Kelly E. James

Remaining sufficiently disciplined to be consistently creative while being employed in a different field is a delicate balance that many of us understand. Owning and running a small fine arts business on the side is certainly challenging as well. Doing this while working full time in higher education as a faculty librarian and administrator (the library director) is even more challenging.

I love both environments and professions very much and strongly believe that keeping a strict separation between these two simultaneous careers has been ethically imperative. I also believe that both passions need a full commitment of time, focus, and finance to do them well. Working – and I daresay living – this duality is surprisingly hard to sustain long term, and yet is what circumstances have determined necessary my entire adult life. Now, however, I realize that I am at a point of decision. I am at the diverging road of Robert Frost’s poem.

There are professional affiliations that I must engage with for both careers, and participation in each of them demands serious financial commitments, intense intellectual contributions, notable energy and an active presence. Judiciously choosing even a modest level of participation for each of them can still add up quickly and drain me. Perhaps I could get by with some bare minimum distributed across a broader scale but in good faith, I cannot. When I commit, it is fully.

As I have begun to grow my art business, I have become increasingly aware of the complexity of juggling an overwhelming number of balls in the air. With the art business this involves (aside from making the artwork itself) a demand for participation costs (shooting, jurying, booth, framing, travel and more), calendar deadlines (submit, ship, travel, and the detriment of scheduling errors), and even the aging of each piece to assure currency compliance requirements.

In the past year, I have had some modest success with the sale of several pieces of artwork and for this, I am enormously grateful. I have re-invested the proceeds in much needed technology for the business, in gichlee prints of select work to increase ready cash flow, in expanded affiliations, and now in underwriting entry fees to more competitions than ever before. All are tough decisions that need to be made thoughtfully and strategically and they burn through the profits quickly.

I can feel that tipping point in both the monetary support and the service juxtaposition of my two careers and am aware that a decision must be made to address this bittersweet imbalance of serving two passions effectively, let alone well. It is time for me to choose, and move from that place of transition; to step forward in faith.

After 25 years in my library, I will be retiring this summer from my position as University Library Director to focus on my art fulltime.