Champagne On A Monday | The launch of JoeyMarket.com
New Years eve is on a monday this year!
Time to pop champagne, Toast to our creative dreams, then get to work.
Dear Creative,
Welcome. Tonight I am midnight-toasting to a new artistic era in my life. How about you? Are you a New Year’s Eve resolution setter?
I’ve been a hard-core resolution-er from about 10 years old, and feel extremely energized by the days and minutes leading up to the end of the year.
“What can be created, released, produced, made better in the new year?”. Whatever the goal, it’s usually written down before the clock strikes.
However, one year ago today, I was in a bit of a different mindset, knee deep in an artist derailment. My personal term for a phase where major changes impact your ability to create. It’s less about actual obstacles and more about foggy headspace. Needing time to readjust.
I needed a few years, apparently.
And over those few years, I didn’t make any resolutions or goals for my art.
I was stuck. I was trying to stay the same when I wasn’t the same.
After years of writing songs in a similar style, playing the same instrument, writing with the same people, living in the same place, it all changed - and I had little desire to continue on the same path.
It was disorienting.
After a while, I started looking in the mirror and asking …
What was it going to take to view me differently as an artist? to feel like myself again, but new? To share my creative work.
I finally reached a point where I knew - I had to change. I had to stop worrying about sharing the work and do the work. I needed to step outside of my comfort zone, and view myself as a new kind of creature. A creative of multiple, vulnerable expressions. One that could produce any kind of art I wanted.
So at the crack of midnight 1/1/18, I put a few goals in place.
Over the new year, I was going to create more work, new kinds of work, take more chances, and launch this website. Joey Market: An online home where I could explore and embrace being a multi-creative in new ways, then connect and share those findings with like minded artists.
If you’d like the detailed version of how I exercised these 2018 goals, I included a full recap at the bottom of this article. But what followed, was a year of self discovery, creative exploration, and a 15 pound box of ideas, scripts, and project outlines I never knew I could produce.
The work isn’t perfect. It’s too personal to share in its current state, but it’s mine to touch and look back on, and acknowledge that those ideas and feelings existed.
I’m making Joey Market live today, feeling creative again, and rejuvenated to produce work I want to share with others.
How are you feeling with your
art & creative life?
Have you been vulnerable with your art recently? Written or performed work that feels hard to write or share it’s so personal? Have you satiated a need to collaborate with other artists and feel that synergy that pushes beyond reality? Have you used your imagination to a point of vivid representation on paper?
It took me a solid year of experimenting with work I knew I would never share to feel a taste of the freedom that can come from authenticity and making work that’s truly experimental.
Isn’t that what we need today? Authenticity? Experimentation? Honesty? Uncomfort that leads to revelation? More creativity?
If so, we have to be courageous and explore new mediums.
Write our work, believe in our work, then share our work. Make our creativity tangible, and claim our title as creatives in a world that needs new ways of thinking.
So if you’ve been thinking about exploring a creative project that feels foreign and inaccessible to you, this is the year to try it out.
Do it for yourself.
Write a song.
Write a novel.
Draft a screenplay.
Google what a sizzle reel is (if you don’t know) and shoot one for your concept.
Compose a 3 piece vocal movement for you and an odd or unique instrument.
Pick up a new instrument.
Write the most honest thing and uncomfortable thing you could ever express on paper.
Create a character that is based on you, but so foreign to you, you question who you are at one point.
Try to write 6 minutes of comedy about your life.
Prepare for an audition.
Audition for a show.
Write a play.
Make visual art.
Design an art instillation.
let’s be multi-creatives in 2019.
Let’s shock ourselves with how creative we can be.
That’s my goal for 2019. Create more - start to share what feels right.
Not sure where to start on your own journey?
Joey Market will be sharing creative material intended to inspire you to be an authentic, multi-creative /// ultra-modernist /// modern day renaissance artist. Visual art. Modern Art. Abstract Art. Literature. Musicians. Composers. Comedians. We’ll share reminders to stay healthy and challenge you to keep creating each week.
Get curious. Seek a framework that suits your learning style, then go with your gut and start the work.
Bookmark joeymarket.com now, Subscribe To Our Art Courier Here, and come spend less time on social media and more time getting in the right place to create in 2019.
Until the next post, wishing you the happiest and most creative new year!
xoxo
Christina
Joey Market Curator
PS - If you’d like to talk about art, or join the Joey Market team and contribute content - send a sample and hello to hello at joey market dot com.
GOAL One ///
think like a renaissance artist.
My first step in feeling like a new art creature in 2018 was to actually become one. So I tried to take a light cue from great creative minds of the past - the artists of the Renaissance. A time when artists were painters were philosophers were sculptors were composers were advisors to royalty.
Leonardo DaVinci literally had no known experience in military engineering when he was designing underground tunnels, attack vessels, and portable bridge concepts for ancient Italy. He was a great mind who didn’t bombard his days with thoughts of self doubt. He didn’t say “I’m only an artist. No one will see me as an inventor, engineer, designer.” He believed in his observation skills, and imagination enough to explore what was interesting. What inspired. Titles didn’t stop him.
And in that same way, I wanted to feel free from any artistic title being too elite for me. So I opened my mind to every title and action. Could I call myself a songwriter and a playwright? Could I write a film screenplay? Could I compose - then actually call myself a composer? Yes.
Renaissance artists did it, and so many high functioning celebrities of today take on these artistic titles with fluidity. Why is it hard to claim the title?
It may be because we don’t put enough value in our past experiences, enough weight in our instinct, and care too much about what other people think. Maybe we hold that title to a value that we have to earn at a certain level of our own success.
The result of letting it go: It felt great to feel free of it. It also opened my creativity to topics in history and science that had never been appealing in formal studies. Trying to think like a renaissance artist was flexing new parts of my brain and led to work I didn’t know I could write.
GOAL two ///
fill a (Physical) box with new work
I’ve written hundreds of songs and maybe 50% of them are on paper. 0% of them printed in a way I could pick up and review without flipping through old notebooks.
As a musician, even with recorded music in hand, it can be tough to quantify work that doesn’t get released.
The goal in 2018 was to make it tangible. Type out the lyrics, write out the story idea, compose a basic elevator pitch concept then put it down on paper. A physical box would be my own way of proving I had accepted the challenge to make a lot of new work. Once I had a draft of the idea, or a concept, I would print it on paper, and try to fill a box over the course of a year.
The Result : A bankers box of work! This goal did its job in making me feel like my creative work was documented, therefore, exists in real life.
What’s in my box of work? Without getting too detailed…
Draft composition of a 7 voice choral arrangement of a poem by Rilke/// Draft 3 piece vocal arrangement of 3 Rilke poems called Songs Of The Statue /// 20 songs written for a rock musical concept /// 60 pages of a film screenplay based on a personal story /// Pilot episode and sizzle reel script for reality show concept /// (12) 4 minutes webisode scripts for a small series on women /// Spent 50+ hours researching and writing about a historical entrepeneur from the 1800’s /// Wrote a pilot episode script for podcast about the same figure. /// Created and framed 3 collage art pieces /// 1 pilot episode of a sitcom series concept show /// Short story on time travel and a car crash /// 5 co-written pop songs with friends///
GOAL three ///
BE uncomfortably honest
This may already be something you’re great at, but for me, there’s a certain kind of veil that can cover the level of honesty you can reach in some creative work. Sometimes real expressions of truth can hurt others, or just feel uncomfortable to say out loud.
The creative box challenge gave me the freedom to not worry about hurting feelings, or sharing too much, as no one would see or hear the work. The freedom made me realize - the best art is the most honest. It can make you laugh. It can hurt. And that’s why it’s worth making. And, that’s probably why some of these private works will end up seeing the light of day in the future.
The Result: Therapeutic creative sessions + emotional closure I didn’t know I needed on a few things.
Goal four ///
ditch social apps for CREATIVE apps
This goal had the biggest impact on creating more art in 2018.
In late 2017, my social media experience had devolved into mindlessly scrolling through my feed without any intellectual stimulation or real interest in the content. I was comparing my real life to filtered, curated images. and the time I was spending mindlessly scrolling - I could have been creating.
So I in early 2018, I deleted all social media apps from my phone, and replaced them with the Google Docs app. The replacement would be like the fake-cigarette I held in my hand to feed the itch. If I felt compelled to open Facebook or Instagram, I had to open a blank document or working project, and write instead.
The result: Wow. I can’t believe how much work I mindlessly created. I had a terrible habit of phone scrolling right before bed, and instead, I started mindlessly writing on a script idea. There were a few times where the phone fell on my face, or auto-correct took over in a weird way, but after a few days I looked back and had written over 30 pages of scripted content. THIRTY. What?! My work increased exponentially when I replaced my social apps with creative apps.
The follow up: Here’s the funny part - I fell off the bandwagon on this one. I downloaded Instagram again and fell back into similar habits. Similar because, instead of using my personal account, I opened a few accounts specific to topics, then curated those feeds to include visually artistic images and algorithms. That helped, but didn’t increase my work the way it had when it social media wasn’t accessible.
The 2019 Goal: I love embracing new technology, and think its a part of being a renaissance artist in a way, so I’m working on how to keep Instagram and stay creative.
I think it might be fun to get in a habit of spending 3 days of the week curating social content offline, designing content in a really artistic way, then posting it the other two or three days of the week. Not that personal feeds have to be curated, but I wonder how our visual feeds would change if we stood in line at public places and just looked around, talked to each other more. Technologically stimulated in a balanced way.
All in all - these ideas were just a few among the many that can kickstart creativity. I’m not the expert, but if you’re looking for ways to kickstart your own creativity in 2019, steal these ideas! Or share your own 2019 creative goals with us using #joeymarket /// @joeymarket.
