From the Editor's Desk
You have to be tenacious
Arthur McLean
Award-winning photographer and director of photography at the University of Alabama, Chip Cooper, has one key piece of advice for those who are looking to do creative projects and have them seen by the larger world: be tenacious.

Cooper was in Grove Hill this past weekend giving a talk and leading a workshop sponsored by the Grove Hill Arts Council, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Friday, Cooper spoke to an assembled group at a seminar entitled "Turning Art into Business."

After hearing his story, it's easy to see why he gives this particular bit of advice. At the age of 35, Cooper bought a plane ticket to New York and spent more than two weeks and a lot of good old fashioned shoe leather knocking on publishers' doors. "I literally went down the phone book," he said.

That tenacity paid off with his first solo photography book, "Alabama Memories."

But the trip wasn't even that easy. After landing the deal, his publishers called him back and said the pre-orders for the book didn't meet the numbers they needed and Cooper would have to find a way to come up with $50,000 to make the book a reality.

How many of us would have just given up at that point? But Cooper found investors and found a way to make the book happen.

Since then, the book deals have gotten better, and he's currently working on his fifth book now, one about Charlie Lucas, Alabama's "Tin Man." But he'll be the first to tell you it still takes tenacity.

Now, before you get to thinking this is just about arteests, let's think about some other folks who might also wind up wearing the label "tenacious." There's plenty of them all around us to have battle to overcome the obstacles whether they be single moms raising their kids and going to school to get a better job, or perhaps dealing with a disability.

A guy who went by the name of Edison claimed he tested 6,000 vegetable fibers alone in trying to perfect the light bulb. "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," he is to have said. Sounds like tenacity to me.

So Cooper's passing along the same lesson that's been handed down for years now: it takes hard work to accomplish things.

You and I might not invent the next light bulb or have our own books published, but the lesson still holds true.

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