GreeningFrogtownNovDec

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BIG IDEAS Greening Up Dale Street Here's a plan to turn an abandoned lot into a center to fight climate change on a local level PAGE 8 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
FROM THE COVER He Figured It Out for You Art elder Seitu Jones has advice for young Frogtown artists You’re a Frogtown artist and you’re looking for tips on how to turn your creative impulses into a living. Everyone’s got to find their own path in this tough racket. But that said, Frogtown’s most prominent artist, Seitu Jones, has time-tested advice developed over nearly a half-century of paying the bills via the arts. He’s recently been declared a McKnight Foundation Distinguished Artist, was the first-ever resident artist for the City of Minneapolis, created the art at the Dale and Rice St. Greenline Stations, was the brains behind the 2,000-guest public meal held on Victoria St., and was among the co-founders to Frogtown Farm, to cite just a few of his accomplishments. Here’s his memory of how he got on the arts path, and the practical and high-minded essentials for building up a lasting career. How did you get started? Back in the 70s, there wasn’t a real market here for art. I was often tempted to go to New York, but I had kids, and there was no way I could conceptualize picking up my kids and moving them there. Being a child of the 60s, I kept coming up with all these different philosophies. One week I’d be a Marxist, and another week a black cultural nationalist, another week I’d be drifting toward the Black Panther party. All those things affected me in some ways. Even at the time in the 60s, the 70s when I was part of the Black Arts movement and worked at Penumbra Theater, we thought we were doing work for the cause here. I didn’t want to move my kids to New York because the revolution was going to happen, like, next week. But in the end the thing I settled on was leaving your community more beautiful than you found it. That’s still what drives my work. I’ve been fortunate to build a career around that. A lot of what I’ve done is public art. I started out doing murals. That led to larger public art works. That’s really what’s paid my bills. Can you boil that down to some dos and don’ts for young Frogtown artists? There are two sides you’ve got to be thinking about. There are the logistics of doing all this and then there’s the content, the art part. And a big part is not the art part. That’s what trips people up. Unfortunately, you’ve got to pay taxes. Last year I paid more taxes than Donald Trump paid in the past 1 0 years. You’ve got to get legal and decide on a business structure that’s right for you — a sole proprietorship, or an LLC, or an S Corporation. You’ve got to market yourself, because it’s always a hustle. I spend 30 to 40 percent of my time focused on all the business aspects of being an artist. Get a good accountant. Make sure that you save some money. Especially as you get to be my age, take a look at that Social Security account. You want to make sure you get as much as you can. And you’ve got to invest in yourself. I’m so curious that I want to keep learning new stuff, so it’s either taking that class or buying that tool that you’ll need down the line. You need to invest in yourself over and over again. You’ve also got to invest in your space. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to buy a warehouse, but you need to find a place that suits you and your work. — Continued Page 11 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 PAGE 9
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GreeningFrogtownNovDec

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