DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat Mario Urdaneta, a mechanical engineering graduate student, studies in front of artist Donna Stoner's painting "Comfortably Adrift" yesterday at Bentley's. Bentley's is a cafˇ where local artists can showcase their work and have it exposed to the public.

Artists take creative approaches to exhibit their work

Somewhere in the back of the creative writer's mind as she sits down to write, somewhere lurking amidst a young drummer's garage band practice, somewhere deep within the painter's studio, is the voice that forever haunts the young artist. It says, "This is no way to make a living."

A career in the arts seems like not much of a career at all, because so few manage to achieve it. The young artist may dream of becoming a household name, but the journey from a high school literary magazine to the bestseller list, from shooting home movies on daddy's camcorder to the Oscars, from the front of the family refrigerator to the Guggenheim, is a long and hard one.

Regardless of the genre, getting one's work out into the public eye is no easy job - and it's not just a matter of talent.

"There is a lot of quality fiction out there, so even wonderful stories and poems often get rejected many times before getting published (sometimes they are never published)," said Aurelie Sheehan, a writer and assistant professor of English, in an e-mail interview.

DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat "White Sage," a painting by local artist Elee D, stares through Epic Cafe on Fourth Avenue.

The competition is fierce, but for young artists living out their labor of love, it's too often they forget about the "labor" part.

"Success in any field is hard work. Determination wins the game," said Rachel Ellis Adams, a media arts graduate student, in an e-mail interview. "As I've talked to people (in the media industry) who've 'made it' and people who haven't, the issue that repeats itself the most is the difference in attitude."

While hard work cuts across genres, the standards for "making it" vary. Poets do not expect the same press run as fiction writers. What constitutes a successful press run for a book would be a failure for a film. For any aspiring artist, the question remains: How big of an audience is big enough?

"Some right-thinking individuals would argue that the best literature being published today is by certain small presses, and/or is not ever on the bestseller lists," Sheehan said. "Some other right-thinking individuals would argue that a writer writes to be read, to reach out to his or her audience, and the larger the audience the better. You need to think about the kind of work you are writing and be realistic about your expectations."

Yet unlike writing or dance, film is less "process-focused," Adams said.

"A person can dance in their kitchen while eating a salad and thinking about the dentist - it's personally fulfilling in the physical moment. Film is not quite the same way," she said. "Film is made to communicate. It's definitively about connecting the storyteller with the story-listener. How many story-listeners there have to be, I don't know."

Other times, as for local sculptor Chris Morrey, public recognition, or having a local "presence," is not an issue. He is a UA alumnus and, until recently, headed the Dinnerware Contemporary Gallery's Board of Directors.

"I don't think in terms of presence, which would seem to be kind of a marketplace sort of construction - like, 'Saturate the market!' or something. I think about the work I'm building and where I'd like to see it," said Morrey. "It revolves around getting the work right, not some concept of me having a career. I don't need a career."

The ability to make art, though, is not always accessible for young artists, especially when financial obstacles stand in the way, as with film.

"A writer can find a pen on the ground or buy one for less than a dollar and write and write and write - on walls, if necessary, on the newspaper, on trash, on junk mail. Writers can write 100 stories before they're 25," Adams said. "Maybe they won't be published yet, but they will have been able to work and hone their craft in the practice of the craft itself. Filmmakers on the other hand are unlikely to have made even one feature before they're 25. Not one."

Not to mention the budgets involved in the creation process.

"How much painting could you do on $100,000? A lot! And dancing? You could barely make one regulation feature on that," Adams added.

Given these obstacles to getting public exposure for a piece of artwork, young artists often seek alternative venues for distributing and exhibiting their work. Art exhibits are regularly seen in local coffeehouses - even the U.S. Post Office on University Boulevard served as an exhibition site.

Associate professor of English Alison Deming cited the creation of reading series and local poetry collectives as further possibilities for getting in the public eye, especially locally. Adams also sees collectives as useful for young filmmakers.

"What I really think young filmmakers should do - particularly those who are turned off by the Hollywood route - is pool resources and form more collectives," she stated. "American cinema as a whole would just benefit so much."

Young artists also collaborate to create their own venues for exhibition - as with the local lit mag Spork or art gallery Carbonbase, for example. In addition, more support is needed for independent local venues such as The Loft and The Screening Room, Adams stated.

Moreover, in this technological age, the Internet presents even more opportunities for young artists, though always within limits.

"Technology always changes things - it opens up some new things and shuts down others," Adams stated. "The Internet will open up more exhibition space for a certain type of 'film.'"

Creative writers, too, can find an audience through self-publishing on the Web, as can musicians by releasing their music through sites like www.mp3.com.

Morrey stated, however, that he finds the Internet, and the technologies surrounding it, more useful as a means of creating art rather than exhibiting it.

Whatever the mode of distribution or exhibition, whatever the size of the audience, Sheehan and Morrey agreed that making art is what counts, and it is important for all young artists to keep working at their crafts.

"One of the most satisfying things for me as a writer is being proud of something I've done, really proud," Sheehan stated. "That doesn't depend on publication."