BUT I DIGRESS: Saving the world one suffering artist at a time

By Sally Stang, Special Writer
   To supplement my income, I have become a professional arts counselor (nailing up online degree), a much-needed adviser to artists of all sorts. And why not? Wherever you turn in this area, there are artists plying their art wares. Hordes of painters, herds of sculptors, clusters of potters, bumping elbow-to-elbow on street corners longing to express themselves.
   So many tortured, creative souls (using only the right side of their brains yet) need counseling. And now, thanks to my four hours of online training, I can help.
   Artists suffer from a syndrome that we, in the certified art therapizing profession, call “Artenfartenschtinkenbaden,” or as you lay people might say, “Artsy Fartsy Syndrome.” I discuss this in my (yet to be written) book “The Starving Artist Diet: 100 Recipes Using Only Condiments.”
   In my book, I plan to quote liberally from the former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore, who once said . . . oh, wait, darn, I think it was Leslie Gore, who said, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” But she also said, “Art is like a cement trampoline — it’s hard.”
   Pithy remark though it may be, Ms. Gore, while being an artist might be hard, spending lots of time with artists is even harder. However, I can comfort myself by saying, as I look into a large Rococo mirror, “Former supermodel, Sally Stang, things could be worse!”
   But I digress . . .
   As an arts counselor, when I first meet with my artist client, I immediately put on my best listening hat and let them yammer on deliriously about their art, their philosophy, their hopes and dreams . . . When they wake me up, I can finally get on with the counseling stuff.
   I had a young client, a student named — well, let’s call her “Tator Tot,” to protect her anonymity. She lived in a little Disneyfied world of childlike denial.
   Every morning, she would don her jaunty artist’s beret and imagine that she was living in Paris. She’d eat a dozen croissants to reinforce the fantasy, then grab her brushes and ride a sparkled unicorn to her grand art studio in the Lost City of Mermaids. Instead of that fold-out table in the back of her parents’ garage.
   She told her father that she didn’t need to take mathematics in college, because she was going to be a great artist. Her father said, “Well, then you will need math to count your crushed hopes and broken dreams.”
   Despite her parents’ lack of support and my words of wisdom (I told her she was an idiot), she failed anyway. But not before successfully ignoring everyone, maturely adjusting her rose-colored blindfold, and moving to a bohemian rat’s nest where she began passionately pursuing her career as a tie-dye artist.
   For my part, I failed to guide Tater away from that hippie cult and then lost touch with her after she moved back with her parents, who fretted because she stayed holed up in her bedroom. Last I heard, she had to be taken to the hospital to have her pajamas surgically removed.
   Another client, whom I shall call “ Hercules,” was a handsome painter who had early success with a one-man show. Despite a tongue bath of adulation from reviewers who licked his ego like a lollipop, I warned him, “One successful art show does not a retirement plan make!”
   Sadly for Kevin, I mean, Hercules, his next art show didn’t go over well. The reviewer from the art section of a local newspaper wrote, “To this artist, I would like to recommend that he never paint again. These canvases need to be burned, then buried in a big field. Then the earth should be salted, so nothing will ever grow there and then it should be paved over with asphalt. Then they should build a big restaurant there that critics simply hate, so that no one will ever set foot there. Ever.”
   Hercules was inconsolable. Once a bright comet, this young painter had become, overnight, a falling star that no one ever wished upon again. Ever.
   As I sat patting his hand and saying “Now now, there there,” it occurred to me that I’m not very good at this.
    Sally Stang is a multi-media self-expressionist living in a garret in the faux French-speaking, jaunty beret-wearing, cheap wine-guzzling section of Lambertville.