Working the Show or…

…showing the work?

There’s a lot more to that than just rearranging the words in a sentence. In fact, there’s a big difference between the two. A professionally prepared resume is about working the show, a solid portfolio of published work is about showing the work, but only if it’s your published work.

I went to art school briefly when I graduated from high school. There was a guy in one of my classes, I can’t remember his name, that had a folder full of magazine clippings that made up his portfolio. It was a collection of amazing airbrush designs. They were some of the best work I had seen.

He talked it up big about himself and his talent. He showed the work around to everyone and made it the center of every conversation. He worked it so hard that we became suspicious of him. After a couple of weeks one of our fellow art students came to class early and set up an air brush booth in the work area. He laid out every color of paint, several air brush guns, paper, etc.

After all of his big talk the guy didn’t have the real stuff. He didn’t prep the medium, had no idea how to work the equipment and in no way was capable of air brushing anything… at all. He had been working the show and showing other people’s work. Nothing else he said after that had any merit, and, as already stated, I can’t even remember his name.

The rest of life is like that, too. In who you are, your aspirations, your actions, everything, are you working the show or showing the work? It makes a difference in the long run and in the short term.