We were lucky to catch up with Angi Cooper recently and have shared our conversation below.

Angi , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

Happiness is such a personal creature. In this country, we’re told to follow our passions and do what makes us happy, but sometimes doing the thing that makes us happy doesn’t always make us a lot of money or enough money to live on. For me, that’s where the happiness balloon deflates a bit. But honestly, I cannot imagine a life without creativity. It seems necessary, a natural part of my existence. Working with my hands and body in one creative genre or another (mainly visual art and movement) has been a pretty steady happiness hangout for as long as I can remember. The lure of self-expression is too intoxicating to not imbibe and I choose to imbibe. I chose this path.

The idea part of the creative process is one of the strongest forces pushing me through. Where it gets a bit tricky is determining how to bring that idea to life. What dimensionality will it be? What medium(s) will I use? Then the playing begins! And this is the bliss part, the happy part, sometimes the frustrating part, but also the hard work part with the reward at the end.

I am also blessed to have a good support system of family, friends, colleagues and patrons which helps to take away some of the economic stress. Having worked as an independent artist for quite a while now, I really don’t miss having a 9-5 job. I do like the flexibility of an irregular schedule, part-time evening work, traveling to do artist residencies, and having studio time for projects. For me, the flexibility is important and one of the perks of independent work.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an interdisciplinary artist and teaching artist (PreK-12 and adult continuing education) who enjoys working in myriad mediums.

Creativity has been foundational in my family and includes a lot of makers—artists, carpenters, woodworkers, mechanics, sewers, gardeners, cooks, engineers, performers, and educators. We are also big readers, travelers, and general do-it-yourselfers. I started drawing and sewing at a young age, and I also enjoyed playing around with a variety of media and genres early on. I was part of the latch key generation, so working independently has been in my marrow since adolescence.

While studying graphic design in college, I started working in an in-house advertising department of a local company. It was a great early job that paid above minimum wage with part-time benefits, and I was actually making money doing work I learned at university. Post graduation, I embarked on a variety of jobs in retail, arts related industries, wholesale jewelry sales, production furniture painting and decorative arts painting. I also began selling my own work in polymer clay jewelry designs and acrylic paintings.

When the production painting jobs faded away, an artist friend introduced me to teaching artist work. I began with the Memphis Arts Council’s program in 2002, and continue to work with arts organizations in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas in artist-in-residence programs for PreK-12 students. Since I revel in experimenting with myriad processes and media, I have a great deal of fun creating lessons and ideas for my residency programs.

In my personal work, nature is a strong pull and my most meaningful compositions are inspired by the natural world. There are so many ecosystems that construct this beautiful macrocosm we call planet Earth. It’s this interconnectedness that continues to find a path in my art. Having been a volunteer zoo educator for a while, sharing this love of nature seems a natural fit for me. The love definitely charts a course through a variety of muses. Recent exhibitions at the MAX Mississippi Arts+ Entertainment Experience™ and the Children’s Museum of Memphis featured paintings of North American endangered species, a series of circular paintings featuring human shapes with nature insets, and humorous/allegorical collage box assemblages. Also featured were temporary installations of 1,000 origami cranes formed out of magazine and junk mail papers and arranged in a rainbow color spectrum. The endangered species paintings came together during and post pandemic, having viewed quite a bit of wildlife cams on the internet. I wanted to bring a narrower focus of wildlife to the exhibition, so I opted to represent North American species. It was a bonus that the paintings were on display almost 50 years after the Endangered Species Act was signed into law in 1973 by President Nixon.

Humor is another love and I really enjoy using a certain playfulness in my more anthropomorphic pieces including my collage box assemblage work that features my animal characters in ironic or amusing situations, my series of art cards featuring my cat Ollie in varying guises, and my line of zine creations. For some of my box collages I use verbiage from the finance industry for a cadre of themes for my “Financiers and Other Fanciful Creatures” series. It is a challenging theme, but also incredibly fun to fabricate. The box pieces are like tiny stage sets and the studio becomes a tornado strewn mess when I have a series of these in the works, which is a pretty good indication I’m having fun with them! I keep thinking that the El Producto cigar boxes my papaw gifted me when I was a child were the original instigator for this work.

I continue to be grateful for new opportunities to exhibit, present and sell my work, especially in new regions and different venues. Amping up my illustration skills is on the horizon for work in media and the publishing world as I want to expand my range for graphic storytelling, book illustrations, articles and stories. Of course, I will play around with other media as it presents itself (animation, puppets, writing, collaborations). Creating is joyous lifelong work. Artists never really retire. There are too many genres to play with!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

What can society do to support artists? In my volunteer zoo educator training, we were taught that education was the key to getting people to care about our planet and the wildlife within the various ecosystems. I believe that it is also true for the arts.

From my teaching artist training in aesthetic arts education, I’ve learned how to help young students experience art on a more intense and intimate level. These children are not just being loaded onto a bus to parade past paintings in a museum, but are actually experiencing part of the art-making process for themselves through artist-in-residence programs in the schools. Instead of removing arts programs from schools, they should be part of everyday curriculum. I believe arts programs are the breeding ground for creative thinking. Students learn to work individually and also collaboratively. They learn how to work with their hands using different tools and processes. They learn how to take an idea into a finished piece. They have ownership of what they create. Seeing teaching artists in their school and making a living through personal and education work also reinforces the arts as a livelihood choice.

The arts are vibrant and provide joy in life. Visual art has been around since the cave paintings, so we know these impulses are intrinsic to our nature. The arts exist and persist because humans are born makers, tinkerers, figure-outers, and curiosity seekers. Most of us may not be living like hedge-fund managers, but there is a lot of longevity on our side and many, many ancestors. Art should always be encouraged and provided to young people in our schools.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Working as an independent artist takes an outsized level of energy. Like a lot of creatives, I keep several irons in the fire at a time. In addition to talent and skillsets, I have to be organized, resilient, flexible, professional, put in the physical labor, have the get-up-and-go, have gumption, some thick skin and be able to hustle, hustle, hustle!

I think what non-creatives might not realize are all the other skillsets involved in working as a creative. The organizational skills alone account for a big chunk of worktime: marketing my work, compiling a mailing list, organizing my paperwork for the CPA, searching for new venues to sell, applying to call-for-entries, updating my online presence, composing lesson plans for teaching artist work, and blocking out studio time for creating new personal work are just some.

It can put a body to the test for sure. But in the end, I’ve created something that wasn’t there before. I birthed an idea and put it out in the world. It is still so rewarding and often serendipitous to find out that my work has really connected with someone, that it speaks to them, that it makes them happy in some way, or that they really ‘get it’. People have told me how they’ve enjoyed watching my work grow over the years, and that is some of the best validation I’ve received as a creative person. It makes all the effort worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.angicooper.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angiart1/
• Other: https://memphisartscollective.com/angi-cooper

Image Credits
All photos are taken by me.