In an essay on Narrative.ly, Alison Gerber recounts the rather harrowing IRS audit of Minneapolis artist Venus DeMars:
Sometimes the line between professional and amateur is a clear, bright one. But in the United States artists are, for the most part, just artists, moving in and out of day jobs and commercial work, employment and unemployment, windfall and drought: professional artist, serious artist, working artist, real artist. Around here, these are fighting words. They mean so much in part because we don’t agree — can’t agree — on what they mean.
