We recently connected with Bea Hurd and have shared our conversation below.

Bea, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I think its nearly inherent to the experience of every creative to wonder what life would be like with a “regular Job”. I often think about the majors I almost chose in college, the higher paying jobs I almost pursued, and the life of security that I passed up for a life of art and making. While the career I chose is constantly showing up with personal battles, feats of money management, and long-nights in the studio, I would not change anything about my life.

If there is one thing I know about myself, it is that I was never meant for a regular office job. The 9-5 grind more resembles a horror movie than the American dream for me. I am a person who thrives in challenge, unpredictably, making, and most of all, constant creativity. While there will always be down sides to choosing a creative life style, I think what I have traded in money and stability, I have earned back in happiness, passion, and fulfillment. As long as I get to make art everyday, I have everything I need.

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 cycle in and out of “material romances”; seeking materials to form relationships with and allowing them to persuade me. I look to materials that have found their way into my home and past conscious acknowledgment. Mass-produced goods radiate the auras of the makers and consumers; an unconscious reflection produced by endless wandering in reproduction. Products of daily use; those that are used, consumed, and disposed of read like newspapers about who brings such materials into and out of existence so quickly. These expeditions come across as both baptisms and anthropological revelations.

When searching for explorations, I probe supermarkets, gas stations, thrift stores, and kitchens, pining for materials that want to be seen. I know a material intriguing enough to enchant me possesses within it a body of work and a new perspective of myself. Like the tango, a push and pull between my needs and that of the material is established. Products that touch, help, and integrate with our bodies create intimate acts yielding the potential to shape how we think. Ultimately, I gravitate towards materials that go into, are used in relation to, or in replacement of the body. Knowing the act of consumption is abundantly self-motivated, I turn to my own experiences.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

My whole life up until I was 20 I had thought I wanted to be a doctor. While I did art obsessively since being a toddler, I had an overarching belief that smart kids are doctors or lawyers. I always did well in school, excelling in advanced classes and constantly being commended for the possibilities of my future- though these possibilities always were heavily academic based and filled with decades more of schooling. Being an artist was a pipe dream that I did not dare utter out loud. While art is where the entirety of my passion and soul was, the medical field is where my brain told me to go.

In high school I did every pre-medical camp and activity there was. Preparing myself for the high intensity of this path. Coming into college, I selected an art major while fulfilling my pre-medical classes. Though I did find medicine and the human body interesting, it was not how I wanted to spend my life. I found myself living in the art college, spending hundreds of hours on my studio homework and further distancing myself from my medical classes with every hour spent.

It was not until the summer between my freshman and sophomore year that I realized I only really enjoyed my art classes. My premed felt like a grind that would not end and the future of medical school felt more daunting than the climbing tallest mountains. I realized then that brains and academic success is not obligation to choose an academic career. What I thrive in is making and creativity. All I ever want to do is tinker in my art studio and experiment with materiality. In a defining moment of my life, I immediately dropped premed and declared a major in sculpture and a minor in painting and drawing.

My youth was defined by my academic success. I felt my 4.0 GPA stamped on my forehead, and a burning expectation of IV league college, advanced degrees, and STEM careers. While there is nothing wrong with choosing that life, it was not what would bring my life fulfillment, I proceeded to spend the next year unlearning the idea that making lots of money was indicative of success and that your worth is based on academic advancement. Though I may never have PhD or a six figure income, I feel grateful for realizing that an artistic career and lifestyle is valid and needed.

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.

The main thing I find that gets lost in translation when talking with non-art career people, is that I have knowingly and peacefully chosen a life style that I know may never bring riches or absolute stability and that those are things I do not prioritize. What I want in life is enough money to feel comfortable and have what I need, but beyond that the trade of riches for creative freedom is a decision I would make again and again.

I think in our more capitalistic society, we are trained from a young age to pick a career based on income, social validation, and prestige. You see it at schools and their lack of funding for the arts, you see it in the trope of the starving artist, and in the universal idea that to be a doctor or lawyer is to have made it. I feel it is hard for some people to wrap their heads around the idea of being happily middle class. I may not be able to buy anything and everything I want, but as an artist I have chosen my happiness obver my income, and that is the ultimate act of self respect.

Contact Info:

• Website: beahurd.com
• Instagram: @bea_hurd