Written By Phoebe Rettberg
“Everybody is covered in wounds and bruises and scars from FileMaker Pro experiences.” – Tilda Swinton to IndieWire
Say your new boss has a cryogenically frozen husband, Bobby. He has a series of paintings, all of eggs, scattered across New York City. Your boss wants a database to keep track of the artwork in hopes of eventually opening a gallery. While Google Sheets would do the trick, she insists on FileMaker Pro. The expensive, inaccessible, industry-standard tool, along with an exhibit, would show the art world these paintings of eggs, in all their kitschy profundity, were valuable. This is how she will protect his legacy.
You lie, saying you have experience with the software. You lie because you are desperate for a job so you don’t lose your Visa. You’re trapped in a seemingly endless bureaucratic maze, a catch-22 of needing money to submit an application to be approved to earn money. What’s one more needlessly complicated administrative system?
Steps: 1) Create a new file.
This is where all of the data will be stored. It is the blank slate that starts the project.
At your previous job, you worked at a facility that stores cryogenically frozen people, including Bobby. You were assigned to look after him, and out of boredom or fascination, you became deeply familiar with his archives. You are a creative person, and Bobby’s passion for art and finding meaning in the every day resonates with you deeply. You have all of this knowledge—some easy facts, some gut-level recognition—and need somewhere to put it.
2) Create fields.
These are how you can contain information about your entries—things like names, dates, locations, etc. What categories would be beneficial to the database?
After you have begun to work for Bobby’s wife, she hires a new assistant. He’s rich and easygoing, and she loves him. She loves him despite how obviously he looks down on her and how obviously he doesn’t share the passion you both have for Bobby’s work. Yet she compares the both of you and as far as she’s concerned, he’s miles ahead.
3) In layout mode, add the fields to the body of your database and adjust sizes.
This is where you try to make things fit onto one grid. You make adjustments and concessions as you confront the boundaries of the software.
Your boss can’t seem to recognize how skewed her expectations are. At the same time, your bank account is overdrafting and you’re struggling to pay rent. It seems there are a million arbitrary regulations that you are expected to fit into. None of it makes sense, but the boundaries are there and they’re suffocating.
4) Add new records.
Once added, fill in the fields with information about each entry.
You get a call from a gallery that wants Bobby’s work. When you arrive it becomes clear that they don’t want an exhibit, but you and your boss sell the paintings anyway. You make it work despite the limitations.
It may not be what you envision but the software is hard and you make new entries anyway.
5) Upload to FileMaker Server.
If you want to access the database from anywhere you can upload it to a FileMaker Server.
Bobby’s “13 eggs” exhibit would’ve ended with an unfinished painting. A bright orange background and gray shadow seem to swirl around an egg at the center. The unpainted bottom corner is met with energetic brush strokes. To a passive viewer, it may feel unremarkable, but to you, it encapsulates Bobby’s work. You see optimism, hope, and creative potential in it. Bobby paints eggs, not to tell you what they will be, but with the hope that you can imagine what will hatch. There may not be a guarantee that he will wake up in the future, but he knows the importance of nurturing potential—incubating talent.
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