Making Artwork as a Vocational Act
Re-orienting the proverbial cart and horse of being an artist today
The other night during a co-working session with a creative friend we ended our time by commiserating about the necessity of not caring what others think about our work as creatives in this day and age. I mused about how I was grateful for a relatively un-traumatic art school experience where I learned the art of discerning whose voices were for me and whose voices I could kindly not care about.
Reflecting on this experience I attribute my ability to not take everyone’s voice as for me from my prior experience in my spiritual direction practicum in seminary, where it was incredibly hard (and slightly traumatic) to learn to not care about what all my faculty thought of my practice skills.
As my friend and I were wrapping up our co-working time (body doubling is magic, btw) I shared that I’ve seen a handful of people from a creative cohort I worked with in 2025 fall off the bandwagon, so to speak, and stop working on their various projects. For some it’s due to significant life challenges and seems like wisdom to pause; for others, it seems like a more nuanced difficulty in knowing how to filter whose voices are for you and move forward in your creative practice anyway.
Knowing who to listen to — and more importantly who not to listen to — in your creative practice is not easy. Much of this can be attributed to the idea of the ‘art industrial complex’, or the gatekeepers, as it were. The democratization of many formerly gate kept spaces has led to oodles more content than would have otherwise been created. I think of the boon this is — we have reporters like Jessica Yellin sharing news without fear mongering and hyperbole, as one example. Musicians outside the production system are finding audiences, like Doechii did through publishing music first on YouTube and SoundCloud. Self-published authors are at times finding an invitation to re-publish through traditional methods after their initial success at marketing their own books. The broader perspective on breakthrough makers like these who are transcending the need for traditionally inaccessible spaces is a kind of collective, ‘Good for them,’ mentality.
Visual artists, while we’ve been working for a generation to embrace the breakdown of former gatekeeping systems by putting art in cool weird unconventional spaces, and taking advantage of new online systems to share our work (e.g., social media, product marketing sites like Red Bubble, Patreon, etc.) we seem to fear letting go of the former ways of being an artist, still longing to make it to the inside of industry recognition. So many of us, myself included, struggle to work in solitude for months or years that the prospect of not getting an opportunity to share this work beyond our studio walls (or darkrooms) feels at times devastating. Like my creative cohort members, it can be easy to abandon the creative ship when it feels as if there is no wind to move our sails outward and into the world.
Yet, I’m beginning to wonder if — from a formative perspective — we have put the creative industry cart before the creative process horse.
My question is a vocational one. It centers around what it means to be an artist.
Decades ago Marshall McLuhan tapped into this concept, in a manner of speaking, when he wrote about how our machines change our shape. He wrote that we shape our tools, but then they ultimately shape us in return. Through our use of tools — for our purposes here, creative tools — we see the world through a new perspective. That shift of seeing changes our behavior, first as individuals, but it also eventually changes society at large.
As creatives, artists, writers we are changed by what we make. Derrick Brown at THE WRITER'S FIELD GUIDE FOR UNCASUAL LIVING wrote about this idea this past week (May 2026). Creative making of any kind is a type of subconscious revelation. What we create can, whether we acknowledge it or not, say a lot about what we’ve been through, believed, or hope for. This all happens in the studio, often alone.1
Frequently the entirety of this transformational process gets jettisoned in hot pursuit of getting our work out into ‘the world.’ And of course we do. Artists are subconsciously (or not) told that if their work does not see the light of day it has not been of use, but a waste of time to make it. The cultural value is placed in the exposure of the art rather than the process of the artist making the work. I propose rather that we reorient the art cart and horse and put the process of making horse in front of the exposure cart for our own wellbeing.2
There are so many reasons for us humans to seek, want, feel as if we need external validation. All humans — artists or otherwise — have a deep need to be truly seen and known. That, in and of itself, is not the creative vocational trouble I’m outlining here. The trouble is when the pursuit of being known, and ultimately loved, is sought to be achieved from a gate keeping industry built on unacknowledged and unfair systems of prioritization and access. Being seen, supported, known, and loved happens in community — not in industry.3
Re-orienting ourselves to the transformative value of process is tricky business. We need others to do it. Community, though, is hard. It gets messy. At times it grounds us more than we thought possible. Still, finding community as an artist is heavy lifting — a tall order, you might say. It is hard work worth doing though. Without safe places to explore the impact of our own making we are left to simmer in the soup of our own harshest thoughts, our unkindest ideas about ourselves and what we’ve made with our hands.
In community we are more prone to develop our strongest ideas, learn to discern which voices are for us, and boldly not give a hoot what the industry says (or does not say) about our creative work because we believe we have been changed in the process of making and it is good. Community can hold us while we learn to trust the goodness of our making, wherever those artifacts live. Community can push us not to give up too soon.
Leaning which voices are for us, finding community that can see and hold us, trusting that making changes us for the better: these are the shape of being an artist rooted vocation. Regardless of where your art lives, you and those in your community are the better for it having been made.
Now go make your artwork. Please and thank you.
Are you an artist not sure where to start in search of a creative community?
Check out these resources:
If this resonates with you, here’s how you can go deeper:
I work 1:1 with artists in a couple of different capacities. Here are some options. Thinking of something different, or looking for a group experience? Reach out.
Stuck in a creative project? Creative coaching might be for you.
Looking for someone to walk along side you in your spiritual journey? Spiritual direction could be a great fit.
Desert Father Abba Moses: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” When we listen we learn so very much in our studio/cells.
I am reminded of this beloved quote of St. Bernard of Clairvaux: “The [one] who is wise, therefore, will see [their] life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself ... Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare ... You too must learn to await this fullness before pouring out your gifts, do not try to be more generous than God.” We could here substitute the word Church for artists when thinking about our creative desires for exposure and process.
This essay is heavily inspired by the recent posts at Shoebox Arts, and it’s organizer Kristine Schomaker, who’s been building community spaces for artists for many years.