Guest blogger Gail Sachson owns Ask Me About Art, offering lectures, tours and program planning. She is Vice-Chair of the Cultural Affairs Commission and a member of the Public Art Committee.

This past week, I was easily convinced that Dallas actually is the new New York of the art world – or the next Florence, as Ray Nasher predicted it would be.

World-renown British artist Michael Craig-Martin came to talk and show art, the second annual Dallas Art Fair drew connoisseurs and collectors from all over the world (well, from all over the state), three new galleries opened (as did a major alternative space for contemporary art) and the Arts District was alive with music, dance, opera and an original theater production at the Dallas Theater Center that just might make it to Broadway.

So how do you get to Broadway? Or Carnegie Hall? Or to your one person show at MOMA? Michael Craig-Martin, 69, known for his teaching résumé as well as his art (now showing at the Goss-Michael Foundation), spoke with the Visual Arts students at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts on Saturday. He offered career advice and age-proven wisdom tempered with wit. All artists – and everyone else, for that matter – should keep these Craig-Martin musings by their bedside.

• Take advantage of all opportunities.
• Say “yes” to all odd projects and see what happens. (Craig-Martin has designed jewelry, a postage stamp, a menu and a grocery bag and decorated a car, the interior of a hospital and the exterior of an apartment building.)
• Do things as they unfold.
• Unexpected results are often more interesting than what you expected.
• It is good to nurture unfulfilled dreams.
• Make a drawing of your dreams. That will be a “kind of commitment to the realization.”
• No experience is ever wasted.
• Even mistakes will be useful. You will always learn something.