive invitation to the art world at last.
~Amy Abattoir.

Customer Rating: 

This is an odd review I suppose. I returned the book because I don't have time to read a book that big. I need something a little more streamlined. This book starts at way too basic but if you have the time, then read it.

Customer Rating: 

I opened this book in the studio for the first time when I was working on a budget for a project bid, and looking over a supplied example (chapter 7) immediately gave me new ideas of line items I had not considered. They were things I was doing but not charging for, and since I got the gig, it literally made me money. Now the impressive thing about this is I have been working for a while now as a full time artist, and the budget I was looking at in the book is actually from a friend here in New York, but there were still new things to learn. This is a small example of why this book is a cut above what else passes for professional career guidance for artists, because most can't help you beyond a year or two after school - they just don't go that deep. This book provides not only the kind of nitty-gritty details artists need in the moment, but an overarching support plan for how you can still be a working artist in ten years or twenty or thirty. Make no mistake you need help to get there, and this book covers both the internal and external practice that can make that possible. The book approaches this not through thin bullet point advice, but honest and revealing discussion about the habits that need to be practiced over a lifetime.

Having once taught Professional Practices to BFA students I read every book out there on this topic, and I wish this had been around then. There are other books that do some basic things well, or approach it from a theoretical direction, but a book that could speak to both recent graduates and working professionals has never existed until now. Beware of anything not actually written by an artist who has walked the walk and supported a family with their art work. I am fortunate to have gotten to a point in my career where I was interviewed by Jackie for this book, (p110) but I still have found insights in almost every page and frankly things I need to continue to work on. It's a book you can go back to more than once and find new ideas and habits to hone. Some people think the art world is a sprint, but if you're in it you know it's a more like a marathon, so plan for it. If you only buy one book like this buy this one, if you only buy two, buy two copies of this book and go through it with a friend. Seriously, read chapter 10 and you'll know why.

Customer Rating: 

This is the second book for a course being taken on developing a business for the artist. The Artist's Guide (TAG) (2009) is more current than Self-Promotion for the Creative Person (SPCP) and an easier and better read than it as well. The SPCP (2001) is sufficiently old to be outdated. The art world in this country is much different than it was eight years ago due to the prolificacy, capability and capacity of the computer. My business is designed to be internet mostly because the market is not local.

Customer Rating: 

I haven't finished the book yet, but so far I am finding it to be very informative. Battenfield is a go-getter and this book will inspire you to be the same. While you may not use her specific tactics, her energy is contagious. This book will make you want to get out there and sell your art because now you'll know that it's do-able. I also like it because while Battenfield's energy is contagious, the book is written in a style in which she tells her story rather than sells you on her story. By that, I mean you don't get the feeling that she is in your face. She isn't hawking her own website, webinars, or other ways to get you to buy her knowledge. She is simply sharing her experience one artist to another. At least that it how the material I have currently read is presented. As I mentioned earlier, I haven't finished the book. I am taking it one step at a time.