Hello,
I am Holliand Otik, and I am a successoholic.
That is not to say I’m a perfectionist, I am far from it. I’ve done a few bodge jobs in my time. What I mean is that I NEED success. I need it to feel validated, to feel encouraged… I need it in order to get up and into my studio and to churn my brain butter into clups of milky ideas (disgusting).
I have had successes, I won the young artist’s prize at the Cork Street Open Exhibition during my second year of university, I finished university with a First, then our stand won the Best Stand award at New Designers in islington. I was on a roll, I applied for the Threadneedle Prize exhibition after my second Cork Street show and I got in, making the final 190 out of over 3,000.
Then it happened. Or rather, it didn’t happen. Nothing happened. I didn’t sell a thing, no one contacted me, the great conversations I had with people at the private view did not materialise into anything and that magazine never did call me back.
My first failure. Or rather, my last success. I got a part time job, that slowly leeched into a full time job, that turned into a WAY TOO MANY HOURS KILL ME NOW job. I moved house, from thriving, artistic Bristol, to rural, slow paced, crafty Herefordshire: a place where opportunities abound, but you really have to push for them.
I did not push. I set up my studio and I sat in it and nothing happened. I felt like I was back at my first day of art school. Like I had no idea what my interests were, or my style, or even my medium. I felt as though I had let myself down, like a fraud. As though all of that previous success and excitement was just luck. I felt alone, alone in my studio with just four cats and my old degree work for company.
That was when it hit me. I was alone. That was the problem. Those successes, they had come from moments of clarity, of enthusiasm, of discourse and challenging discussion. “I can’t do this alone!” I suddenly thought. But I was alone, in a small city, in my own little home workspace. My saving grace became the internet, I followed blogs of artsts who inspired me, and I started to make work again. “Look how cool these people are” I thought (think), “I wish I was like that! Look at these group shows! Look at this crazy project! Wow what a lot of fun being an artist is!” I said to myself, eating my third microwaved bowl of noodles of the day with precariously glaze-covered utensils.
I realised then that I needed to make art friends. I need to relate to people who feel the same passions as me, people who know what it is to have an idea stuck in the back of their neck. People who know that buzz at four in the morning, when you lie awake with a plan forming in your head but you are too afraid to write or draw in case you damage it, but too scared to sleep in case you forget. People who have probably dropped slimy noodles on themselves, looking at people just like them, whilst thinking “I wish I could do that!”.
So here I am. Here I am pouring my embarrassing tale of laziness and self absorption out into the internet, and asking (a little nervously):
WILL YOU BE MY ART FRIEND?
Please?
