Amateur: its old-fashioned meaning is "lover of", so that an "amateur artist" is someone who makes their art for the love of it. A professional artist can also be an amateur - someone who loves making art and makes money from it.
In this best sense of the term, musician and zine artiste Coco Solid, aka Jessica Hansell, is an amateur artist. When the Ngapuhi/Samoan/German Aucklander started putting out mix-tapes in 2004, making money was not the point. The rapper and punk rocker makes a bit from her music now, but it's still not the point. She also works separately from her many artistic endeavours, and sees this whole other life as enriching her art. "I think that's important," she said last week, at Survive & Thrive, an arts industry conference run by the Arts Regional Trust and thebigidea.co.nz.
Unsurprisingly, she's not worried when she hears people talking about "music dying"; for Coco Solid, the industry big boys' decreasing profits just means making music is "becoming less of a capitalist venture". Rather than being afraid of cyberspace, she owes much of her increasing and "scattered but loyal fanbase" to "the generosity of the internet".
I like Coco Solid's thinking a lot. I like the idea that the quality of someone's art isn't equated with the money they make from it (unlike, say, client-driven design, where that is absolutely fine). I like it because the admired artist in this scenario isn't likely to be the one who has pandered to the highest bidder or the lowest common denominator.
I like that the internet makes the Age of the Amateur Artist seem possible - everybody sharing their aesthetics and creativity and feedback, whether or not they're making money. And many will be making money: the web has made it cheaper to distribute music (for example) as well as making it cheaper to consume it. The price per unit might be smaller, but a much higher percentage of that price can go back to the artist. They have more control.
