It’s a shifting second act that has given Robinson a way of success the Recent York corporate world couldn’t. After years of grueling work, she has reached a level of success that aligns her economic needs and skilled goals. That stability has allowed her to travel between Brooklyn and Nairobi over the past yr, where she finds inspiration in nature and a grounded feeling.
Robinson, 57, spent years working as a designer, and dabbled in art on the side.
Erin K. Robinson. (Courtesy photo)
“I used to be miserable,” she said of her last stint in the company world. She left the office 4 years ago to explore her creative pursuits full-time. “My motto has been: It’s never too late to reinvent yourself. It was a little bit of a sacrifice.”
That journey meant painting and trying to seek out her artistic voice. With a push from her dad, Robinson began to explore her art with more freedom and commenced illustrating on her iPad. More people found her work, and she or he has since illustrated several children’s books showcasing Black women — work that seems like her artistic legacy.
“It’s OK to be doing something joyful,” Robinson said she has realized. But it surely took mental work and financial sacrifices to get there. “I used to be scared about leaving that comfort zone. [Now] I don’t have that fear of letting go, and even of failing.”
What does it mean to thrive for gig-working creatives in Brooklyn?
Robinson is one among five people Technical.ly spoke to for a Brooklyn installment of our recent storytelling project, Thriving. The project includes reported articles like this one, an audio series and community engagement efforts that may happen over the subsequent yr. It can grant readers a view into the lives of on a regular basis people, their goals and the challenges they face to get there.
This piece focuses on gig-working creatives in Brooklyn, and pairs with a story on this group based in Philadelphia. These are freelancers and self-employed visual artists, performers, and designers who support themselves with creative work and side hustles. A 2019 online survey conducted by the Recent York City’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, the Freelancers Union and Upwork found that 34% of the town’s staff, or about 1.3 million people, do freelance work. That workforce — and exploitation of it — was so significant that NYC passed a law in 2017 aiming to raised protect freelance staff from nonpayment.
We asked these Brooklynites what thriving means to them. They spoke of challenges to seek out regular work, affording Recent York City rent, and balancing their mental health with the demands of constructing it in a city that is known for being the place to make it. But through those struggles, they’ve also found personal success and financial success in ditching the 9 to five to follow their artistic dreams.
Sophia Jane Wilkof — ‘Realizing that I’m an artist really empowered me to make the switch’
Sophia Jane Wilkof took a job in fundraising for a theatre company in Manhattan’s Theater District and moved from California to Recent York five years ago, pondering she could be completely satisfied to be behind the scenes of shows with a gradual job. She would do some standup comedy she loved on the side, she decided.
But in 2020, Wilkof said she realized that she desired to be back on the stage full-time. The COVID-19 pandemic put her plans on hold for a couple of months, but eventually she scaled back at her job and commenced studying at HB Studio, a drama school. Since graduating, she’s juggled dog walking and mentoring and officiating for Hebrew Helpers, a corporation that prepares kids for his or her bar and bat mitzvahs, together with standup and auditions.
And he or she’s spent the past yr determining the right way to say no to opportunities that aren’t value sacrificing time — say, walking a dog in a special neighborhood twice a day or taking up each creative opportunity — to find time for rehearsing, writing, auditioning and performing that serves her goals.
Sophia Jane Wilkof. (Courtesy photo)
The 29-year-old Bed-Stuy resident considers her creative profession to still be a piece in progress. For Wilkof, success would appear to be booking a large comedy show about once a month, fully supporting herself through her Hebrew mentoring side hustle (which, fortunately, she finds fulfilling, too) and setting a typical pace for auditioning. Without delay, she’s holding herself to at the least one open mic every week and carving out specific times in her schedule to write down comedy or work toward auditions.
She credits a few of her success to this point to ECHT, a Brooklyn-based artist collective. Wilkof said she hopes to work alongside other creatives, something ECHT did before the pandemic by organising office hours. That allowed creatives working on various things, from writing to performing to visual arts, to satisfy up and bounce off each others’ energy. To her, Recent York is a spot where she will be surrounded by other people who find themselves grinding and never necessarily working 9 to 5s.
“I’d have eventually gotten here, but just joining that group and performing with them and realizing that I’m an artist — though I [was] not professionally an artist on the time — really empowered me to make the switch,” Wilkof said.
Steven Sharpe Jr. — ‘There’s a price to pay, each literally and figuratively’
For Steven Sharpe Jr., creating content as a freelancer and supporting his own mental health are fully linked. Along with making photo and video content for social media and ad partnerships with brands like Goal, Doc Martens and Kenneth Cole, he has hosted a podcast focused on mental health and launched his own studio, Nobius Creative Studios, to assist other content creators navigate the tricky world of contracts with brands.
Steven Sharpe Jr. (Courtesy photo)
To do all of it means maintaining with ever-shifting social media trends and demands and learning so much about contractual details, one other piece of the self-employment puzzle that will be tricky for creatives to master. But to Sharpe, that’s vital work to do to earn his real value.
“I don’t wish to see myself on a billboard knowing that I accepted $500 from a brand this one time for something that I needed within the moment, but I didn’t think long-term and browse through my contracts to appreciate that this one term thing is now affecting me long-term,” said Sharpe, who lives in Crown Heights.
The 31-year-old moved to Recent York from North Carolina, and worked full-time jobs before calling it quits and becoming a full-time freelancer in 2020. Along with getting what he’s value for his work, Sharpe said he feels success comes from his deal with wellness, too, and learning to prioritize rest over “hustle culture.”
“It is vitally difficult to be here and to survive in Recent York. The town has some kind of energy that actually pushes everyone to their limits. Creatively, I feel prefer it’s filled with creativity,” he said. “You’ve gotten access to so many individuals from all world wide. That part is the rationale to remain. But around that there’s a price to pay, each literally and figuratively.”
Gili Benita — ‘A part of success is making a living out of something that you just love doing’
Gili Benita moved greater than 5,000 miles from Jerusalem to Recent York in 2019 with the hope of doing editorial and documentary photography work for pay. Back in Israel, he photographed weddings and hated it, but he said it was the one way for him to make a living with photos.
Within the three years since, he has studied on the International Center of Photography and had assignments for The Recent York Times and Italian Vogue. His first was for the Times’ Metro section, and sent him deep into Queens to take portraits of trans people living within the foster care system.
He’s now supporting himself fully with work related to photography, but in addition desires to focus in the longer term on photo editing and other points of the visual medium. Benita said he knows that running around with a camera and doing the physical work can get harder with age, and he has a watch to diversifying his skills for the longer term. It could help, too, for when the marketplace for his work becomes volatile — possibly one yr he could make $100,000, but his earnings might take a 40% hit the subsequent.
Gili Benita. (Photo by Kana Motojima)
Benita said his more immediate goal is to have a steadier mixture of editorial work and business work, which pays higher, but he’s also working on a private project documenting individuals who have objected to the mandatory military draft in Israel or had mental health issues after being within the military. The 25-year-old is completely satisfied to do fulfilling, vital work like this, but in addition cares deeply about financial independence.
“I actually think that a component of success is making a living out of something that you just love doing and being pleased with that,” he said. “That’s something that’s value so much. At the top of the day if you pay your rent, and buy your food, and also you go to a restaurant with the cash you made by doing something you’re keen on, that’s very fulfilling.”
Camille Clavery — ‘Even in my art, I need to feel secure’
Camille Clavery knew desk jobs weren’t for her from day one, she said. She prefers working along with her hands and on her feet. But it surely wasn’t until 2019 that she found her artistic voice in collage making. The pieces she does deal with the experience of girls of color, reflecting her own as an African American woman, she said.
She began selling her work in 2020 after her friends pushed her to take the collages to the subsequent level. Since, the Bed-Stuy resident and Brooklyn native has had her work at several shows in Brooklyn and at a bunch show at Art Basel in Miami last yr.
Camille Clavery. (Courtesy photo)
Selling her art still feels scary, she said. It could feel vulnerable to place her voice on display, and with out a formal tremendous arts degree, she sometimes seems like she doesn’t speak the language of those round her.
But Clavery, 43, continues to be taking steps to place her work on the market. She’s also dabbled in NFTs and is starting a collaborative project that involves an NFT version of a Tarot deck.
“To feel such as you’re thriving, I feel it’s to also feel such as you’re secure in what you’re doing,” she said. “Even in my art, I need to feel secure. And I need to create.”
But that also means financial safety, and having the ability to afford healthcare. Without access to routine healthcare, mental health resources, and exercise, Clavery said she doesn’t feel like she might be an efficient artist and communicate her voice well. So Clavery bartends on the weekends and in addition does some home staging on the side. But her true passion is in her collage work and the related NFT projects.
The latter doesn’t occur without her network of friends and collectives in Brooklyn, which have pushed her to sell her art and set her up with gallery shows. That community health is vital to her, too.
Thriving is “also feeling secure inside your community,” Clavery said. “The stronger that’s, the more that you could thrive, since you all will. And we’ll all be sharing the wealth.”
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