If there is a thread that connects everyone it is the positive energy that so clearly marks each person’s dedication to improve.

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A Santa Monica art gallery isn’t the usual place to see the entrepreneurial spirit on display.  But in a time when institutional job security is a mirage, creative individuals in all disciplines are finding ways to make ends meet while developing their intellectual capital.   

The locale itself is a work in progress.  The gallery is a converted airport hanger adjacent to Santa Monica College.   Inside, it boasts rows of clean white walls and artist studios.  The long hallways make a fine canvas for showcasing artwork, and serve as the backdrop for the exhibit. 

The evening features three female painters at different stages in their careers.  One, a self-taught Spanish native, is deceased.  Another is an art teacher at a prestigious local academy.  The third is a multi-talented painter, sculptor and designer fresh out of college. 

Though the pieces are reasonably priced, none of the painters makes enough selling artwork to call it a full-time job.  But you won’t find any romantic notions of being a starving artist here.  These ladies need to make a living.   

The recent college grad is learning how to navigate the art market.  Most importantly, she’s growing to appreciate the value of delivering the kind of product people will buy. 

She prefers to push the boundaries, but her customers like the basics.  Put another way, experience is teaching her that it’s more profitable to be Thomas Kinkade than Salvador Dali. 

The sentiment is echoed by her fiancé as he explains the importance of honing skills to deliver consistent quality of the type that brings in money.  Inspiring words from a man parlaying his graduate studies in philosophy into work opportunities as a teacher, blogger and motivational speaker.   

Then there’s the friend of a friend who owns a financial consulting firm he operates from home.  Thanks to the multinational zeal for renewable energy, he’s picked up a specialty for putting together projects that help businesses go green.  The most aggressive investors are Spanish banks.  Adept at identifying emerging opportunities, he’s helped several of those banks finance wind turbines in Chile and rooftop solar panels in the American Southwest. 

Since all his work requires is an Internet connection and easy access to an airport, he’s highly flexible with where he lives.  So far, he’s choosing to stay in Los Angeles, though the less expensive standard of living in his native Texas is a strong temptation to overcome with every new California tax. 

Another example of the entrepreneurial spirit at work appears in the gregarious form of a young Creole woman.  A survivor of a divorced household, she bears none of the marks of someone who lets circumstances dictate her goals.  During her first year in college she earned a wholesaler’s license and sold reduced price evening gowns to classmates attending school formals.  At the end of the spring semester she transferred closer to home and is running her mother’s celebrity hair extension business. 

Now, she has her eyes set on becoming a movie producer.  In conversations with people in the know, she’s learned that even Hollywood is suffering from the same malady plaguing the rest of corporate America: college graduates who work hard, but don’t know anything.  When the decline in skills like analytical writing and computation fuses with the death of a liberal education in the great books, the result is a swarm of film school students who don’t know Dante from Descartes. 

That’s a problem for an industry trucking in highly stylized versions of the six basic kinds of conflict.   

Small wonder she’s being encouraged to complete her philosophy degree since, above all, it is at least teaching her how to think logically.  In the meantime, this perpetual commercial machine somehow finds time to attend UCLA and participate with a weekly improvisational troupe, in addition to managing multiple money-making ventures.

If there is a thread that connects everyone it is the positive energy that so clearly marks each person’s dedication to improve.  Though a public policy wonk might see an impoverished collection of young adults burdened by hardships and in need of subsidies, no one at this event would agree.  For these, the future is bright because their work ethic is strong.  Much like art, the direction of a person’s life depends in large measure on one’s perspective.