Welcome to #artist/dayjob#

#Rank Miami examines the (c)overt class and ranking systems surrounding the Miami art fairs.

In the expressly commerce-based bubble of the Miami art fairs, artists’ ranks might be established/defined in relation to gallery representation and/or the need to maintain a dayjob to support themselves and their families.

For artists who must work outside the studio to bring home the tofu, the type of job and how long they’ve maintained it becomes a sort of sub-classification/ranking, defining a position within the larger social and economic strata. Are the more desirable/impressive jobs art-related, in-field or academic? Does this ranking system draw and quarter us based on the perceptions and realities of our day to day duties and responsibilities?

#artist/dayjob# seeks to explore this ranking system through the simple sociological tool of the self-survey. Four questions:

How many years have you been an artist? What kind of artist are you? What’s your dayjob? How many years have you done it? #artist/dayjob#

These questions seem so simple. They are the foundations of common cocktail chat, yet, to the sensitive and informed inquisitor, they reveal the speaker’s standing-- earned or not-- in the larger milieu of the commercial art world and the culture.

So, dear artist:

Please let us know your ‘situation’ in the following format:

#number of years as an artist what kind of artist you are/ what is your day job # of years in that dayjob

example:

15writer/ad copy writer10 or

20visual artist/professor-gallerist18