Agnes Martin’s handwritten list of every job she ever had
“also raised rabbits and ducks”
Welcome to the 183rd issue of Subtle Maneuvers. My sincere thanks to everyone who came to my LA book launch last Friday! What a perfect evening; I’m sharing some photos below. Next stop: Chicago! Come see me at the Chicago Athletic Association tomorrow, April 8, at 5:30pm.
Artists need day jobs. Not every artist; not all the time (let’s hope). But often it’s an unavoidable condition of creative work: the necessity of finding other work to pay for all the time and space needed for the creativity to flourish (let’s hope).
In my new book, I mention one particularly epic example of the day-jobbing artist: the American abstract painter Agnes Martin (1912–2004), who once sent her close friend and art dealer Arne Glimcher a handwritten two-page list of every job she ever had—thirty-five items encompassing a truly stunning variety of short-term and ad-hoc employment, which was later reprinted in Glimcher’s Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances.
I wasn’t able to include Martin’s full list in my book—but I’m delighted to share it with you all today:
If you’re having trouble reading the text, here’s a transcript:
Please publish all or none
I have worked:
1. as a play ground Director
2. as a tennis coach
3. started two successful businesses
4. on a farm – milking
5. three times at the wheat harvest
6. managed cherry pickers
7. for a mining Co. managed Indians horse packing supplies
8. taught three years in country schools
9. as a cashier
10. in a factory
11. in a hamburger stand
12 as a receptionist
13 in a butcher shop
14. in a nursery
15. in a cafeteria
16. as a bakers helper
17. as a waitress many times
18 as a dishwasher three times
19 as a janitor once
20 as a cook onceduring the War
21. helping Spanish and Indian get in touch with relatives in the Army (Red Cross)
22. visited spruce logging operations for the government
23 at Swan Island (liberty ships) child care center24 running an elevator
25 in a parking garage
26 packing ice cream
27 managed five Hindus. baling strawAs a disciplinarian
28. worked with deprived boys
29. on school buses
30. with 60 boy waiters
31. house mother on campus
32 chaperone traveling University Students
33 with criminal boys
34 individual child care
2 girls and one boy age 4 – 5 – 635 also raised rabbits and ducks.
If you have also worked a great variety of day jobs to fund your creative ambitions—please share your list in the comments. I find these litanies weirdly inspiring; they offer a glimpse of the resourcefulness, endurance, and tenacity that underlies all creative careers.
MY WEIRDEST NOTE-TAKING HABIT
I originally budgeted eighteen months to write my new book; it ended up taking four and a half years. Part of the reason it took so long was that I have developed a rather time-consuming and inefficient research process—which I was delighted to unpack for Jillian Hess’s Noted, one of the great creative-process publications of our time. What an honor to contribute this guest post on my own cobbled-together method, including, yes, my weirdest note-taking habit.
IS NOW THE WORST POSSIBLE TIME TO BE AN ARTIST?
My new book is about how writers and artists through history funded their creative work—but of course everyone (me included) wants to know what artists now should be doing. And I’m torn on how to talk about this! On the one hand, I want to say: Artists have always struggled to make ends meet; we can at least draw strength from their examples and see ourselves as part of a lineage of creative people trying to make our work with the resources we do have.
On the other hand: I feel like we actually are living through a uniquely difficult moment, where it’s harder than ever to make the math work. And I want to recognize that and talk about that, too—which I’m so glad I was able to do with my friend Anna Brones, even if, naturally, neither of us has any answers. Read our conversation here.
MORE ON SLOW BOOKS, MONEY PRESSURE, “BALANCE”
OK, so my inefficient research process isn’t the only reason the new book took so long—and in my recent interview with JoAnna Novak for BOMB I talk more about the various drafts I produced before I got to the final version, plus why money pressure may be a good thing for an artist and how I think about the question of “balance” in a creative career.
Read our interview here. And don’t miss JoAnna’s own list of day jobs, in her introduction:
snack-bar worker, bagel-shop clerk, children’s clothing salesperson, babysitter, hardware-store cashier, server, literary-magazine editor, housesitter, catsitter, telemarketer, pastry assistant, photo booth attendant, fiction-writing instructor (that was all before I turned twenty-five).
MY DREAM BOOK LAUNCH
I truly couldn’t have asked for a better book event than last Friday’s at Skylight Books here in LA. Huge thanks to everyone who came out; to Skylight for hosting us; to Ross Simonini for being an incredibly smart and gracious conversation partner; and to my wife, Rebecca, for throwing the coolest afterparty—and taking all the photos too!
EVEN MORE BOOK NEWS
On my publication day, last Tuesday, I had a very enjoyable Substack Live chat with Jason Chatfield about the new book and some of its more over-the-top funding strategies (like Baudelaire’s letters to his mother—mon dieu!).
Last week, I also had a lovely Q&A with Ximena Vengoechea for her Letters from Ximena—and I especially enjoyed the opportunity to think about what funding I would most like to have access to (family money, obviously?!).
For Jessica Murnane’s Inside and Outside podcast, I talked about my love of Peter Hujar’s Day (the book and the movie), and my intense nostalgia for the not-so-distant pre-internet past.
I was also delighted to talk about the new book with Brian Larson for his Shelf Care Society podcast (listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify) and with Ekaterina Popova of the Create! Podcast—both really fun and satisfying conversations.
Finally: All this month, I’m happy to be partnering with the London Writers' Salon on a series of writing prompts around the themes of my book. Read the first prompt here. I’ll also be participating in a generative writing session on April 13 and the salon’s 24-hour writing sprint on April 24–25.
Thanks for reading! If you’re in Chicago, please come say hi tomorrow evening. For everyone else: paid subscribers are invited to our next Book Club meeting on Sunday, April 26th, at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 7pm UK time, when we’ll be discussing … my new book! Find all the details and join us here. —Mason
My list: bagging groceries at Kroger; work-study job in my college's English department (all four years); summer jobs at a psychiatry clinic (data entry) and a psychology group practice (medical records); library assistant; assistant to the publisher and CEO of a small architecture magazine, then assistant editor, associate editor, web editor, back to associate editor, and finally managing editor of the same magazine; executive editor at a different magazine; guest editor and then senior editor at a blog/web magazine (and programming chair for its conference); freelance writing, blogging, and some copywriting during all these magazine jobs; and finally full-time freelance writer and author since 2016, holy moly!
I am loving reading everyone’s lists!!
Mine would include babysitting (on and off from age 12 to 30), religious sermon transcriptionist, performing arts teacher (singing, piano, and drama), playwright, director, hostess, waitress, coat check girl (at The Park in Chelsea), spa receptionist, temp at a sump pump company, magazine assistant, Jill of all trades at a small children’s book publisher, copyeditor and proofreader at an ed tech startup, conference organizer, nonprofit executive director, poetry teacher, memoir teacher, novel teacher, book coach