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Also this issue: Culture Vultures Walter Mosley Where the Wilde Things Are Children’s Books Book Quicks |
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March 27-April 2, 2003
cover story
 Join together: Mariposa co-op members (left to right) Bull Gervasi, Nick Tenaglia, Rachel Markley, Jim Ellsworth and Alexis Buss. Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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Facing a fiscal crisis several years ago, Mickey Z. did what any sensible freelance writer would do to procrastinate in a time of need: He e-mailed everyone he knew to find out how they make money. The result is The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet (Soft Skull Press), a compilation of anecdotes from 24 artists and activists.
"If I was doing this for the money, I'd be crazy," says Z., a.k.a. Michael Zezima, 42. An ardent, even strident vegetarian, Zezima has clearly spent his life among one fringe political or cultural movement or another. One of his three books is called Forgotten New York: Small Slices of a Big Apple; his writing has appeared in the counterculture anthologies You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know is Wrong. He is also a prime example of the counter-normative characters who make up the cast of Murdering: someone who identifies himself primarily as an artist, but does not actually make a living through art. "People who pursue careers in art and activism find that work isn't highly valued in our materialistic society. They spend a lot of time chasing their tails, looking for work," Zezima says. "The way I earn money is as a personal trainer. For a long time I was a proofreader for a vanity press, which meant I read bad books all day."
The most interesting thing about Murdering is the question it attempts to answer: Namely, how do artists and activists actually make money? Most people define themselves primarily through their jobs, but few people actually have jobs as artists or activists. Being a painter usually means painting canvases some of the time, then painting houses or waiting tables to make money. Census figures aren't much help in identifying artists, either. "Freelance artist" is a recognized category of employment, but it's far more common for an artist to work at a daily job like bartending or temping, since freelancing is a notoriously unstable lifestyle.
 Not-so-comic book: Pete Stathis with a page from Evenfall, which was indirectly financed by his mother's death.
Photo By Michael T. Regan |
In Philadelphia, the life of an artist or activist generally means a whole lot of hustle. Take Liesel Euler, an actor and performer whose current projects involve singing, playing guitar, performing collaborative physical theater with troupes like Pig Iron and New Paradise Laboratories and doing a deadly funny one-woman show. "I am an artist and performer; more specifically, and in alphabetical order, an actor, composer, dancer, dramaturg, guitarist, singer, teacher and writer," says Euler, 32. "I am also in the early stages of creating my own work: I write and perform very silly songs." That's her professional persona, artistically speaking. To actually pay the bills, Euler logs 25 hours a week as a receptionist at an architecture firm (which brings full health benefits), works as a Pilates instructor and does life modeling at Moore College of Art. "If you're lucky, they'll ask for a reclining pose, and you can fall asleep," Euler says of this latter part-time gig. "I like it when I get paid to sleep in the nude. Why not?" The decision to pursue a career as an artist at the expense of a more traditional career was one that took a long time for Euler, including three years of bartending, waitressing and catering. "I sometimes lived off my family during that time. They were very generous, but I couldn't take it anymore," she says. For Euler, as for most performers, the addictive nature of her craft is worth the economic and social instability associated with a life in the arts.
Over in West Philadelphia, the longtime breeding ground of radicalism and revolt, making a living as an activist depends largely on collective action and the efforts of community organizers. The success of West Philly's radical community runs directly contrary to Murdering's contention that artists and activists inevitably have to engage in soul-deadening work in order to make ends meet. The community, largely centered around Baltimore Avenue between 45th and 50th streets, exists as an almost self-contained economy. Community members have access to the kind of food, housing and social and economic support that would make even the most radical leftist proud.
One of the community's hubs is the A-Space, the first floor of a three-story building at 47th and Baltimore. The A-Space is an anarchist-friendly spot that looks and feels much like the social hall at a church or recreation center, complete with well-worn coffee pot and checkered linoleum. A dizzying variety of arts, political and social activist movements meet and distribute literature there. The bulletin board announces an upcoming meeting of anarcha-feminists, a benefit dinner and video presentation for a radical newspaper and a workshop called "Challenging White Supremacy." Books Through Bars, an organization that distributes literature to prisoners, stores its inventory in a back room, and every week volunteers arrive to pack up boxes of used, donated or remaindered books.
The A-Space is "governed" by a collective that meets monthly to deal with administrative demands. The collective publishes a monthly events calendar, and members share responsibility for cleanup and letting people in and out. The economic demands are few: The A-Space is the former home of the Philadelphia Marxist School, which donated the space to the collective in 1990. "Communism crumbled all over the world -- including in West Philly," jokes Alexis Buss, one of the collective members. The $200 rent on the space is easily met each month, since nobody actually takes a salary. Even the rent goes back into the community -- the building is owned by the Life Center Association, a West Philly land trust that provides dozens of activists with breathtakingly inexpensive cooperative housing.
Buss explains that the economics of the A-Space and the surrounding neighborhood are intricate and longstanding. The Life Center Association formed in the 1960s to provide community land ownership and develop an affordable housing option for activists. It also owns several other large houses in the neighborhood, including one called The Vortex, a communal living space painted purple and green with goofy sculptures in the front garden. The land trust has expanded over the years to include several other properties in the neighborhood, including both sides of a twin house at 4821 and 4823 Baltimore. "4823 was the first house that we bought -- it was purchased at sheriff's sale for $7,000, and rehabbed by members of the land trust," Buss explains. "The building next door, 4821, started out as a squat, then it was purchased about two years later at sheriff's sale." Now, each house is a communal living situation, although 4823 is in significantly better condition than its twin. Gesturing at a recently painted house at 4820 Baltimore, Buss adds, "That one was purchased in order to provide inside space for a children's garden around the corner. It's used for indoor activities associated with the garden -- for greenhouse purposes, and for activities when it rains."
Buss is one of the linchpins of this community. Walking down Baltimore Avenue with her is like walking through Center City with Ed Rendell; almost everyone stops to say hello, chat and do some business. "Most business takes place this way, just by running into people on the street," Buss says. She pauses outside the garden house to talk with Jenny, an independent contractor who is trying to join the Philadelphia plumbers union. They trade notes on what's happening in the neighborhood, who has recently gotten married or moved away and the success of a recent fundraising party for a longtime resident whose medical bills became prohibitive.
Since 1995, the West Philly radical scene has swollen to sufficient size that it is possible to exist entirely within the community. Housing needs can be met by living in one of the land trust's communal situations. For food, neighborhood radicals can shop at Mariposa Food Co-op, located next to the A-Space, which charges only a 30-percent or less markup on each item -- far cheaper than any grocery store. A healthy informal economy operates on the barter system: A graphic designer might design a brochure for a carpenter in exchange for a few hours of carpentry. There is even talk of formalizing the informal economy: Fred Kittelman is trying to start HOURS, a fair trade system based on hours of work, in an attempt to subvert the capitalist notion that one person's labor is worth more than another's.
"I'm not sure it's legal," muses Alice Wells, a graceful white-haired woman sitting behind the counter at Mariposa. "It might fall into that gray area. But it seems like a good idea." Rachel Markley, the co-op store manager, points out that HOURS is based on a successful program in Ithaca, N.Y., in which the local economy uses Ithaca Dollars in addition to currency to exchange goods and labor. An amiable, low-key debate begins, ranging from Ithaca dollars to car-sharing to the price of organic versus major-label cheese. Buss lounges against the door frame, idly plucks a kumquat from a bin and munches it while offering the occasional opinion. Watching the pace of life at Mariposa, it's clear that the community has been specifically tailored to the needs of artists, activists and other social radicals. It's also easy to see why the community perseveres, since the organizational and motivational skills of the community's core members rival those of any corporate CEO.
Of course, many Philadelphia artists and activists are quite happily self-employed, especially those whom fate has given a leg up. When his mother died several years ago, comic book artist Pete Stathis inherited a small real estate business: three houses in West Philly that he has renovated over the past five or six years. "I used to have to do catering work as well, but now that the rental market has gone up here, I don't anymore," says Stathis. "To be honest, there's no way I would be able to put out a full-length bimonthly comic book by myself if I was still doing both of these jobs. You have deadlines and you have to keep to a strict schedule. It's a full-time job, and without some other source of income to get you started, I don't know how else you could put your own book out. As an artist who is just starting to meet with some mild success, I always feel like the houses are my dirty little secret: I have a part-time job that pays like a full-time job. In the end, I know I'm really lucky to be in the situation that I'm in." In fact, Stathis' life not only puts food on the table, but fuels his creative output. Stathis published the first issue of his comic series, Evenfall, last week. Like Stathis, Evenfall's heroine, Phoebe, has dropped out of college after her mother's death in order to run her mother's real estate properties.
Given the fact that so many artists and activists have fascinating stories about putting lives together on a shoestring, it's hard to look at Murdering without seeing it as the vanity project of a punk-rock in-crowd. The book's subjects are so close as to be practically incestuous. Like participants Tim Wise and Marta Russell, Zezima has written for Z Magazine Online. Richard Metzger's publishing project, Disinformation, published two collections to which Zezima contributed essays. Susana Santizo is a friend of Zezima's wife. Sander Hicks, another of Murdering's stars, founded Soft Skull Books -- the company that publishes both Zezima and poet Sparrow, another of the book's subjects.
Zezima is quick to admit that the book is not representative of all artists and activists. "There's nothing scientific about the demographic, and it's not representative of any people beyond the 24 participants," he explains. "This isn't a book about people struggling against the circumstances of their birth. Its power lies in the motivating power of example." Of course, if the book's example goes no further than its two dozen subjects -- most of whom are vegetarians and New Yorkers, and were included simply because they were the only ones to complete the 100-odd questionnaires Zezima e-mailed -- it's hard to imagine why we should care at all about how its subjects make a living.
Savor, instead, this irony: Selling the book to the publisher solved the financial crisis that prompted Zezima to dream up the book in the first place. Now, on publication, hopefully he'll net some publicity and exposure for himself and his friends. And as with any author, the more books that sell, the more Mickey Z. himself will be able to make ends meet.
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