Getting Away from your Ego

Episode Transcript:

Cindy Leung  00:00

I would say that that require a lot of energy and discipline that perhaps was not really my goal. Because my goal is to make work that is fulfilling to me that speak to me, right? I'm not making work to cater somebody's needs.

Isotta Page  00:22

This is Art Is… a podcast for artists, where we brainstorm the future of the art world and the creative industries. I think it's really interesting that you've shared with us about this kind of professional facade, because how do you think Instagram plays into that? And how do you as a creative use Instagram as a tool, but also not let it intimidate you or create FOMO or negative pairs and emotions?

Cindy Leung  00:58

It's really hard. I know, a lot of artists, like they don't even have Instagram on their phone, they only open it when they need to pull move themselves, right? If they have a show coming up, or if they are doing Instagram sell, then they would like open it up. But a lot of them don't look at answer grant all the time. They're like, I want to see, so and so doing this and that I don't want to look at how this person got a grant. You know, like, I don't want to look at that. I know that there are people like that. But I think at the beginning, I was kind of like that I would get jealous very easily. And I would like to compare myself with a lot of artists, you know, like, how come this person got this opportunity. But I did I apply for this up to this opportunity as well. But I have to do a lot of work like internal work and like figure it out, how can I get what I want, right? Because the goal is to get what you want, right? And so I can really let my ego to get in my way to get what I want. So I would just ask, like, I feel like, there's really nothing you can do except asking, right? I mean, I asked random question. And I'll be like saying, send a question to a stranger and be like, hey, you know, we met maybe we met at a conference before. But I'm just wondering, you know, how did you get this like, amazing opportunity? What is your writing your proposal, and I felt like, at least within the ceramic or academic view? I feel like artists are very open in terms of like sharing, right? Yeah, I got this opportunity, because I wrote this. And that because I did my research, and I am creating a new body of work that respond to this art center, perfect collection. Like that could be something that somebody told me and I was like, oh, yeah, okay. I learned that. Maybe my proposal was to, I don't want to say the word basic, but I felt like my proposal did not include how I would benefit from the Art Center resources or certain facility resources. And so that's something I learned through talking to artists on Instagram. And in doing so in, you know, not letting my ego to get in my way, I actually gain a lot from it. It's almost like an emotional roller coaster. Where like, Okay, I'm feeling free uncomfortable. I'm feeling a lot of jealousy, and maybe sadness, right? But I feel like I have to let just hold on tie, and step out and ask that questions. And then eventually, perhaps I will gain the information that I need to know. What about you? Do you do that? Like, do you find it difficult to do that? Or do you just like right now go through it,

Isotta Page  03:39

I think what you said has been so powerful. And as we as we discussed before, I've been incredibly interested in creating a more peer to peer resource pool here on the podcast, especially around professional experiences, and getting to share our own insights, because I think we can really learn so much from each other. So it's really amazing to hear this plight against your own ego and not standing in your own way as a perfect descriptor of what happens. And it's really true. It's the simplest things really, at the end of the day.

Cindy Leung  04:15

Yeah, there are a lot of like, internal conversation that I have with myself. But yeah, at the end of the day, I just take a step back and really look at the bigger picture as I do, I want this opportunity. I'm gonna gather information about it, in order for me to succeed, and I try to reframe my failure in a much more neutral way. Because I feel like a lot of time, if I rephrase something as like overly positive, right, like the doubt in my heart, I don't believe it. Like it is overly positive. And so I try to neutralize it in such a way that okay, yeah, I can accept that. There is 50% of the possibility that I can get this opportunity. I just have to ask, right but and, and by asking, perhaps I could increase the likelihood to like 70% that I would get this opportunity. And I feel like, I just have to like, take that baby step, baby step. And eventually I'll get there. That's the way I approach it. It's very embarrassing at times. When somebody say, I'm sorry, I can't share that information. And you're like, oh, okay, or to bet? Well,

Isotta Page  05:27

if you don't ask, you never know, right?

Cindy Leung  05:29

Yeah, yeah. And I felt like an Ask a, I actually got a lot of information and benefit. Recently, I got a teaching opportunity. And it's an hour away from where I live. And so it's a part time gig right at John T chain, and they usually don't give you a travel stipend. But since I was living so far away, I was asked if I could have a travel stipend. Of course, I wasn't thinking that oh, they, they absolutely 100% have to give me so that I would teach this class without like, I'm not egotistical like that. But in asking, they're like, Ha, I haven't thought about that. But I'll look into it. And then a month later, it got approved, and I got a travel stipend to teach a class, you know, so I felt like in that. I think the key point is that you should ask that question that you want to ask without having high expectation that it will absolutely 100% will. And so you won't let yourself down in that way. But maybe in return, you'll get a little bit think back.

Isotta Page  06:34

Yeah, I think that's just so well said. Because if you're asking to a lot of different people, to your hopes, aren't all on just one thing, you know, you're differentiating, you're creating a little bit of diversity in your options, and then you'll just see what happens. But otherwise, it's very hard, and you get to focus on one thing, and it's really hard for that just one thing to always happen exactly as you want.

Cindy Leung  06:59

Sometimes I feel like I read this like porn, where I asked, sometimes I'm in a situation where I would ask people Hi, are you? You know, I heard that you are a professor at this university, or, you know, you're a studio manager at this art center. I'm wondering if you're hiring right now. And a lot of the time, or, you know, if they're running an art business, or a fabricator, whatever outlet and a lot of times, they actually give me an answer that I would not have expected, or they they would say something like, You know what? I have not thought about it. But now that you asked, right, you got me curious. And yeah, I'm actually maybe we would need an instructor. Or maybe we would need somebody to help with our business in the next two months. And so send me your resume. I feel like sometimes, when you ask like, you have like an unexpected answer, and then you're like, Yeah, jackpot. And then at that moment, you said, you got so proud of yourself.

Isotta Page  08:07

That's awesome. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about your experience with selling work, and what your approach to selling has been these days, and maybe what your aspirations are for the future in terms of creating like a practice of, of sellable art.

Cindy Leung  08:23

Yeah. So this is my first artists residency unmad Berger Art Center in Kansas City, Missouri. And so this art center has a gallery, and it's also has a lot of holiday. So yeah, just like events in general, that allows you to sell your work right? When it comes to selling I felt like there are two ways to do it like you can passively salad and actively sell it right. And I feel like right now I'm because I'm just getting it started, I think I'm much more about passively selling, because I'm just making the work. And then I drop it off at the gallery. And then they do the work they do the selling for me and the gallery already have like a list of clientele that recklessly come to the gallery. And so they're doing the work, but they're also getting 50% of their cut, right by doing that by doing the work for me. And so you know, I'm trying out this way of selling and then in the past, I have also done craft fair to sell functional work. But I would say that that require a lot of energy and discipline that perhaps was not really my goal, because my goal is to make work that is fulfilling to me that speak to me, right I'm not making work to cater somebody's needs. And so I haven't done that for a while, but I think my focus right now would be passively selling my artwork. All galleries. And I will try to like focus on talking to galleries sending my proposal or portfolio to them so that maybe there's chance that I could exhibit a commercial galleries, right. But also because my work I consider my work kind of conceptual. And a lot of commercial galleries do not want that they want sellable item, right is something that is not very colorful. Yeah. So right now I have only exhibit my work a nonprofit gallery, very, I haven't noticed, but a lot of work or have a lot of showing opportunity at commercial galleries. And so that's something that I'm still working on. And I think I learned a lot from my peers, in terms of like preserving the artwork, or how to talk to galleries. So like, some people told me that the old way of approaching galleries does not work anymore, right, which is email your portfolio to the gallery, like that doesn't work anymore, or, you know, showing your portfolio in person at a gallery, somebody told me that that doesn't work anymore. But then I also heard that that's not true. I also heard that somebody got gallery representation just by emailing just cold email. And so I feel like there's really not one way to sell your artwork. And with like, Instagram, you talked about how you found me on Instagram. So I felt like a lot of people could succeed and have a successful art business, who selling on Instagram and have your Etsy shop link to your Instagram and sell it that way. And it's so fascinating that I learned that you could also I mean, like sell it on. Just like in person, there are a lot of like internet sell going on. But people like to get to know an artist before purchasing an item. And so when I met an art center, I try to wear my residency is like I try to talk to community member as much as possible to increase the likelihood that my work would sell, you know, you don't want to be a bad person, a rude person. And so people end up hating you and your work. So saw that. That's why approach. What about you? Do you feel like that you have to purchase somebody's work? You have to like somebody in order to purchase the work?

Isotta Page  12:35

I don't know. That's a really good question. I mean, I feel like that's kind of the question of the age. Now. I guess it depends on the type of work. But when you go to a museum, for instance, and you see a piece that you haven't ever seen before, you're immediately drawn to it, even though you don't know anything about the artists, you don't know where they're from, or if they're even alive still. So I guess I could probably imagine purchasing work without knowing, or, I guess, liking the artists, but I guess if I actively didn't like them, then that would probably stop me. But if I just didn't know, maybe,

Cindy Leung  13:10

yeah, I mean, there are a lot of debate nowadays, especially male artists in the past, you know, they behave a certain way that perhaps would not consider as appropriate nowadays, right? And so yeah, you know, just artists could make great work, but then maybe his personal life is a mess. It can affect the way I look at the work. And so it become subjective, much more like rather than objective, like, is the work really good? Or is it good? Because I like this person. That's something that I think about a lot every time I go to a crash fair. But you know, this also has a lot to do with the value of the work, right? If the work is really good, like you said, it's other museums. And so it's authentication, or authenticity has been validated. And so when people buy that work, they're looking at their value, they're thinking about it as an investment, rather than something that they would actually use that they will actually collect dues who are saying, like if I'm just paying for $2, or a handmade ceramic mug, or bowl, right, I saw, like, the risk of it's like, much lower than or just something at an auction house. Yeah. Like, I feel like it's much more personnel than when it comes to buying something that you actually use, or then something that I'm just hey, I'm just investing, and I'm gonna flip it.

Isotta Page  14:46

Yeah, definitely. So Cindy, I was wondering if there was something we haven't covered, or any question that you'd like me to ask or if there's something you wanted to add to anything

Cindy Leung  14:56

you were saying that you know, this podcast, it's about peace era to pure learning and brainstorming the future of the art industry. And so, I guess I would like to talk about like the future of the art world, especially after the pandemic, what do you think like, what do you like to see because personally, I would like to see, like, I felt like because of the pandemic, we got to stay home a lot more often, at least for me, I started decorating my house when I was in lockdown, right. And I felt like I had much more requirement in terms of like, certain objects in my house, like it has to look aesthetically pleasing, it has to speak about my personality, right? Or the color of my house should be something that I like instead of a white cube. And so like, I'm hoping that there would be much more entry level art collector there for so that they would start collecting more affordable are very, I felt like we should really talk about the idea of affordable art, right? What is affordable know, what's the pricing slide? And how do we determine that?

Isotta Page  16:05

And is there anything that you'd like to see less of in the art world moving forward?

Cindy Leung  16:10

I guess I like to do a lot of things that I'm curious about, about the art world where I am perhaps your cover in previous episode on your podcast, but you know, there's something about like art fair that I don't know about, like, how did these people get in and what kind of people go to art fair? So a assessable, saying, Gregory because even for our surveys, like different level offers, and so I would like to see, like, how they're how they're construct, right? Like, what kind of people go to art fair, certain types of offer and like, what kind of offer there are diagnosis like in New York or in Miami? I suppose you're in Miami like I feel like there's not a lot of Affordable Art Fair, but like in New York, DERM do a lot of those going on. And so I would like to see what it means to get into an art fair. I guess. I also like to see a lot more woman artists because I felt like every time somebody make a lot of money and a commercial gallery, they're all man I feel like that there's so this like stereotype where if a man make art, that's because they're really good at what they're doing. And I think that's come from tradition. And I'm hoping that there are more people who are willing to break down that tradition in the future. I have a website is WWE dot Cindy, see lsy.com I'm also on Instagram at Cindy CLS one can find me I have a lot of input Chris picture I share. A lot of my friends work as well just to COBOL a healthy way to like pull my peer

Isotta Page  18:05

Thank you for listening to Art Is… a podcast for artists. Please leave art is a podcast for artists a rating and review in Apple podcasts. It really helps others find us. Also I would love it if you took a moment to reflect on who in your life might also benefit from listening to this podcast. When you do please share artists or podcasts for artists with them. So we can continue to grow the show organically and brainstorm the future of the art world together. You can also support the work I do by subscribing wherever you listen, and by donating to the podcast. The link to do so is in the episode description. Okay, that's it for now. Thanks so much and see you next Wednesday.