"I have 10 days to find a talented, driven artist a job. Can you help?"
Today I received an e-mail from Chris Shattuck who wrote, "I've been running a campaign to help friend of mine find a job as an artist, leveraging all kinds of social media." Chris attached the following article about his artist friend Joseph Cowman who produced the stunning painting above. (Follow Joseph's fine art and illustration blog at josephcowman.blogspot.com.)
Taking this story on good faith* I asked Chris if I could help spread the word by publishing his article here with an image from Joseph's portfolio. The thought of such a talented creative pining his days away as a dental technician under fluorescent lights instead of manifesting his illustrious creative spirit in the world haunts me. I'd rather know Joseph is living his creative dream and if sharing his story helps him get a break, I'm happy to help. Here's to "rooting on" the Save Joseph campaign.
"Joseph has a stable job and he works with good people, but as anyone who knows him will tell you, he has a higher calling. Joseph is an artist, and his paintings are stunning. He took on a part-time job as a dental technician to support his family and jump-start a career as an illustrative artist, but it has been more difficult to get work as an artist from his small town than he anticipated. After 7 years, while his skills have been growing, he still hasn't had a real break.
The company he works for is doing well, and he's been asked to make a difficult choice. Either take on a full-time position — a dream to many who have lost their jobs during the recession, but which would force Joseph to put aside his real passion as an artist — or risk losing his part-time job and putting serious financial strain on their family. Joseph explains:
'I'm really thankful for what I have, and sometimes it seems selfish to push for something more. But I think we've all been given certain skills, and our real job is to find out what we
can do with them.'
He has one week (until August 5, 2010) to make the choice.
Joseph's friend and brother-in-law, Chris Shattuck, felt like there must be an alternative. For years he and the rest of Joseph's friends and family have wanted to see Joseph in a position that would push his creativity to its limits. So, Chris decided to do something about it. Leveraging his skills as a web developer, he started a web site called savejoseph.org, with the idea of
beginning a grassroots campaign to keep connecting people to other people through social networking until the right opportunity could be found that would allow Joseph to merge his passion as an artist with a job that could support his family.
The 'Save Joseph' campaign leverages multiple layers of social media to spread the word, including Twitter, Facebook and Blogger, using a Drupal web site as the glue holding it all together. Chris has also been tapping into his real-life social network, connecting with anyone he can think of who might be able to offer advice or point him in a direction he hadn't thought of.
'This an experiment to see if the right motive and the right goal is enough to bring a lot of people together to help improve one person's life. There's still a lot of struggling out there,
and if this works out I think it will give a people a little more hope.'
So far, the campaign involves some creative techniques for leveraging niche social networks. For example, Chris is writing web development tutorials sponsored by the campaign and broadcasting them to a wide network of fellow workers in the web industry. There are also efforts underway to document some of the interesting projects Joseph has undertaken throughout his life and broadcast these out as videos on video-based social networks such as YouTube, Blip and Vimeo. Chris explained:
'When I was 15, Joseph blew my mind by showing me a functional robotic arm he built out of wood and hypodermic needles. It sounds strange, but it was so inspiring that it has affected me in some way ever since. I want to share that experience with others because I have this feeling that when they see what Joseph is capable of, they'll be banging down his door.'
The 'Save Joseph' campaign will last for 1 more week (until August 5, 2010), and you can learn more at savejoseph.org.
* Since this campaign is about helping Joseph Cowman find a fulfilling creative career (and not asking for money), and because I have no real way of verifying a true life situation from a social media experiment or hoax, I disclaim myself from any fraudulent representation or perpetuation other than innocently passing the word along as a single root in the social media collective consciousness. Go Joseph! •
