We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Timo Elliott a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Timo, appreciate you joining us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?

I had heard that the arts were a “feast or famine” industry, but I hadn’t really expected how that would play out. I’ve been lucky enough to be employed working in production more or less full time for the past five years, but there have definitely been times, such as during the beginning of the Covid era and now with the strikes where work has been harder to come by. It definitely takes a certain amount of resilience to pursue a career in the arts with the potential unwanted off time always looming over the horizon.

What has been equally difficult in its own ways have been the periods of “feast”. Sometimes this translates into planned overtime for weeks or months on end, other times this can be frenetic overtime that just happens when a job gets quoted wrong or something breaks down in the manufacturing pipeline. In the spring of 2021, I was contracted for a mold casting job for an initial three week run. That run expanded to four weeks with 10 hour days, then five weeks with 12 hour days. Eventually as the full scope of the project was realized, the team was effectively doubled and the job took six weeks working six days a week with variable overtime of 10-12 hours. That’s what it took to get the job done, even if it left everyone super burnt out and exhausted. Because we were all coming out of Covid and the massive downtime that entailed we were all happy to do the work, especially since there weren’t many projects on the horizon.

Other feasts might be characterized by an abundance of work options, all of which have to be reconciled with the other realities of life. Should you take a job that that pays very well but is short term, or should you stay at your longer contract that pays less hourly but goes through the end of the month? Can you do both? How many private commissions can you take on and still be a functional human being? Because of the famine always looming at the edge of sight, its very tempting to just try to do everything all the time, even if that kills any semblance of work-life balance. I wish I could say I’ve gotten this figured out, that I always know exactly when to bail on a project for a higher paying but short lived gig, or how exactly to work two or three contracts simultaneously. Sometimes I feel like I have this figured out, but the truth is there is never any one right answer to these type of freelance business questions. Every freelancer experiences this to one degree or another, and has to reconcile their options as they present themselves.

Timo, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always been interested in the arts. I grew up painting and making stop motion films and until high school had anticipated going into a career in the visual arts. This changed when I built a suit of armor in my school’s metal shop. In addition to the actual construction, this process required a significant amount of research and somewhere along the way I realized that fabric, and costumes in general, were fascinating. From that point forward I have pursued a career in making costumes.

I specialize in specialty costumes, essentially anything that a character wears that is outside the purview of a tailor or draper. Some examples include hats, shoes, or jewelry, but my real love is for the more structural costumes such as armor, spacesuits, puppets, or wing harnesses. I love the challenge of making a rigid object move with the human body. The unique nature of these projects means there is a high degree of novelty between projects and there are always creative engineering problems to be solved. To do this effectively I have to be familiar with not only tradition costume construction methods, but also adjacent and often seemingly unrelated fabrication techniques such as mold-casting, or welding. I am particularly fond of leather or metalworking projects, though the varied scope of what I do means these often make up only a small portion of my projects. While I don’t predominantly make any one thing, the most frequent project I’ve worked on in film have been spacesuits. While not my original passion of armor, they are armor after a fashion and complex enough to satisfy my engineering inclinations.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

The number one thing society can to to support artists is to provide adequate compensation. Art is often viewed by non creatives as an extravagance, an act of creation where satisfaction and meaning comes in the crafting process. This idea seems to consciously or unconsciously make people forget about the very real work that is involved in the process. Making art takes time and effort. Good art, whatever the medium, takes considerable training and practice to make. By undervaluing artists society essentially disincentivizes creatives from pursuing this training and practice, let alone attempting art as a career. If this trend continues, fewer and fewer artists will emerge, and those who do pursue a career will often find it cut short as the desire to eat outweighs any sense of accomplishment in the creative process. In the grand scheme this hurts not only artists, but all of society. While there are thousands of needful occupations required to keep society operating, from plumbers to doctors, art serves the equally important role of giving people something to look forward to. Art gives meaning to people’s lives, and by underpaying artists we are essentially saying that meaning isn’t something we value as a society.

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.

Uncertainty is baked into the career of a freelance creative. There are things freelancers can do to mitigate that, and most successful creatives will if they are to survive, but the uncertainty is always there. Most noncreatives recognize the arts as a not particularly stable career option, but they don’t realize everything that entails. Certainly there are heavy sacrifices creatives often have to make to pursue the arts as a career, but there is often joy in the uncertainty as well. Yes, moving across the country by yourself is scary. Yes, nobody likes constantly job searching. Yes, nobody likes living with roommates well into their adult life. All these on their own should be enough to make anyone second guess a creative career, but that’s discounting the thrill that can come with the unknown. Sometimes a job will come up and you will find yourself in another state, or another country. You can find yourself working on projects you’ve dreamed about since being a kid, and perhaps even making art that will inspire the next generation. There are a thousand beautiful things to be found in the uncertainty, even if on the surface it just looks scary. Yes, we’re all aware it looks scary, it often is scary, but we’re passionate about what we do to risk it regardless.

Contact Info:

• Website: timoelliottart.com
• Instagram: @timoelliottart