For a career in the arts, a coach in your back pocket

THE visual artist labeled “weird” in high school. The struggling actor waiting tables. What does it take to pursue the arts as a passion -- and as a career?

Actor and playwright provocateur Anna Deavere Smith (“Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” “House Arrest”), an NYU professor and founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, offers idiosyncratic and impassioned answers in her new book, “Letters to a Young Artist.”

Not a sermon from on high, Smith’s book is part pep talk, part tough love, part literary food for the head and part nuts-and-bolts stratagems.

In “letters” written to a fictitious teenage painter named BZ, Smith imparts personal anecdotes, observations and advice under such subject titles as “Presence,” “Procrastination,” “Suicide and Keeping the Faith,” “The Death of Cool” and “Dealing With the Man (or Your Power).”

To encourage readers to broaden their horizons, Smith illustrates her points with a plenitude of references as diverse as Herman Melville, Albert Camus, painter Rufino Tamayo, supermodel Naomi Campbell and rodeo bull rider Brent Williams.

“I’ve always felt that [as actors] we’re better off and we bring more to our own work if we seek other kinds of discourse and other kinds of intellectual enrichment,” Smith said by phone. “I’ve certainly been influenced by people in the visual arts -- I’m now on the board of the Museum of Modern Art -- that’s why I decided to talk to a young painter.

“I’ve always understood -- and I’ve experienced -- that the life of an artist can be painful and can be hard,” she said. “I would never say that I am the right teacher for all artists, but I am very, very interested in that individual who wants to be in the world.”

Or, as she tells BZ: “This notion of knowing who you are, knowing where you stand, knowing what you think is right, knowing how to fight for what you think is right, knowing how to be centered, and knowing where your moral core is, will be the thrust of all I ever write to you.”

Smith said that her intent was to make her paperback guide feel personal, portable and share-able. Toss it in a backpack, mark it up and write in it, start in the middle or start at the end, copy a favorite chapter “or rip it out and give it to somebody.”

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Excerpts

“Agents, Gallery Owners, Managers, Lawyers, Publicists, Accountants, Bookkeepers and So Forth” -- “If you never come in contact with authority figures, either because they frighten you or because you find them irrelevant, question that immediately. Do not hide from them. Do not discount them. Learn how to have a relationship with authority.”

“Confidence” -- “Confidence is a static state. Determination is active. Determination allows for doubt and for humility -- both of which are critical in the world today.”

“Jealousy” -- “Keep it real. Even jealousy is based on fantasies: A fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.”

“Fear” -- “The life of an artist is risky: There’s a lot to be afraid of.... The supreme danger is that you could be invisible. But the fact is, you have to be stronger than all of that.... I don’t know a single artist at any level who has faced a life without fear, or without challenges. Remember my swimming metaphor: Just get in and swim your laps.”