A vibrant college town with a strong local art scene, Denton can do more to support its struggling artist community. Roughly 60% of art major graduates are underemployed or working below their qualifications, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Four local artists working in a range of disciplines spoke with us about their inspirations and methods of making a living out of their crafts.
Ray Darbro works as a custodian for the University of North Texas but is a crochet artist and metal worker in her off hours. Darbro double-majored in library and information science and in studio arts while minoring in art history at UNT. She works nights but creates whenever the time is available.
“It’s something that helps me get out of my head a lot of times,” Darbro said. “I tend to pull in when I’m going through hard stuff. I had to be pretty self-sufficient as a kid, so I made art, and it was a way to get things that were in my head out.”
Though fans of her work have bought crochet, jewelry and more, Darbro believes art should be for enjoyment, not just a source of income. She also struggles with putting a price on her work.
“I just felt like if I turned it into a job, it would take the fun out of it,” Darbro said. “If you see something that somebody is making that you really like and you’re like, ‘Hey that’s awesome,’ then pay them. Look at them and think about how much work goes into it. It may look easy, but it’s not.”
Street art has become a form of self-expression for many artists who have a hard time making a living out of their passion. Cities like Denton have allotted graffiti corners for public art. Murals decorate the walls of the downtown Square and along underpasses.
Recently, traveling street artist Jason Odom stopped at Denton’s local “Freewall” between Voertman’s Bookstore and Aura Coffee to leave a trace of his journey at the scene.
“Being able to monetize everything — whether it be writing, dancing, painting or music — and making a living off of it for someone such as myself is impossible,” Odom said. “Being out here and doing this takes so much of myself already.”
Denton is likewise home to a thriving music scene, but the music industry isn’t any kinder than the visual arts. According to the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, only 61% of music performance majors work professionally in their field.
Lead singer and guitarist of local band Posival, Michael Patrick Zamora, taught himself to play guitar at 15 years old and continued pursuing music while working maintenance jobs and earning a history degree from UNT.
“I just remember kind of getting obsessed over playing guitar, especially during the summer when I wasn’t in school,” Zamora said. “I would sit in my room and play guitar for eight hours a day and only stop to go to the bathroom or make myself something to eat. It was almost like a secret world to me that I just got obsessed with.”
Though also a musician, Zamora’s father didn’t support his pursuit of music as a degree and career.
“I just kind of was always told as a kid that there was no money in music and there was nothing I could do with it,” Zamora said. “That’s why I never really went to school for music, just because I wasn’t really encouraged.”
Zamora works in a maintenance position where he receives assurance of job security so he doesn’t have to turn to his band for financial stability. That being said, he focuses primarily on his music and also passively sells band merch, such as CDs, cassettes and more, earning the band roughly $100-$300 per show.
“If you look at that in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, it’s really not that bad,” Zamora said. “The other side of that is if someone buys a shirt and we get notifications on our pages of people wearing the shirt, tagging the band and posting it online, that’s immeasurable.”
Lower-income members of the art industry who hope to sell their work have to fight against the automatic advantage of upper-class members. According to The Hechinger Report, only 18% of the art industry comes from working-class backgrounds.
Mercedes Muratalla, a junior at UNT and a double major in Spanish and art history, received a full-ride scholarship for her education and has worked as a gallery attendant since her freshman year.
With a desire for art curating, Muratalla experiences economic stress caused by the industry’s bias toward those of higher-income backgrounds. However, she remains optimistic about her career pursuits as well as for others in the industry.
“I think it really comes down to the devotion artists put into their field, down to the individual artist and the galleries they work with,” Muratalla said. “It’s just networking at that point.”
She believes communities can help artists succeed by providing more resources, such as grants and scholarships, to members of the art industry. Such support would assist with the cost of obtaining the master’s degree necessary to make the median annual wage of an art curator.
“With more money, you have better colleges and better opportunities, so it’s definitely a skewed system,” Muratalla said. “It’s one you have to learn to work against.”