How do we live in a robust culture? How do we produce a robust culture at a time when we are fracturing, polarized, and creative enterprise is an afterthought?

Let's remind ourselves of where we are. If you look around, you see political fragility, economic uncertainty, and general unhappiness. That's depressing. That's the point. As a people, we ARE depressed. You don't look back at 2021, let alone what's going on now, and go, "it's a happy time." We're not happy and we have to face it. We've got essentially a global war, and a recession only partly driven by that war. We've got a big economic bubble. We have a politically fractured culture at a global level. Totalitarianism, never the friend of a creative culture, is coming back in vogue. We're at each other's throats. We're not happy. 

The beast is slouching toward Jerusalem. The earth is heating up. We're settling into (if we're lucky) a mere detente as two nations living in one national entity. Arguably, we began going in that direction in 1945 when we settled into the Cold War and that generated the Korean war, the Vietnam war, El Salvador... and we decided to live in a state of permanent animosity, driven by munitions manufacturers, the intelligence apparatus, and munitions and chemical industries that profit from it. There was a huge amount of money to be made. Those chemical makers clean your baby and make for a sparkling kitchen and they also do deforestation in Laos.

All of that to say that we're now in an understandable state of fragility when it comes to the role of creativity in our lives. We have a tenuous relationship with art.

We do not even now dream so much anymore. Our dreams are smaller. We don't dream of a world that flourishes and we haven't been given a mechanism to build better dreams. The material on CHF's site is basically an insistence that there is another path—that we're working to solve that problem in a robust way.

How do we get a robust and flourishing culture in the first place? That's the entrance to the conversation we are creating. As a culture, we tend to put creatives in a box. And even the goal of showcasing artists as essential workers and ensuring they're well-paid is not yet dreaming big enough. I think even those dreams are too small. I don't want to be a useful cog in someone's wheelhouse. I don't want to work for somebody because I have the skills. I want to work for somebody because without creative enterprise, we don't 'make it' as a culture.

We must move away from the merely theoretical lament toward a vision of doing something practical and economically powerful. Without that, We don't build a robust creative culture. We must build a road for artists to thrive, and creativity to flourish, and it has to be done at the economic and investment level.

Anything less creates the same problem we had all through the cold war, which is the starving artist syndrome. Only the 1% of artists can be famous and only those who know the right people and happen to gain the approval of the taste-makers can make any money. Everybody else is dirt poor and living on their cousins' sofas.

What we're doing at CHF isn't sexy in a theoretical way, but it's actionable and practical. We're asking people to dig deep into the thought process of how we get a culture that we want to live in. And we are starting from the premise that you don't get a robust creative culture without a thriving creative economy. 

I don't think we've widely connected the dots between these big questions—first, daring to ask them and then to dream of the ubiquitous, middle-class artist. How do you actually do it? What is the day-to-day? How do you actually implement it? And that's where we actually do have an answer.  

It starts at the mindset and knowledge level. We foster a conversation around art as a business, and we empower art-entrepreneurs with the business training all other...

“We’re going to need more art—all of it—to solve the world’s challenging problems. Creative intelligence is what it takes to inject life into the culture, to drive effective leadership, to drive new ideas. We don’t have to choose. We can have one foot in the world of visceral taste and touch and another foot in the digital world without having to split ourselves in half.”

​​​​This is a bite-sized The Thriving Artist™podcast episode with Daniel DiGriz’s perspective on art news and cultural change. As you may know from previous episodes, Daniel peruses the art news of The New York Times. This time, a couple of headlines really stood out! The first one is 50 years of Taking Photography Seriously. The synopsis: When the Photographer's Gallery opened in London in 1971, few saw the medium as suitable for exhibitions. Today everyone does. The second article is Hands Off the Library's Picture Collection! The synopsis: Cornell Spiegelman and Warhol browse the famous collection of images in the New York Public Library. Now a century of serendipitous discovery will come to an end if the collection is closed off to the public. This episode is courtesy of Shirley Lemmon.

Two years in the making, CHF’s Report on the Working Artist (ROWA) is a truly groundbreaking piece of research: the first of its kind demonstrating artists’ pivotal role in our changing economy. In this engaging conversation, CHF’s data analysis team Daniel DiGriz and Lily Dulberg sit down to discuss the methodology and significance of the Report, the documented demand for entrepreneurial training for artists, the gaps in existing research and traditional art education—and how we now have solid and replicable data that supports artists’ ability to make measurable contributions to our economy and the culture at large.

• “We’ve got a lot of information out there from many different sources, many reputable organizations, nonprofits, and our business education programs. But there’s so little information on what artists need to drive success, and what actually changes the landscape of their art business.”
• “Most of the data out there does not measure bottom-line outcomes, which it’s kind of funny, right? Because you need to know those things in order to develop new programs and create best practices and to support artists.”
• “Many organizations had information on their websites about the different types of programs they ran, and testimonials and quotes from artists on what they need. But there was no real evidence of what these programs were able to do for the artists. There were no business results, no income results.”
• “With all the data that we’ve collated, and more specifically, with the data that we have done in-house at the Clark Hulings Fund through our Business Accelerator Program and our events, we really came up with a pattern that we can follow for any type of research in the future. And that is, that attitudes change behavior. Behavior produces business results. And business results lead to increased income or revenue.”
• “One of the main things that I think that we should take away from this, that business education moves the needle for artists. It helps them make more income, it helps them develop a more robust network which allows them to increase their sales.”

• “The ecosystem of gallerists, artists, and peer networks contribute so heavily to business results—and the success that artists see in their lives and in their businesses. There really aren’t enough art business events out there and there really aren’t enough groups for artists that foster communication around what it’s like to be in an art business.”
• “There’s a gap, and in that gap is business education. And it’s so mind-boggling to think that only 5% of an average sampling of fine arts curriculum involves any sort of entrepreneurial or business education.”
• “We had to establish that there was a gap, that it exists indeed, in order to say, ‘Okay, this is how we can fill the gap, this is how we can create change and this is how artists are already creating change.’ ”
• “…it was really amazing to be able to shed light on how that’s already happening and the research that shows that it’s replicable. Other organizations can do it, and the secret sauce is business training.”

• “So at the Clark Hulings Fund, we’ve been collecting data from our fellows, from [Art-Business Conference] participants, from artists who are involved with our work in many different ways. We have a whole process behind how we do that: we make sure that everything is categorized so that we can actually analyze the themes, and there are codes for the different themes that come up in what the artists are talking about.”
• “When have our conferences, we have artists coming up to us, giving us...

Noah Scalin is an artist based in Richmond, Virginia, whose sculpture, installation, and photography use everyday items reassembled in new contexts. Noah did a major installation in Times Square in the winter of 2019, and is working with The Krause Gallery in New York City. He is also a corporate consultant at Another Limited Rebellion with his sister Mica Scalin. The firm specializes in using art and creativity in leadership development, and clients include Coke, General Electric, and Intuit. Noah was the first artist-in-residence at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business, where he is now an adjunct professor.

• “I ended up doing this project called Skull-A-Day where I got myself out of my creative rut and inspired again. And one of the really strange outcomes of that was that I started getting asked to talk to businesses about my creative practice. And so that turned into me doing a side-job initially of me going and doing these keynote talks and consulting, and all of a sudden I found myself, you know, really enjoying that work.”
• “I like to say that not only was I the first artist in residence at the VCU School of Business, but possibly the first artist in residence at any school of business anywhere. […] A few years ago the school realized that creativity was one of the principles that they needed to be teaching their students to be successful in business—and that’s a pretty radical idea, but it’s also backed up by a lot of data.”
• “I was like, ‘I didn’t go to business school, I don’t know anything about this.’ But I do know about how the artist’s skills set is valuable in business.”
• “And especially the process we use, which is: do something, and then reflect on it, and share that with other people as the next step; that that process especially—making more things and putting more things in the world—gives you more opportunities. Just sheer numbers. You know, if you do want something you measure, that’s what it is. The more you put out, the more opportunities you get for something to come back.”

• “Anybody in any industry right now is seeing some form of automation coming into play. And certainly, with advances in AI it’s going to be an entirely different world we live in very soon, science fiction is becoming fact very quickly.”
• “Certainly the jobs that are going to go last are going to be the ones that require people to creative problem-solve and come up with unique new ideas.”
• “It usually starts with a person of vision within the company, somebody who has recognized that creativity is one of the top skills that leadership needs to survive the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
• “One of the talks I do is actually called The ROI of Creativity. And what I talk to people about is that business wants to do this measurement and wants to have these numbers and wants to be like what’s the benefit of this. And it’s really a narrow view of what we’re talking about.”
• “What I talk to them about is sustainable innovation and the people that need that and know what that is, they’re on board.”

• “Most jobs don’t give you a chance to really develop your creativity, you’re expected to bring that to the table and have it there. And even now in the business world when they’re asking executives to be creative they’re not training them, they’re just going, ‘Start doing this, be creative, creative problem-solve!’ And they’re like, ‘I don’t know how to do that’.”
• “Because we’re presenting such an unusual story, people pay attention and we usually can get inside their heads and plant some seeds that they’ve needed to hear for a while; maybe the opportunity to start seeing things differently and behaving...

Cyndi Conn is the Executive Director of Creative Santa Fe, a non-profit arts and community development organization that emphasizes innovative collaboration between diverse groups of people with varying skills, knowledge, experiences and opinions. She serves on the Advisory Boards of The Black Mountain Institute, the National Parks Arts Foundation and the N-Square Innovators Network. In 2018 she co-chaired Mayor Alan Webber’s task force on job creation in Santa Fe. Cyndi has been a curator, gallery founder, and creator of art advisory firm LAUNCHPROJECTS. She has lived in Paris, Mexico City, Austin, and New Orleans.

• “Creative Santa Fe has the luxury of being a connective tissue type of organization.”
• “There were so many organizations working in such important fields and even within that their own fields, they were not working together.”
• “When we first said we were going to partner artists with issues, everyone was like, ‘What, you’re going to like…paint paintings of nuclear bombs?’ ”
• “The Nuclear Weapons Summit was our first effort at looking at this idea of the [Disruptive Futures] dialogue, bringing people together who don’t typically agree, don’t typically communicate, and using the arts to leverage—to create these bridges and anchors.”

• “The arts can bring people together that normally would not want to sit in a room together and talk about problem-solving.”
• “And then you bring in artists and young people and new types of thinkers, you really get […] people [who] don’t know what’s not possible, and so you start to create a whole new possible.”
• “We realized if we could get people within their own sectors actually talking and working together and then bringing in new voices—[bringing] new people to the table that either don’t typically have a voice to or aren’t typically included—like artists, we really could change the way that people talk.”

• “Creative Santa Fe was started in 2005 as a result of an economic study that the City of Santa Fe and McCune Foundation commissioned, looking at the arts economy. It came back that it was a 1.1 billion dollar a year economy but there was no single organization to spearhead and ensure the long-term sustainability of that economy.”
• “We need to better educate—especially our voting population and our leadership—that the arts are not just an amenity, they’re a critical function of society and a part of the fabric of social, cultural, and also economic life and livelihood for our country.”

• “We brought the arts in [to discussions at the nuclear weapons summit] and that’s such a leveling factor, it creates empathy, it creates a whole new paradigm for how people communicate, how they listen.”
• “And that’s what we’re really seeing works, and it’s worked to a really surprising extent.”
• “It’s not just a think tank; it’s not just talk. We are working towards an outcome that our partners need to have and feel like they can only get that outcome through this methodology that we provide.
• “We’ve have had over 200 partners looking at issues—everything from affordable housing, rebirth of local news, the future of art, Native resilience and rights, sustainable technologies. And for each one of these, we have partners that have very tangible outcomes that they’d like to see as a result of these dialogues.”

• “In most indigenous cultures throughout the world, there was never a word for art. Because art was embedded in everyday life. At some point we started separating the arts from everything else in life. And I think that’s been to our detriment all these years. And so it’s just time to bring art back into the daily conversation, daily life, daily problem...

Mandy Theis @mandyfineartist is a figurative painter and art educator, and graduate of the Aristides Atelier. She is the president and co-founder of The Da Vinci Initiative—a foundation that supports skill-based learning in K-12 art-classrooms.

Mandy is Director of the School of Atelier Arts which provides atelier training and resources to art teachers through online classes, workshops and conferences, and keynote speaker services. She is also an Academic Director at the Florence Academy of Art and runs the MA in Studio Arts Degree Program in a partnership between FAA and School of Atelier Arts.

Mandy is an advocate for visual literacy and figurative work in the contemporary art market.

• “Atelier training is pretty much the way artists were trained up until about a hundred years ago. The idea being that there’s inherited artistic information that has been handed down through generation after generation from one artist to another artist.”
• “A lot of people don’t realize it, but there are actually scientific discoveries in art just like there are in every other field.”
• “We can’t really move art forward if we don’t understand what’s already known about visual literacy.”
• “[I’m working on a book that should be released over the next year] about how visual literacy matters to every profession, so each chapter is an atelier concept and how it matters to a certain profession.”

• “With the advent of Modernism, there was this idea that training would ruin your creativity, and it was the artists themselves that purposely chose not to train the next generation.”
• “Nobody loves learning more than art teachers love to learn, and yet there’s been a separation between access to this skillset and how we train art educators in today’s time.”

• “What we’re really trying to do is take this gap and close it and provide access to these skills to art educators so that they can incorporate it into their classrooms.”
• “Because the training fell out of favor, it’s very, very difficult for most art educators to access it.”
• “We’re increasing the ability to teach very important skills about how the eye actually sees information, interprets information. This isn’t just important for artists.”
• “It’s about helping your eyes seeing in a more nuanced way.”
• “The response has been overwhelmingly positive, because we’re offering something teachers love: learning.”

• “It’s ironic that realism has become a counterculture movement in art, so to speak, or that skill-based art is the counterculture movement in art. But it excites me to think that skills matter again.”
• “Historically we probably know less about what it is that we’re seeing than humanity did a hundred years ago, with the access to the internet and more information in every other subject than we’ve ever had before.”
• “My incentive is that I want children to be able to create whatever artwork is in their heads and their hearts without compromise. I just want to provide additional options of what they can do in the classroom.”
• “Understanding color or shape or value or line in a really nuanced way, not just saying here’s a line…it changes how you see the world.”

• “I see these two huge, big names who we like to think of as the poster children of non-realist art, are embedded very heavily in realism, turning to realism, and learning as much as they can about it.”
• “If you look at gaming systems, often all the edges are really hard, which kills the illusion of depth […] even in these games where...

Willy Bo Richardson is a painter based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and an alumnus of CHF’s Art-Business Accelerator program. Visually, his work is abstract and colorful, with a repeating motif of stripes. Willy subtracts the trappings that condition our response to art—the frame, the pedestal— and weaves art into the setting itself. The Albuquerque Museum recently acquired one of his pieces for their permanent collection, and he’s currently working with Richard Levy Gallery— while pursuing corporate projects that include wall-art licensing, and mid-size installations in European health care and gerontology settings. Willy’s long-term goal is to create totally-immersive corporate environments.

• “What I really got out of CHF was on two main levels. The first level is the nuts and bolts: how to be professional. So on one level, I can run my business the way any entrepreneur or individual business owner could do it. And then there’s another level, and that is working with the other fellows and learning side-by-side.”
• “One of the biggest lessons I got working with you and Elizabeth and the Fellows at Clark Hulings Fund was this similar path of fearlessness of being an entrepreneur and an artist. It’s the same fearlessness. And of course fearlessness actually starts with fear. It’s a project that seems scary and I’m going to do it anyway. And then it’s a little less scary. And then the next project, it’s a bigger project with same amount of fear but now I know I can get through it.”
• “The challenge was to make [the goal] so scary and big that you can never accomplish it, and I’m making small steps towards that.”
• “One of the things that I was so attracted to Clark Hulings for was that there’s all these disruptors happening. Even the idea of what an artist is, is shifting. And I think that creates opportunities for artists not only to start making a living, but also to inject themselves into the world.”

• “Well, it started out a little bit as an idealist thing where I wanted to have my art to be available for the middle class.”
• “It’s an ambition of mine to put my work in front of people—not just those who have the opportunity with income and education to appreciate fine art.”
• “What my ‘big-dad ugly’ goal is, is to completely integrate [my work] into the environment, so that one does not think they are looking at art, but that they are sitting on a couch and the textiles, the pillows, the wall coverings, different architectural elements—we call it materials for the built-environment, and my paintings are integrated into that.”

• “I made a commitment to myself and others that I would only work with those that are working towards the safest practice as possible, which is sometimes more expensive, but that does not go against my primary goal, which is high quality. Safe for the environment and high-quality often can be hand-in-hand.”
• “I think that our culture is actually really receptive to the idea of putting something out into the world that is doing the least amount of harm on the environment as possible.”

• “In the fine art world, it’s definitely kind of a no-no to license your work and to do reproductions, and that stems from a history where the technology was different.”
• “When I first started getting into reproductions while living in New York City, people were saying it was going to ruin my career. So every step of the way has been all the experts and those in the know telling me not to do things. That doesn’t mean when somebody says to not do something that it’s smart, it just means that you’ve got to figure out which things people are afraid of.”
• “Often times the art consultants are very open to whatever they think they can sell, and not so interested in...

Mary McBride is the chair of the Arts and Cultural Management and Design Management graduate programs at Pratt Institute School of Art in New York City. An executive coach, a frequent international speaker, and a visiting professor in Spain, Turkey, India and Russia, she is also Editor of Catalyst—an online publication focusing on leadership in the 21st century. With an artistic background herself, Mary is in a unique position to see the creative aspects of business design and entrepreneurial decision-making in fields ranging from arts and culture, to publishing, financial services, technology, retail store development, apparel and packaging, and product and strategy design.

• “I got a call from Pratt Institute that said: ‘Do you think you can create an MBA for designers and artists and cultural people?’ And I said: ‘I don’t think they need an MBA, I think they need something that goes beyond the MBA—and almost, in a way, the antidote to the MBA.”
• “I wanted to make a bridge for myself between my creative side and my strategic side, and then I got an opportunity to build that bridge for lots of other people.”
• “What [these] program graduate students do is design experiences that will engage and enliven—and hopefully get people to be part of the culture and civilization and the conversation that we’re all trying to have.”

• “When design is not part of strategy formulation, and it’s just part of the execution of strategy, you lose 50-75% of the value of a design.”
• “Part of being a successful entrepreneur is figuring out a place to locate yourself where the conditions of the ecology are supportive of what you’re trying to do.”
• “Entrepreneurship isn’t one step. It’s really thinking ahead to where you would like to be.”
• “It really makes me crazy when design professors and professionals keep saying that ‘design solves problems.’ And it does, but it’s not all that design does. It actually turns a problem into a possible opportunity for a particular group of users.”
• “Art is a lot of different things—mostly it is about self-expression though—whereas design is more about: what can I bring into the world that can be used by other people?”

• “Words make a difference. So if I’m telling myself that [what I’m doing now] is a sacrifice, that’s very different than telling myself that this is a choice.”
• “When I hear people talking about how much they’re sacrificing for their art form or for their family or because they want to feed the pup, I say, well: isn’t that a choice that you’re making? If you’re a very deliberate and strategic choice-maker, shouldn’t that make you feel like a more powerful, able, person?”
• “I think people who know what their values are…know what their values are! So yes, they’re trading, yes they’re ‘sacrificing,’ but what they don’t trade off is what they value.”

• “It’s asking for a miracle to expect that what you think has value is necessarily going to have value in exchange to [your market] if you haven’t even thought about them in your creative process.”
• “How you quantify anything is really a matter of meeting the market on its own terms and negotiating.”
• “When you bring [your art] to market you meet people who understand your passion and purpose, who can help you set a financial value to [your art].”

• “We get to know each other on a deeper level by creating narratives, exchanging them, seeing where it is we like to amend them… so I think it’s necessary for everyone to have that [in their] artist statement.”
• “I spent too long thinking about what that more traditional business approach looks like. It keeps shifting over time, and it depends on what culture, country, and...

Donna is a painter based in Beaufort, North Carolina; she’s a graduate Fellow of CHF’s Art-Business Accelerator Program, and an Emeritus Advisor for the 2019 group of Fellows. Her work is representational, and explores the nautical and coastal themes of her home. Her sales strategy involves partnering with cause-based organizations to amplify their messages through the use of fine art. Recent projects include a resident artist position with Friends of the NC Maritime Museum and a collaboration with The Kit Jones Project.

• “Being able to define what I want and where I want to go with my career has helped me immensely in so many different ways.”
• “When you decide what you want to do, you become more intentional about what you choose to do.”
• “People who get residencies, get more residencies. I went to [North Carolina Maritime Museum] and I said: ‘hey, I would really like a residency.’ This is what that would entail. Here’s what I want from you. Here’s what you’ll get from me. And with that intention, after defining myself and redefining what I want, I can actually move with a little more skill and a little more focus in order to get where I want to go.”

• “I made the decision that I was going to be a professional artist, and took away all the safety nets that I had….That ‘I’m inspired today, or I’m not’— that’s not me. I get up [and say] here’s what I have to do today. This is my list. So to me, it’s that blue-collar work ethic that is applied to fine art.”
• “You’re better off making a sale as you.”
• “It’s kind of a throwback to back in the day when you had patrons, and artists worked almost as craftspeople. And they had their guilds and they were actually working for people. It’s a very similar type of relationship. So in that respect, being a blue-collar or a working artist is more valuable because they say: ‘Oh a working artist. That means you’re actually finishing and doing a job.’ And they’re very happy with that and it does help.”
• “Are you an artist because you call yourself one, or should you wait until someone calls you an artist? So rather than saying whether I’m an artist or not I just go, ‘I paint!’ And I leave it at that. ‘I’m a painter. I paint pictures.’ ”
• “I’m in a niche market of maritime art right now. And I also live in a very tourist community. [So I’m constantly asked]: ‘Can you donate this? Can you donate that?’ and I’m like, ‘No. I cannot.’ So I figured, how am I going to leverage what’s coming my way which is ‘Can you donate this?’ with: what of mine needs to be marketed?”
• “…I don’t donate anything. They pay me. They pay for my materials. They pay for the framing. They pay for the advertising. And so I have it set up where I may be donating my time, but I’m not out any money.”
• “So if you’re serious about buying a piece from me, if you have bought a piece, or you’ve come up to one of my events, you get a special newsletter that is exclusive. And I tell them it’s exclusive. I give them options and opportunities, that once I put the stuff in a gallery or online, those opportunities are gone. So it gives them a time frame in which they actually have to do something. My open rate is between 80 and 100% for those special newsletters.”

• “I love hearing what other people have to say about my work. I really do. It’s very interesting. And I like that it’s adventurous…I’m trying to catch more of an emotion or an atmosphere more so than a representation of: ‘Here is the scene, enjoy it’.”
• “I’m going to do what I want to do, because I like doing it. And if I make a change, like I did in June— I made a change with how I actually put the paint on the board… and if my...

Emily is an Intellectual Property Attorney with over 14 years of experience handling copyright and trademark, including business and licensing agreements, infringement, prosecution, and litigation, and educating artists on the legal aspects of protecting their work. She’s the founder of Copyright Collaborative, a forum for artists to learn about their intellectual property rights, as well as work together to create a culture that deters infringement. Emily is a member of the state bars in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine—where she currently lives.

• “I discovered that artists, visual artists especially, didn’t know much about copyright and I got a general energy of powerlessness from them where they seemed to not understand what they needed to do…”
• “Music organizations and photography organizations have really come together to lobby the copyright office and congress to pay attention to their particular needs in the intellectual property arena. And I don’t feel that visual artists have had the same representation.”
• “From working with a lot of visual artists and from attending a lot of trade shows, I do get the energy that everybody is out for himself. And I’m not so sure if that’s the same in music and in photography and other artistic venues. I mean, let’s talk about filmography, videography…I would say that they’re more cohesive and unionized.”

• “I’ve always gone through my legal career with that I want to say ‘stone pebble in my shoe’ where I think it’s so important to educate people on what their rights are.”
• “In consideration of copyrights and copyright law in the United States, and all of the misinformation that’s out there on Etsy and other platforms like that, I thought it was just really important to let artists know what their rights were.”
• “One of the biggest misconceptions is once you express the artwork—so once you put the artwork on paper—it’s protected and all of your rights are protected right there.”
• “There’s been a perverse amalgamation of old copyright laws and new copyright laws. And so if you’re trying to find out certain things about copyright, you’ll see that it depends on when the work was created and when the work was published.”

• “I definitely think it’s wise for artists to do some of this themselves, but I think it’s important for artists to know when they need to turn to an attorney.”
• “Copyright, you would go to the US Copyright Office, which is: copyright [dot] gov. And for patents and trademarks, the website is: uspto [dot] gov—United States Patent and Trademark Office.”
• “If you don’t file a copyright application in a timely fashion you pay a very, very significant price. […] Artists really need to copyright their works I would say, immediately.”
• “Take that group, take that collection of work that’s somehow cohesive, and file them under one copyright application.[…] You can file for a collection of works, so long as they haven’t been published. ‘Published’ means offered for sale or licensed.”
• “Protect your best-selling work. It’s always the best-selling works that gets knocked off.”
• ”If a company or anybody asks you for images of your work, have them sign a half-page agreement.”

• “If you go to certain websites such as Alibaba, which is a very well-known carrier of infringing works, they usually won’t take down the work unless you produce a copyright registration.”
• ”I think it will continue to get more difficult and more stringent in getting works taken down unless you have a registration. It’s very easy to say, ‘Here’s my registration, take that work...

Angela is a Washington DC-based speaker, trainer, consultant, and president of TKC Incorporated. With clients including Marriott, the State Department, AARP, and 40Plus of Greater Washington, she works with adults in mid-life and beyond, helping them adapt to the changing freelance workforce. Angela has appeared in the pages of USA Today, Essence, and local news outlets across the country. She is the author of Do the Hustle without the Hassle and the host of The Gig Worker Summit.

• “You’ll find that people are entering entrepreneurship for a whole lot of different reasons, but that freedom undergirds all of it.”
• “It’s a real shift in mindset that you are the owner, you’re not the employee anymore, and that the responsibilities for the success of this operation is really on your shoulders and not the company’s shoulders.”
• “People are more responsible for what they put out into the universe than ever before. So if you’re an emerging artist for example, you have to put out into the world who you are.”
• “The only way to grow in anything—whether it’s art or anything else—is to introduce it and give it to the world. And the world may not always say: ‘Ah! That’s the greatest thing since sliced bread!’ and that’s ok, because it gives us the opportunity to refine our craft.”
• “If your experience has been that you have all of this age discrimination against you, does it disqualify you [in a grant application] if you don’t choose say [your age]?… I would ask the grantmaker who is asking this question: what is the purpose of this? And then say: ‘I’d prefer not to answer.’ ”
• “The whole ‘gig’ terminology— it just kind of puts a little grey shade on things, but none of this is new—we’ve had contractors and freelancers since way back…What is new is the technology that enables us to find opportunities quickly, cheaply and affords the corporation to do the same thing.”

• “This idea of steady income, it’s a nice notion but it doesn’t have to necessarily be the only way to profit and to be comfortable […] That fluctuation is always there, but that’s not necessarily a detriment…I think sometimes when people talk about a steady income they what they’re saying is: I want to make the same amount of money every week like I have a job.”
• “I have a process where I do my planning at the beginning of the year. I have a yearly calendar, I put all of my family commitments on it that I know about, like vacations. When I set up my quarterly goals, I decide exactly what I need to meet them.”
• “You start to get an idea about what’s realistic to make in a month, with the amount of time you want to dedicate to it. Then you have to think through whatever family obligations you have, and financial commitments you have, how you fill that gap, and then you go for those opportunities. And that’s when it may mean you’re doing some fast-pack ways to cash. Because maybe the thing you want to do is not as easily accessible, or it may have a long sales-cycle.”
• “I always tell people: have the possibilities all before you. Prep them up.”
• “We are actually in control and we can patch our income together from several different sources. And technology makes that alot easier.”

• “If you’re an entrepreneur, a gig worker, you’re an artist—because you know that every month your income might not look the same, you have to live beneath your income.”
• “Most of the time, if we really take a look at our [financial] vices, don’t give up everything, but take a part of that and stash it away for the future. So that you can, as you get older, have an additional little nest-egg somewhere.”
• “My definition of retirement is a period of time where I am working as little as I...

Bonnie Clearwater is the director and chief curator at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Originally from Rockland County, New York; she has also been the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami; Executive Director of the Lannan Foundation Art Programs in Los Angeles, and Director of the Lannan Museum in Lake Worth, Florida. Bonnie is known for her scholarship on contemporary and modern art—particularly Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, and Tracey Emin. She is recognized for her curatorial vision, museum education and outreach programs, and developing the careers of emerging artists.

• “The art world is always looking for artists who are under-represented, and in my career, not only do I look for up-and-coming new talent, but also the artists who are overlooked for some reason or another— it wasn’t the right time or the right place.”
• “[Mark] Rothko was particularly concerned as to why he became well-known, whereas a number of the other artists he started out with or got to know later in his career—he felt that they were great talent as well and yet had not achieved recognition.”
• “Not any one person can ‘make’ an artist…it’s a mysterious process…who the influencers are changes.”
• “It’s hard to say to an artist that this is how they can identify how [the process of being recognized as an emerging artist] is done… the best thing they can do is make their art, have the contacts and be ready and open to possibilities.”
• “I think right now what I am seeing in the art world is that it has returned to the artist- driven art world.”

• “There are so many platforms now for an artist living in obscure or out-of-the way places to get their work out and be seen.”
• “Network. Make sure that if there is a museum or an art center or dealers…that the artist attends their events…that’s a number one thing an artist needs to do to in order to get their art out in front and known—it’s really hard to just send work out cold to a gallery or curator.”
• “If there are grants…[artists] should definitely apply for those. In most cases those grants are reviewed by a peer panel, or of professionals who are either curators or critics; therefore it’s getting in front of exactly the people you want.”
• “Travel. Make sure that you know what’s happening in the rest of the United States, or your region, and around the world.”
• “Find other artists to be able to talk to. When artists are in art school, they have a support base that will critique them. But what happens after graduation, is that artists are in their studio all alone, there’s no one to talk to, no one to get that critical feedback from. So it’s important to also build up a network of artists one respects and have that kind of critical dialogue.”

• “I can tell you almost exclusively, any artist whose work I’ve been interested in, it’s the work that’s attracted me first…I could see in the work that there is something about it that is true, that’s compelling, that is bringing a new way to think about things and is making me want to think about it.”
• “After I meet with the artist, I do want to have a sense that there is enough in them to carry a career. That what they’re trying to do is so expansive and multi-faceted that they won’t get stuck in one idea that they’ll be repeating for the rest of their career.”

• “It is interesting to hear why collectors collect, why they’re passionate, what they’ve learned… it’s important for artists to hear how their work is perceived beyond their own studio.”
• “There’s all kinds of collectors. There’s those that in one aspect that they like the story. They...

James D. Balestrieri is the Clark Hulings Foundation’s Writer-in-Residence. He is currently working on a new book on Hulings, Clark Hulings: Quantum Realist. Jim is the proprietor of Balestrieri Fine Arts, a consulting firm that specializes in catalogue research and arts writing, estate and collections management, and marketing and communications for museums and auctions. Jim has a BA from Columbia University, an MA in English from Marquette University, an MFA in Playwriting from Carnegie-Mellon, and was a Screenwriting Fellow at the American Film Institute. He served as Director of J.N. Bartfield Galleries in New York for 20 years and has published over 150 feature essays and reviews in a wide variety of national arts publications.

In this episode, Jim gives us an in-depth look at the themes of the upcoming Hulings book, and discusses how Clark Hulings’ career strategy applies to working artists today. Inspired by Hulings’ successes both within—and outside of—art tastemakers’ approval, Jim and Daniel question who gets to decide which artists matter, and how the canon does and does not serve the best interest of the arts, or artists. Hulings’ accomplishments, both as an artist and a small business owner, call to his deeper understanding of the dignity of work—from running a market stall to the act of making a living as a painter—as a way of belonging to the world.

• “Clark Hulings was an American artist. A realist—in a way. He began his career as a very successful illustrator in the golden age of illustration.”
• “The thing that sets him apart is the subject that he found, chose, and made his life’s work. His life’s work is depicting work. Working people in working situations—whether they’re farmers, laborers, whether it’s an urban setting, a village setting, or a rural setting. What he captured was working people at work, doing what they do. And that sets him apart from almost any other American realist of that time.”
• “Lots of people associate Clark with Western Art. [...] But really, the number of paintings he did that could be considered Western or Southwestern is miniscule compared to the numbers of paintings he did in Mexico and Europe. So there’s a whole idea that Elizabeth [Hulings] and I have talked about, which is repositioning Clark Hulings as an American Artist, and indeed, an international artist.”
• “[Hulings] doesn’t really give you a story. They’re not narrative paintings. He moves his easel painting as far from illustration as you can imagine. You see these people working and you wonder what they’re thinking, and what they’re like, and what their inner lives are. But he gives them their privacy.”

• “For Hulings, travel—and if you look at his paintings, you can see it—travel was a way for him to find places. I would use the word 'traditional places,' where the traditions of work and of life were on a long continuum. He seems to be very interested, not only in showing, ‘oh yeah, those women are washing clothes in a street today,’ but in showing that the place around them was a place that had been inhabited for a long time, so that what they were doing was on a long continuum of existence. A kind of deep time. And for those, you’ve got to travel.”
• “There's a whole tradition of travel painting where there are paintings of the famous places: paintings of Notre Dame, paintings of the Ponte Vecchio, paintings of this [or that]...That's not Clark Hulings is about. The first painting that really attracted me to his work is this small painting he did of Naples. And it's this narrow street. Narrow. You couldn't even get a car, one car down there, much less two. And there are deep shadows and the laundry is hanging across it. This is not the Amalfi Coast, this is not some

Kristin Levier is a sculptor and a 2018 Executive Fellow with CHF’s Art-Business Accelerator Program. After two decades as a molecular biologist, she became a full-time studio-artist 13 years ago. As a wood sculptor, Kristin makes work at the intersection of art and science that connects us to the “extraordinary, strange beauty of the natural world.” In this episode, she discusses how she developed her brand story, noticed trends in the art world, and found the audience for her work—all with the support of a network of like-minded artists.

• “My brand story is that I’m trying, with every single object that I make, to create work that’s at the interface of art and science. I think I’m opposed to this idea that people can only be right-brain dominant or left-brain dominant, and science and art are two separate worlds. I feel like there’s so many commonalities and there is just such a strong intersection.”
• “I think it is fairly uncommon, but I know a handful of artists who are coming out of tech backgrounds or lab research like I was involved in, or fields like mathematics.There maybe just isn’t enough of it that people think of it as a common thing. I’m trying to break that stereotype, hopefully, in the things that I do.”
• “I think anything that helps to refocus and feel grateful and amazed by these incredible things surrounding us on the planet… I hope that’s a great thing. [They are] certainly reminders that I like to have in my life.”

• “I was noticing that I keep getting into these exhibitions—things focused on wood—and I just thought, if I’m ever going to move on, I need to apply to things where people haven’t heard of me.”
• “If you’re going to be able to talk about the brand of your work, it means you pretty much need to understand it. And so for me at the beginning […] I was just making whatever was sort of a whim for me. And then I started noticing trends. And then it got to the point where I really had a story I wanted to tell.”
• “The majority of people who buy my work tend to be scientists, medical doctors, or chiropractors—certainly also just art-focused people—but for some reason I thought, ‘well okay, they buy that’, and thinking ‘oh, maybe they have the money to buy art…’ But then you know, really slowing down and taking note: That IS my audience.”

• “The reason I started posting process photos [on Instagram] is because I noticed how much I love seeing process photos from other artists, from painters or other sculptors, seeing the thing when it’s kind of a mess and it’s not done yet.”
• “I realized that there was a real hole missing where I lived. There really weren’t people talking about the business side of being an artist. […] So I was just brave: ‘Okay I’m going to do it’.”
• “I definitely find that having other artists that I talk with often seems really important to me. I think you know that what we’re doing is difficult. I mean everybody has difficulties, but it’s really nice to know that you have someone going through the things you’re going through…so we can support each other and help each other problem-solve.”

• “It’s funny hearing you say the word ‘team,’ because after spending nearly two years together, I think we kind of feel like a family. It’s been amazing for me to be in this group with other artists and other people at CHF. I think people are very vulnerable and very honest with each other, which to me is the best way that interactions like that can work.”
• ”Now I really only buy exactly what I need. And I don’t know why that simple monthly [profit and loss] statement has made that change [in behavior] for me, but it did, and I’ve saved a ton of money. Knowing what you’re...

Rachel Berg is a New York City-based Art Advisor. She is the director of curation at Museum Editions, which specializes in placing art in hotels, restaurants, and corporate environments. She’s also president of Live Artfully, their in-house atelier for custom artwork. Rachel has a visual arts degree from Princeton and a master’s of art and art education from Columbia. An artist herself, Rachel enjoys the collaboration process and is committed to good relationships with artists, as well as transparency in art-licensing projects. In this episode, Rachel discusses how she selects art; works with hotel architects, designers, and vendors; and how artists can navigate the process.

• “What you have to look for when you’re working with art consultant, is a culture that is there to protect the artist and make sure that the artwork has its integrity intact when it gets to its end…”
• “Museum Editions works whichever way the artist and art works, because it’s our incentive to make a beautiful space. It’s our incentive to help the designers fulfill their vision.”
• “As curator, what I like to do is go through and give the artist an idea of which pieces, in what they have submitted—in my and my team’s opinion—would have the most success with our clientele.”
• “Existing work is always our first choice because it’s there, it needs to find a home. Bespoke commissions happen when all the stars don’t line up—maybe it’s the wrong size, maybe it’s the wrong price, maybe it’s the wrong color...so really bespoke comes from the need for a specific piece.”
• “What we are looking for [in artist’s branding and marketing materials] are good quality images that we can pass on to clients, and a solid understanding of what the creation process is, what the materials are, and what the sizing is. It’s really that simple.”

• “I think artists really were protective of their image 15 years ago, whereas now, everyone’s trying to get their image out. You will definitely want it to be available in a hotel when people are Instagramming and are in front of your artwork and can tag you.”
• “This industry is an excellent way to continue selling your work. Hotels change their artwork every 7 years at minimum. So they’re always moving. It’s a booming industry, it’s going to keep going, and they’re always interested in cutting-edge work.”
• “The good news is I’ve been doing this long enough to say with confidence that even if you’re not hot right now, you will be soon. Because the industry, especially the boutique design industry, is very driven by trends.”

• “If it is thoughtful, it is fine art.”
• “Give yourself limitations [for multiple editions of your work]. Say: for “up to 500 prints, this is X price.” Or negotiate that and be aware of your terms when you’re working. There are not so many terms to go over that it’s that complicated to set a limit.”
• “Make sure you’re always retaining the rights to the work. If someone is asking you to sign the rights, there’s a problem. Because we are asking permission to use it; not to own it.”
• “There is an understanding now that there is a social media piece to the story for the brand of the hotel, and even in corporate cases now we’re seeing more and more of the story. The selection committee is consulting with their branding; they’re making sure the artwork is fitting with the story of who they are.”

Nadia Fairlamb is a sculptor who works with wood and mirror glass, and she also teaches art to young people through various educational programs in Hawaii, where she is based. Her work speaks to the integral link between culture and environment, and she carries that focus into the business side of her practice as well, collaborating with designers and hospitality managers to infuse her community with art. In 2017, she won a CHF Business Accelerator Fellowship, and this year she progressed to the next level of the program, as an Executive Fellow. In this episode, Nadia talks about her impressive trajectory, and how her focus on art-entrepreneurship boosted not only her career but her creativity as well.

• "I decided that the only way I could be profitable with my business is if I tried. In other words, for about three years I gave up almost all other work to see if I could become a full-time professional artist."
• "I started by trial and error, by putting myself physically at different art shows, craft fairs, events, things like that, for several years to test out my product, to meet a lot of different kinds of people, and to see what could be bought and what people were wanting to buy."
• "I am now very picky about who I choose to donate to and why. However, when I first started, five, six, seven years ago, I wasn't picky. I took as many different opportunities as I could to have my work seen and shown in front of different audiences. That was until I decided, until I figured out, who my target audiences were."

• "The first thing I did was figure out where and who my ideal interior designers, decorators, art dealers would be, and then once I figured that out, I put together a professional booklet, like a portfolio, of my work that I wanted to showcase for them."
• "I consider myself a business owner, and my business is art. So I know that I'm running a business, and every artist that I know that's making money is doing it the same way.”
• "Selling art is really putting oneself in a really vulnerable place. Because it's not like you're selling a toothbrush or a hamburger. You're selling something that’s part of yourself."
• "I have a company and my business name and my LLC, and that so far has been my brand. And it no longer really fits what I do and who I am as an artist. I'm wanting to shift from ‘This is my business’ to ‘This is me and this is what I make.’”

• "Honestly, I wasn't trained to think like a business person—at all. I had very limited training in what it takes to get a business off the ground and get it going.”
• "I feel like I'm taking away [...] a level of confidence that I was really needing and really wanted to have. Not just about making money but about myself, and confidence about the work that I make as a fine artist."
• “My biggest hurdle has been the self-confidence to raise my prices and ask for those prices, and then get paid for the price point that I want to get paid for. That's really just a self-confidence thing that has been solved through repetition, persistence, and action."

Todd Scalise is the founder and CEO of Higherglyphics, a creative placemaking firm that manages large-scale public art projects from start to finish: funding, art, design, construction, and merchandising. An artist himself, he knows the importance of generating publicity and brand awareness. In this 55-minute episode, he discusses the enormous economic contribution that artists bring to their communities, framing art as a service that's worth funding and publicizing.

• "In 2012, arts and culture production contributed over $698 billion to the US economy, which is about 4.3% of the US gross domestic product."
• "It's a statistical fact that public art (creative placemaking) attracts potential investors in business to communities."
• "Property values did go up slightly, but also occupancy rates went up dramatically around these environments."
• "I learned to look at the return on investment aspect of the Sistine Chapel ceiling---I don't know what Michelangelo got paid, but he certainly did not get paid enough."

• "If you want to start doing public work, you have to start seeing it as a service first, which is consulting."
• "What switched for me was I began considering my audience at some point, not just what I wanted to make."
• "Other considerations that go into these projects---that probably don't go into creating studio art---are a division of labor, systems of logic, some level of incorporation, insurances, and working to budget."
• "With a client, it's a collaborative process, and they have to be brought into that process. Otherwise they don't feel that they're part of it."

• "Whenever you have commerce, you have the need for publicity."
• "Publicity is really putting your message out there in a very unique way, so that people pay attention."
• "To me, publicity is a very creative act, and I think I remember Andy Warhol saying, 'business is art.' Well, you know, 'publicity is art' as well."
• "Repetition is boring, and people forget that eventually. That's the problem with traditional marketing, with the billboard concept.
• "Focus on your audience, not yourself."
• "The tipping point in my business was being able to educate people about why what I'm doing is different."

Is it realistic for artists to think "One day, I'll retire"? Christina Empedocles knows about the financial concerns of artists. A working artist represented by several San Francisco-based galleries, Christina also runs Insight Personal Finance, a company that aims to improve the financial health of creative entrepreneurs. In this episode, Christina acknowledges the financial hurdles that artists face--fluctuating income, being responsible for your own raise, lack of benefits---and provides specific strategies that artists have successfully employed to overcome them.

• "There’s a lot of baggage around art and money, so a lot of people have a hard time looking at what they make, and think 'I should be making more.'"
• "What first established your relationship with money? It can be really be powerful to think about, and help eliminate engrained money behavior that isn’t working for us."
• "When you’re doing this yourself, you have to pull all the levers and it can feel like a burden. But the best time to get started is now; the sooner you start building this structure, it lowers the risk of your creative practice."
• "I started teaching myself finance. I started to realize we [artists] were doing it wrong: a lot of people in the community wanted to avoid dealing with their money."

• "Artists are great at having the long view. We have big visions, and the vision of what we want to accomplish carries us through the fluctuations of our career."
• "Your art practice will change; it’s absolutely necessary to plan for it. I don’t want to hustle to find rent money when I’m 80!"
• "Artists and entrepreneurs tend to invest everything back into the business, not in the future. I see that as taking on more risk."
• "Don’t just reinvest in the art practice. If you want to have agency over the work, you have to become immaculate with money."
• "If we don’t think about inflation and just working without increasing our prices, after a few years, the impact of inflation is immediate and painful."

• "Look at ways to increase income every year; look at all of your skills and think 'How am I using them?'"
• "Align your spending with your values, and reroute the money that you save toward your goals."
• "There are so many money leaks we may not know are there until we start paying attention. Bad habits can be huge drains on our ability to save; we look at the opportunity costs to see what that money can do."
• "The worst that can happen from preparing is having a chunk of money for your future self!"

Building a brand means creating an expectation and giving your audience a chance to anticipate and desire what you’re making. We cover a lot of ground in this episode with Dr. Jenny Darroch, dean of the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. Jenny gives us a 30,000-foot-view of the art world, as well as the issues facing those who aim to bridge art and business. Host Daniel DiGriz and Jenny discuss the brand development challenges that visual artists face, tackling the question: “Do I define my brand, or do I let my brand evolve?”, as well as the principles of marketing, project management, keeping up with a changing market, and connecting with an audience. Check out the highlights below, and then download or stream the full hour-long episode.

• "If there’s an expectation of what modern art should look like, do you become one of the many who can produce art of that kind, or do you make a bold statement and actually redefine how we look at contemporary art today?"
• "No matter what the creative form is, we always play that game: by evolving, we can pick up new customers, but we can also alienate the old."
• "You’ve got this conundrum of audience development that can alienate the core audience...we need to be tuned into the market, but we need to pay attention to what’s new, and what’s possible."

• "We demystify the art world---education provides empowerment and puts people in a far stronger position."
• "The humanistic approach that we [in management] take does resonate with those in the arts community."
• "We see management as a liberal art, and that management revolves around the human condition."

• "Artists tackle issues that relate to society at large---the dysfunction that we see around us, the lack of purpose people have---and these values are really aligned with Peter Drucker’s values."
• "The thing that trips students up the most is embracing that a commercial approach to art is OK."
• The big picture issue "that faces both museums and visual artists is about audience development and engagement."
• "Learning is lifelong, and we can dip in and out of education at any point in our life."

• "When you’re trying to create your own brand, if you want to be commercially successful, you do need to hustle to be known in different art circles."
• "When you embark upon a program of audience development, you can end up confusing the brand...how does the brand maneuver and evolve as the audience expands?"
• "Look across all forms of creative expression---there’s an abundance of product on the market and so many different ways to distribute the product to end users, so to be 'good enough' is not enough."

Alice Loy is the co-founder and CEO of Creative Startups, an accelerator program with a presence in the US, the Middle East, and Asia. An expert in the creative economy, she recognizes that creative entrepreneurs are an undeniable force in the business world, and offers unique insights into founding and funding a growing startup. In this episode, Alice tells us about navigating the hurdles that all entrepreneurs face, identifying investment opportunities in the creative economy, and what convinced the Creative Startups team that Meow Wolf was going to be a success.

• “Creatives can, and should, own the companies that creatives work at---creative people are uniquely suited to understand opportunities and problems and therefore develop solutions for market opportunities.”
• "Society has thought of artists as people who either work on their own, or get a job at a company, and we question that assumption."
• "Creative entrepreneurs have the unique ability to build a more compassionate and sustainable world."
• "A lot of startup glory goes to tech, but as creatives, we need to say ‘this is ours, and this is how we run a company’."

• "Most investors tend to write creatives off as artists who probably can’t figure out how to run a business, and that’s because most investors are people who follow the herd."
• “Now we have Kickstarter and Indiegogo and other platforms that have changed where creatives can go to raise money for an early stockpile of capital to get going.”
• "There is a rising awareness about untapped opportunities for investors who are looking at markets in different ways, which will mean more dollars for creatives."

• Entrepreneurs "pose a risk and an opportunity to the network. If you perform well, you take that risk off the table and now you have a partner."
• "Meow Wolf came to our Accelerator in 2014...they had a track record and a team of founders—having a team makes all the difference in the world."
• "At the end of the day, entrepreneurship is not about ideas, it’s about getting the job done."

Do working artists need art fairs, even after securing representation? An artist himself, Ray Beldner explains the decision-making processes of developing stARTup Art Fair, as well as the important considerations for artists participating in any fair. In addition to running an impromptu cost-benefit analysis of art fair attendance, Ray and Podcast Host Daniel DiGriz discuss how to take the reigns and control your own career, the complexities of online selling, and the importance of a multi-pronged sales approach. Check out the show's highlights below, and then listen to the full 45-minute episode.

• “Having one-on-one face time with an artist is what the viewer wants, it’s a good way to sell art and look at art.”
• “Fairs are a great place to test ideas, to test your market, to learn how to make sales.”
• "You learn how to gauge interest, how to read buyers, close a sale, and how other artists pitch themselves and present their work---it can be an incredible learning experience, and profitable."
• "If you want to reach the most amount of people with your work---curators, dealers, buyers---a fair is one of the best way to do it."

• “Artists are business people---what happens in the artist/gallery relationship is that artists cede their control and, in so doing, become infantilized and dependent on the dealer.”
• “If you want to continuously grow your business, you have to grow your network of partners.”
• “Dealers are partners, and you can have many partners in different regions.”
• "It’s important that artists stop thinking of themselves by the old model---that only the dealer takes care of the artist."
• "Galleries come and go, but in the end, if you don’t think of yourself as a business then you won’t understand the critical concept of making a career as an artist."

• "You need a multi-pronged approach to create a vibrant business, and one prong doesn’t hurt the other; they can actually support each other well."
• “The move is away from brick-and-mortar galleries and toward something that’s event-driven and supported by an online component.”
• “A lot of traditional venues for artists have been failing or falling away. The internet has made everything more transparent and given artists tools to promote themselves online as well as off.”
• “You have to control setting the sales goals and building your team---that concept is empowering to artists.”

Steve Pruneau serves as the Chairman of CHF's Board and is the founder of Free Agent Source Inc., a management consulting company that applies sharing-economy principles to client engagements. In this episode, he and host Daniel DiGriz discuss how to use the 'best practices' employed by successful entrepreneurs. If you’re struggling to identify the next step in your business, or find direct-to-audience selling a challenge, you’ll find this episode illuminating. Read on for highlights, and download the hour-long episode now to enjoy this conversation in full. 

• "Selling is finding a solution for someone---a solution that they welcome into their lives."
• "Most people come to organizations like CHF because they get it: they need to grow an audience, and they want to know how."
• "The bottom line is, sales get done on that emotional sense of confidence we inspire with our audience."
• "My emotional hang-up was this myth that people are natural salespeople, which put a dependency in my life. In modern life, survival skills include selling."
• "The last step of the journey is acknowledging 'ok, now I get how to employ these techniques and grow my audience'---that’s when the thriving starts to happen."
• Direct-to-audience selling “gives you a way to influence and control how you’re presenting yourself to the world."

• "There’s always an opportunity to engage…questions will start to illustrate patterns with the people who are buying your art and with those who aren’t buying your art."
• "In the art world, we’re looking for our people, who feel something from the art and find the work meaningful."
• "I don’t believe there are stories out there of somebody just going viral---there's a backstory of someone doing the work, developing the story, asking the questions, finding a pattern, and using that work to grow the audience or customer base."

• "Shift out of the concept of ‘I’m working on this’ to ‘this is really done’."
• "If you don’t know the solution, break the problem down into the things that you do know, and point out the steps that you don’t know."
• "Follow your instincts and pay attention to programs like CHF, which are going to put you in a mindset to stand your ground, look after yourself, and understand clearly what you want to accomplish."
• "For an artist, we’re looking for a verifiable, completed task, as well as a focus that drives momentum."
• "Preparing an IGP clarifies the mind so now you’re starting to focus on what’s consistent with your goals."
• "It doesn’t matter what your art is, if your intention is to earn a living from it and thrive in your art, that proposal will help you figure out how you’re going to get there.”

Aaron Laux is an artist who makes 100% of his income from his art—a rarity in the profession. In this episode, Aaron and podcast host Daniel DiGriz discuss Aaron’s business model and the Business Accelerator Program. A recent graduate of the fellowship’s first year, Aaron explains how he expanded his business to explore and utilize more avenues of sale. Listen to the 45-minute episode for Aaron’s ideas on the new and emerging art world models that favor working artists.

• “Being able to wear two different hats and switch back and forth between different ways of thinking—it’s something that I wasn’t doing when I was young; I was more focused on the art and the adventure.”
• “What’s been great about this whole process is creating a momentum which involves all of the Fellows, and the ongoing evolution of business concepts.”
• “My goals have evolved. I was at a transition point, and Accelerator pointed me in the direction of other avenues of sale and different approaches; from working with galleries, to commissions, to e-commerce.”
• “I realized I can revisit this project I was working on six years ago—to build a solar photovoltaic sculpture that’s functional, but also aesthetically beautiful—I have the skills I need to create this project and make an Investment-Grade Proposal to find commission or investors for it.”
• “The Accelerator program has broadened my mind to how my art is relevant and how I can make money from it.”

• “There are ways to give clients more choices, to commission art that they want.”
• “Collectors aren’t buying the same way that they used to; they’re not buying at shows, but we’re seeing new art fairs and a status quo in terms of how fairs are run. If organizers employed a shared-risk approach, I think we’d see much more creativity in how these shows are put together.”
• “I do like the concept of Community Supported Art Projects generally, in that putting up initial funds could help create a steady cash flow for artists.”
• “Being able to talk directly with your potential clients is huge; I’ve learned a lot by starting out with art fairs, but fairs that share the risk more evenly offer a model that’s more artist-friendly.”

• “Surviving as an artist is a big deal. I’ve definitely felt like I’ve had to quit at moments, but with tenacity and support of loved ones, something always comes up.”
• “The world of corporate and public art commissions is very competitive—before, I wasn’t even playing the game—now I’m in the game.”
• “It’s been an evolution to be a professional artist, and it’s taken me a long time to get here….I’m coming around to really seeing this as not only what I do, but my lifestyle and my income.”

Artist and illustrator Melissa Whitaker works full-time for companies across the US, bringing her signature pop-graphic-noir style to their branding and storytelling. Melissa’s clients include Madpipe and Free Agent Source. Commissions include food and beverage, real estate, and medical industries—as well cover art for authors and musicians. Her work has been exhibited in LA, San Francisco, KC, and St. Louis. If you happen to be her part of the world, look for her new billboard for the Arts Council Southern Missouri; it’s a satisfying full circle from when she was featured on that same billboard years ago as a real estate agent. Whitaker made the commitment to a full-time art career later on as an adult: she kick-started her art-business skills with CHF and never looked back. itsallintheart.com

• “Companies want to tell the story of who they are, and why they do what they are doing. Maybe they can’t find the perfect stock photography for their business. They will come to me to illustrate their story, and make their website or material, even their PowerPoint presentations, stand out from the rest.”
• “Companies are adapting to be able to reach out to people who are not socializing much anymore. They’ve got to put that personality into their marketing presentations. I see new people coming in for personal illustrations: I’m talking to a real estate agent right now who wants to make herself stand out from all the other agents out there. So I’m excited!”
• “A whole new world of crypto art is coming out. It works a lot like Bitcoin where you can take your digital artwork and you basically encrypt it, where the person who’s buying that is buying the original—virtual original in a way—so it’s not just a digital copy. And that has value to it.”

• “The client will tell me: ‘I want a subway station platform.’ I will put myself there, thinking: ‘if I am on the subway, if I get off the subway and I’m on that platform and I’m waiting…How am I going to stand? How am I going to see that train? Where is the train coming from? Who are the people around me? And that’s what goes into the picture. So I would say a lot of myself goes into the picture because I put myself there.”
• “I’ll talk with the client and I get a sense of what they are looking for. A lot of questions come out, such as what kind of mood are you looking for? What do you want your customer to feel when they look at this? What is your objective? All of that is information that is needed in order to tell the story accurately.”
• “In today’s culture, a lot of people refer to movies. They’ll say, ‘I’m thinking of The Transporter,’ or ‘I’m thinking of 80s music’ and they’ll give me a playlist. That puts me into the zone and it will come out in the art. I try to put everything, all of me, into the art—so whatever is going in, is coming out into the art.
• “Sometimes I’ll do rough drafts to get an idea of what the customer wants. And there are times where I have an image in my head and I’ll just do the whole thing and send it to them, because sometimes the client doesn’t know what they want until they see it. Or they can’t envision the rough draft in the final completion of the project.”
• “There are struggles at times. There are directions I want to go, and the client has to pull me back and say no, no, no, that’s that’s the wrong way. Or, ‘that looks really fun but we can’t go there.’ So that can be difficult, but often I will go ahead and still create it because I can always use it somewhere else. I’m very open to change and adapting because I will always try to make something work.”

• “If it’s a complex illustration with several individual people—each...

Arree Chung is an author, illustrator, designer and art director in the gaming industry, and founder of Storyteller Academy. In this episode, Arree and Daniel discuss a storytelling approach to branding, how to build one business that leverages another, and how Arree navigated failures and big breaks to become an illustrator and entrepreneur.

• “In today’s world, you can study on YouTube, but you’re looking for the best information, and for the thriving community that supports you, so you grow together.”
• “The things that art school doesn’t prepare you for? I’d say it’s really business and marketing—I have so many friends that are artists and they all say that they wished they learned more business.”
• “The best way to learn business is to start doing it.”
• “We’re taught to get jobs, but not how to start a business or be entrepreneurial.”
• “The truth of business is that you not only need a great service or product, but you need a marketing machine that gets you out there and gets awareness. You have to have a process of making sales, consistently.”

• “I have always kept the rights to all my art, and at some point those can be licensed—you can grow a licensing strategy from the artwork that you make.”
• “Most artists want to focus on making art, but if you don’t focus on your channels 50% of the time, you’re not going to get enough traffic to close sales.”
• “Do things fast and experiment.”
• “A business plan is a roadmap, but you need to make sure it’s not just untested numbers on a spreadsheet.”
• “Ask your customer what their needs are, build solutions around that, and develop your business plan from those needs.”

• “I learned about product/market fit—I thought there was a great business opportunity, but I learned otherwise by being in the market.”
• “In retrospect, I’ve learned the value of marketing and how to reach your target audience. I think my first business could have worked if I had more marketing experience and knew how to target customers better.”
• “One mistake I made is to try to develop too many [social] channels at the same time, and didn’t do a good job with any of them.”
• “Building a business is a lot of work, but it’s also a creative endeavor.”

John Furth is the CEO of the advisory group Furth & Associates. A consultant for over 26 years, he has held senior positions as the head of strategy groups at Hitachi Consulting, Discovery Communications and Sony Corporation. John is also author of a forthcoming book, Fearless Disruption: A Guide to the New Realities of Business and Leadership in the 21st Century. This show’s topics include:

• “There has been a shift, and with that shift business people have learned that the softer side of life plays a huge role in non-success and success–that’s become a much more prominent part of business in the last 40 years.”
• “What makes a great leader, great CEO, a great artist—the common thread is that they are committed to continuous learning. They’re on a mission to not let themselves get blindsided by things they don’t know.”
• “Successful people say ‘Yeah, I failed, but I did learn, and this is how I’ll apply it to the next thing I do.'”
• “You have to disrupt your mindset—a belief can get in the way of your growth.”

• “You listen to the stories the CEO and his team are constructing as they go along, and you’re listening for things that don’t make sense: mindset issues, beliefs about business that are either not logical or not true.”
• “When is it time to hire a Chief Marketing Officer, or expand a portfolio of products? That’s part of growth and decision-making—that’s a learned skill, and it’s hard to do that without a mentor or group of people that can help you navigate your decision-making.”
• “The number one reason why a company fails is very simple—they run out of money. You have to be financially secure, in any situation, to build and grow.”
• “The key skill set that a business person needs to have is the ability to get insights and to learn, and not just be comfortable with a few data points.”

• “A lot of people come to me when they have found that somehow, it’s not working the way they thought it would, and it’s because they’re actually not clear on what it is they’re trying to achieve.”
• “The most powerful thing for someone trying to start something—be it an artist or building a company—you have to know and be really clear about what exactly it is you want. You get what you want, and if you don’t know what you want, you don’t get anything.”
• “The difference between someone who’s successful and less successful is their ability to identity what they want, and take steps to get there.”
• “You really do need to navigate growth and understand what’s going to come next—the challenge for young entrepreneurs is they do not know what they don’t know.”

Eric is the Chairman, Publisher, and CEO of Streamline Publishing, Inc. which publishes Fine Art Connoisseur and PleinAir Magazine. A career entrepreneur, Eric has 30 years’ experience launching companies and media brands, as well as a decade in the art industry, working with collectors and organizing art conventions. In this episode, Eric discusses the difference between digital and analogue consumption of art, how to meet the needs of the market while staying true to your vision, and advice for artists navigating the gallery world. Here are a few highlights:

• “I believe that the Masters of today who are still relatively young—the Jacob Collins’ and Grayden Parrish’s and people of that ilk—they’ll see a surge in pricing in their paintings. Younger people following in their footsteps will have thriving careers in their lifetime. This movement is driven by doing something different and not being part of the mainstream.”
• “We’re getting a sense of something from young folks who say ‘I don’t get this modern or abstract stuff’—to them, this resurgence of Old Masters style has become new and fresh. They are criticized for doing something considered avant garde and almost wrong, yet it’s the exact thing that happened when representational painting came out.”
• “The rise of ateliers—and the resurgence of Figurative Art—shows that these people needed a home and chance to be together, to realize that people all over the world were interested in this.”

• “When you look at a digital picture of a piece of art on your Instagram feed, it looks good, but it doesn’t look nearly as good as when you see it in print, which of course doesn’t look nearly as good as when you see it in person. This is one of the big challenges, because we need to get people out there looking at art in person.”
• “I can do things with digital that I can’t do with print—in our digital edition we have 15-20 additional pages that we don’t do in print, because it’s very expensive. So we give digital subscribers more content, and it’s a beautiful thing to be able to do that.”
• “Everything we’re doing today digitally will be old tomorrow. There will be something completely different and new in two, five, or ten—someone will invent something to completely disrupt things, and as an artist, you have to play all the angles.”
• “I have a friend who buys all his art on an auction site—I don’t know if he’s ever set foot in an art gallery. But I also know people who will not buy a piece of art until they can see it in person.”
• “Buyers today wants to be able to research, they want to read about the artist online—so I don’t want anybody else in charge of my brand.”

• “My motto when we started the businesses, is that I would never do anything that I didn’t love.”
• “The galleries that are failing are the ones that aren’t being contemporary in how to operate businesses.”
• “I think the slippery slope with marketing is it can accomplish anything except for good painting—we’ve all seen artists who make so much money and we don’t understand why they’re succeeding because we don’t respect the art that they’re making. Marketing can in fact accomplish selling bad stuff.”
• “The problem is there’s this belief that if you put it online, you’ll sell a lot of art, but it’s not true. You can’t put...

Alexis Clements is a Brooklyn-based artist, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Her writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Bitch Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Guardian, Nature, and she is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic. She has led workshops and moderated panels exploring labor issues within the arts. In this episode, Alexis and podcast host Daniel DiGriz discuss the economic realities of arts labor. Alexis provides a careful and nuanced examination of the forces impacting payment for visual artists, organizing efforts in the US and beyond, and philanthropy in the arts.

• “There’s an enormous amount of shame around money, particularly when people aren’t earning a lot of it, and there’s shame around excess money—in the art world, you have both groups meeting up against each other: at the top you have people spending huge sums of money to purchase artwork, and at the bottom, people are ashamed to talk about money because they think they’re the only ones not making any.”
• “The art market is intensely unstable and variable for an individual artist—the stats about ‘the good years’ in terms of making money over the course of a career puts it at 2.2 out of 16 years. That’s how it works—you don’t get career retrospectives at MoMA every year, you get one.”
• “The artist’s income is incredibly variable, so you have to have something that builds stability, even if you’re the 1% artist–even for those artists, there’s instability.”
• “I just gave a talk where I mentioned the two primary myths of success in the arts. One: ‘In order to be successful I must make all of my money off of my creative output alone’, and two: ‘I should spend all my time on my creative output.’ Those are complete myths.”
• “Artists are trying to access the data and find out what the earnings are for artists—‘how much income is derived from creative work?’ is a particularly thorny question.”
• “There is a shame around making money off of swag or reproductions or something else that isn’t art—but that is making money off of art.”

• “Art is unpredictable, the kind of content that we really crave and want in art is often very provocative, and funders in the nonprofit space are excruciatingly risk-averse…this makes it very difficult for artists to access money to generate genuinely provocative work.”
• “Some great models I’ve seen in terms of philanthropy are people pooling resources together rather than individual funders, because the nonprofit system in the US—like the visual arts marketplace—encourages nonprofits and funders to think of each other as competition and that they need to put their personal mark on things.”
• “People have been trying to get rid of the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] for a really long time….I hope everyone listening to this knows that when there are right-leaning people in power, the discussion becomes ‘let’s defund the NEA’—it’s an annual tradition.”
• “People respond to art because it’s insightful or mixes things up in exciting ways and most humans understand that it’s a form of innovation and it’s part of what makes art so important to our culture—what has happened is the proliferation of the ‘creative economy’ has cheapened the understanding of what creativity really is.”

• “Artists are a constituency; by collaborating and...

Seth Hopkins is the Executive Director of the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, GA. In this episode, Seth and podcast host Daniel DiGriz discuss how artists get involved with museums—securing shows and becoming part of the permanent collection—as well as catching the curator’s eye and boosting an art career. See below for highlights, and listen to the hour-long show for a detailed look at museum collaboration.

• “We push the boundaries of Western art and expose our audience to new artists they may not be aware of, and balance that with more familiar artists.”
• “An Ansel Adams show creates fast growth of our membership, which gives way to shows by other artists.”
• “Zoe Urness shot some very provocative images at the Standing Rock protest, one of which was considered for a Pulitzer, and this will be the first museum show of her work—that’s the bookend to an Ansel Adams show.”
• “We can make the market bigger so that more artists can make a living.”

• “Art is a cool business—it’s the only one I know where the customer often buys dinner.”
• “With a new show, it’s as often our idea as it is a gallery owner’s suggestion, an artist who contacts us directly, a collector—the ideas can come from anywhere.”
• “Gallery friends are important to us, to introduce us to collectors and new artists.”
• “I tell the galleries, ‘you should help us find these collectors and help us network with them’ because the end result is they help us buy more, and better, art.”

• “If you’ve expressed interest in working with the museum, that’s plenty, and we’ve had shows that have developed in that very way.”
• “If you don’t go into art with tenacity from the beginning, I don’t see how you’re going to make it.”
• When contacting a museum, “you don’t have to be passive, but you don’t want to be a nuisance.”
• “The artists that galleries end up adding are very good, and fit the gallery profile—the artist has done their homework, can say how they see themselves fitting with that gallery, and they’ve created some of their own market.”

Dr. Catherine Futter is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Starting her career as a decorative arts curator, she now focuses on contemporary art, and projects that explore how visitors participate with works of art. Catherine provides listeners with an in-depth look at the ways artists and curators execute an exhibition, and what it’s like to work with a museum curator. Listen to the episode and leave a review to let us know what you think. 

• “Something sparks your interest, you find an artist who touches a nerve. There’s something about the work that you want to show to the public, that will open the visitor’s eyes and make them see the world in different ways.”
• “It’s about having the conversation: ‘are you still following this path, is there something you’ve always wanted to try?’—it’s those conversations that lead us to the exhibition.”
• “There’s that excitement of seeing work you’ve never seen before, and working with an artist who is pushing their work in new directions with something they’ve always wanted to try.”

• “I think our entire field is about personal relationships. A collector, intellectually, gives a piece to a museum, and yet they give it because of the relationship with the director, the curator, or the conservator.”
• “That’s what I would miss if I stopped curating—working with living artists, and those conversations that open my mind about what art can be, what our lives can be, and how our lives can be transformed.”
• “If there’s an artist with work that doesn’t quite fit with the museum, we can still tell collectors, ‘This is somebody I think we should all be watching.’ And that can take you different places—relationships are so important.”

• “I met with Claire Twomey on a project, we sat at her table playing with plastic cups and paper, had a fantastic conversation and it moved the project forward.”
• “The most disappointing studio visit was when I had been so excited by this one artist’s work, but the artist responded with: ‘just tell me the schedule, the budget, and the space.’ That’s not the way I like to work.”
• “I consider these projects that I’ve worked on an experimentation, in that we’re all working together to move an artist forward in the projects they want to do.“

• “Project-oriented artists can be torn between if they should be in the marketplace with work that’s collectible, or whether the interaction with community is vital to their work. There’s that balance between wanting to do your work, and being able to survive while doing your work.“
• “As a mentee, it has certainly furthered my career as I got insights into strategical thinking and strategic planning: if you want to get from point A to point D, what is your path going to be? Maybe it’s not a straight line.”
• “It’s not about sending curators slides or images of your work—that rarely goes anywhere. It’s exposure. Or it’s other curators saying ‘Hey, I met this person, maybe you’d like to work with them.’ We talk to each other all the time. Getting your work where it can be seen is very important.”

• “They’re not separate at all—the market and museum—there are galleries now where there’s very little work in the exhibition that’s for sale....

Holly Van Hart is a visual artist based in Silicon Valley, and a Clark Hulings Fund Business Accelerator Fellow. In this episode of the Thriving Artist Podcast™, Holly and Daniel discuss the ins and outs of building a sustainable business practice: deciding on the direction to take your business, standing out in the online marketplace, and how collaboration benefits a business plan.

• “I sell my work through galleries and licensing, interior designers, and directly to buyers. With each of these, I get to know the players, which one is a match, and pay attention for when they’re ready to take on new artists.”
• “It’s important to stay connected with all the people in the art world you want to work with, but also other artists with similar tracks.”
• “With multiple artists, I’ll have phone calls to trade ideas, referrals, best practices—sharing specifics so I can learn from them in a way that’s beyond what I could read in a book—real life examples of what’s working today for individual artists who are on some track that’s similar to mine.”
• “Staying connected helps you stay accountable. It’s critical to keep these connections and keep learning from other people around us.”

• “I have my plan written down and every day I’m looking at what needs to be done to advance the plan. I think ‘OK, what is the next step to get to the place I want to be.’”
• “I keep a sharp eye out for what seems to be working and what doesn’t so I can shift as needed from one thing to another, or come up with something new.”
• “There are millions of great artists in the world, you have to do something to get yourself above the noise of it all.”
• “I don’t mind letting people see the process and where I go wrong, that’s part of the creative process and what people are interested in.”
• “I had sales experience in the tech world, and you get used to hearing a lot of ‘no’s’ before you hear a ‘yes’, so I learned to roll with that.”

• “Artists have to be held accountable and produce measurable results—they have a client base to please.”
• If you make art as a hobby—which I did for many years—you can just make it and if it doesn’t sell, no worries. But if it’s your profession, you need to have a plan.”
• “As an artist you are creating your own career and business, it’s a blank slate you can write for yourself.”
• “The sky’s the limit no matter what you’re selling, that’s part of the opportunity and part of the challenge, because you can get distracted going down a path that doesn’t yield much. You need to find the right combination that works for you.”
• “You need multiple [revenue] channels: I love making original work more than taking the steps to sell prints, but getting your work out there in a broader way is good for everybody—for the artist and those who are selling the artist.”

Stephanie Birdsall is a painter who has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London and the National Arts Club in New York. She has received over 60 awards in national and international juried exhibitions, including Best in Show at the Bridgeport Museum of Arts and Science, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of the Everglades. When she isn’t traveling to paint en plein air, she teaches painting workshops and is the producer of two DVDs on painting.

• “When you’re around master painters, you can’t help but learn from them, but it’s really about putting in the miles, getting the work done.”
• “When Richard invited me to join the Putney Painters, that was a massive confidence boost because it meant that what I was doing was real.”
• “When you have support and people believe in what you’re doing—and that can come from a painting group—that makes a difference.”

• “One thing I say to people who are just getting started: it’s really important to find the right gallery because galleries play to different collectors.”
• “People think galleries are becoming obsolete, but I love them because they’re an opportunity to see work in person that you don’t see online.”
• “I love my galleries and I love social media too, so I try to make them support each other.”
• “You need to be aware that galleries may not be selling you, so it’s important to find a gallery that your work looks like it belongs in.”

• To make painting a viable business “you have to plan in advance: what shows you’ll be in, where you’ll submit, and you need to feed your galleries. I really look at it like a job.”
• “Someone approached me to teach a painting workshop and since then, I find that I’m becoming a better artist and teaching has made me a better painter.”
• “I was doing a demo for a vendor, another vendor asked me to teach at a convention and then people wanted to learn how to do what I do. I started to get invited to teach.”
• “As a true artist, one always wants to be open to learning, so if I can learn from someone else’s workshop, I’ll take it in a second.”

• “In a perfect world all I would do is paint, but our society isn’t like that anymore. Things move so fast with social media, you have to keep on top of your business to stay in front of people.”
• “I see a lack of confidence standing in people’s way, they don’t trust what they’re thinking, they don’t trust what they’re painting, and as soon as they get a little confident I see a huge change.”

Gregg Chadwick is a Santa Monica–based artist who has been painting for three decades, and his work has been exhibited in national and international galleries, art fairs, and museums. He’s given many lectures on the arts, including speaking engagements at UCLA and Categorically Not—a forum that examines the intersection of art and science. Gregg is also a Fellow in The Clark Hulings Fund’s 2017 Business Accelerator Program.

• “All art has a political stance whether it’s on the surface or boiling underneath.”
• “Every day something new happens in the world and art is really primed to look at those global changes and shifts.”
• “The history of oil paintings is so deep that it allows artists to address issues with a very subtle touch.”

• “If you’re in your studio by yourself, people aren’t going to come looking for you. If you’re on social media, you’re communicating globally, and there are things that can only happen in that forum.”
• “I’ve had a number of people contact me over the years looking for particular paintings that I’ve shown online, even if they were previous works on older platforms like Flickr.”

• “Art dealers are on Twitter, and I like to create subject matter that, when it’s Googled, my name comes up.”
• “Social media allows you to sow the seeds of your work and who you are. People want to get to know you a little bit, who the artist is—it’s not just a product.”
• “The collectors who want to be connected to the artists are able to do that. That community and camaraderie is there. It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something significant, and it drives me to keep going, to keep my audience happy.”

• “The difficult thing is putting thoughts into numbers, having an organized system that you’re continually using to propel your business from one level to another.”
• “The encouragement and enthusiasm from the [Accelerator] program and other Fellows has led us to have bigger dreams and bigger ideas that we now know can come to fruition.”
• “This is a group of like-minded individuals in which we can talk about our work and challenges together.”

Ron Whitmore co-owns and operates Artisan, an art-supply store that serves as a community hub for artists in its two locations—Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Ron also spearheads the largest artist material expo in New Mexico, featuring more than 100 workshops, and is the host of Art Fusion, a radio show that brings together musicians and visual artists to talk about their creative processes.

• “In the store, we have our own radio show. We’re giving artists press, offering yoga classes, art workshops. We have a life-drawing class and free demos. We offer services that are interesting to artists.”
• “Artists are sharing their knowledge with us in the store all the time. It makes shopping an experience instead of just getting the cheapest thing online.”
• “We run the materials expo every two years, we have stayed with it and have relationships with all these manufacturers, most of whom are friends.”

• “The digital age has changed the way artists are marketing their work here. Some of them are doing it very successfully. They have pulled out of galleries. They’re selling it directly and getting 100% of the commission.”
• “The whole gallery scene has changed, and the way artists are marketing their work has changed.”
• “Artists are marketing themselves on Facebook. They have sales models on their website. They can sell and ship through that.”
• “Since there’s more self-marketing, artists need business savvy to know how to get where people are looking.”

• “Artists have to have a name before making reproductions. A lot of artists jump on it too soon, and their originals aren’t valued enough.”
• “Artists document their work now; they take pictures at different stages of their work because there’s some deception with artists using print and computers to draw their work.”
• “Oil painting, pastel, and watercolor are still popular, but now there’s digital arts and spray-paint; there’s a lot more urban art going on. Acrylics have taken over as a major new medium, and there are constant changes in those materials.”
• “We used to do Clark Hulings giclées, and they were so popular; when a giclée came out we could sell it for hundreds of dollars, instead of thousands for original prints.”
• “It’s not like our society supports a lot of artists; it’s not like the old mentorships when you worked with a great artist. Now, being an artist is expensive.”

• “The bottom line is art is a business, and you need some sort of marketing plan. You need to be able to go out and see galleries, get your site updated, be able to mail to your list, and get collectors and keep track of them.”
• “The people who get seen are the ones with the drive and the business concepts.”
• “The ones that believe they don’t need any marketing, that they’ll be discovered because they’re that good—it doesn’t really work like that.”
• “An artist recently said this to me about success: ‘You really just keep doing what you feel you need to be doing and if you do it long enough people believe it too’.”

In the second episode of this two-part podcast, Carolyn Edlund weighs-in on how artists can shift their sales strategies and build an art business that will weather these tough times, as well as being resilient to future changes. Contrary to popular belief, collectors are buying art right now, and artists can zoom in on their relationships, update their platforms, and define or redefine their target markets to make this work in their favor.

Carolyn is Sales & Events Director at CHF and our faculty subject matter expert on Sales Strategy. She is the founder of ArtsyShark—and brings a background as an artist, former ED of the Arts Business Institute, years in art-publishing and licensing, and extensive experience in curriculum development and seminars for artists. Work with Carolyn & the CHF Faculty online at the Virtualize Your Art Career™ Conference October 19-30.

• “There are opportunities to really grow your business. I’ve spoken to several artists lately who are making more sales than ever before. Now, how in the world is this happening? I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘What!? Who’s doing that?’ The artists who are making these sales have given some deep thought to how they are going to go virtual with their marketing and sales strategies. And they’re going 100 percent in that direction, using tools online that are helping them reach an audience who is actually very hungry to buy right now.”
• “Everybody is sitting at home, people are bored, they’re shopping and they are buying art. We know that’s happening. We know there has been an uptick in art sales. So the people that I see who are succeeding—when I get down into the weeds with them, like, ‘What are you actually doing?’ It turns out that they’ve got systems built into their business that are very methodical for drawing an audience, introducing them to their work, getting them with a hook, and then selling their work. And then selling more work to them. They’re building a very sustainable business with repeat sales, which is what we want to do in any environment. It is possible to do that during a pandemic.”

• “I love repeat sales because it’s easier to sell to an existing customer. They’re the foundation for an ongoing business—where you have existing sales that happen again and again. Part of that is leveraging the work that you sell. I talk about that when I teach sales strategy, and I’m going to be talking more about that in our conference: are you leveraging your collector by selling to them over and over? Are you leveraging your work by selling the next piece in a set? It’s a way of thinking: what do I have that’s going to appeal to people? What can I offer them if I want to keep them as customers, and as eager customers, who will want to own more of my work?”

• “The market has evolved over the last 20-25 years toward the empowerment of the individual artist. We’ve seen it in other industries. If we look at, for example, the movie industry, back in the day the studios owned all the actors and they would say, ‘You’re doing four movies this year,’ or ‘I’m going to loan you out to Warner Brothers.’ And they would direct the career of the ‘stable’ of actors that they would control. Nowadays, we see actors who are now directing their own production companies. They have their collaborations. They are free, they are empowered. They can do the projects that they choose to do and they’re setting their own career paths. Visual artists are in much the same position. It is not always emotionally easy to step up and say: ‘Yeah, I’m...

Maria Brophy is an art-business consultant and the author of Art, Money, & Success. She got her start managing her husband’s surf-art business (drewbrophy.com), and she applies that experience to her work with other artists. Her areas of expertise include licensing and the creation of multiple income streams. In this podcast, she discusses the importance of identifying a niche, the ways that licensing is used for different mediums, and how to make your art career profitable. 

• “If you want to have a successful art career, you have to view yourself as a business owner, and to remain in business you need cash flow, profit, and growth.” 
• “There are absolutely benefits to artists managing their own careers; it’s difficult to find an agent who will manage everything for you.”
• “It’s absolutely feasible to be able to earn six figures, but you have to think like a businessperson: you have to charge for everything. Don’t eat extra costs; pass those costs on to the client.”
• “There are ways to make everything you do profitable.”

• “If you are painting every subject matter and in every kind of medium, you won’t connect with anyone.”
• “If you can work within a niche and market yourself within it, it’s incredibly powerful. There’s a lot of power in being a big fish in a small pond.”
• “A lot of artists don’t realize they have a niche, and it’s right under their noses.”
• “You find a way to connect with people, to reach those buyers that will connect with your work, because they share a love for the thing you’re doing.”

• “The artists who make millions from their art are not the most talented, but they’ve hit on something that mass amounts of people really enjoy.”
• “Don’t go the traditional route of licensing, but look for opportunities where your art would be the perfect solution for a company.”
• “Tell clients your requirements and say, ‘This is how I work.’ Those are the five magic words.”
• “When you sign your agreement with a gallery make sure it’s not exclusive to anywhere other than their area. You should have the freedom to show your work in any other gallery outside that geographic area.”
• “When you’re younger, it’s fun to get that pat on the back, but you learn quickly that a pat on the back doesn’t pay the mortgage.”

• “Choose which market you want to be in: the high-end marketplace of galleries, the low-end marketplace of Etsy, or somewhere in the middle. Then follow the rules of that market.”
• “If you’re struggling with pricing, you can follow simple formulas such as figuring out a daily, weekly, and monthly rate. It’s good for working on new projects or one-off projects.”
• “If you don’t stay in front of people, they will forget about you. Everybody on the planet knows what Coca-Cola is, but even Coca-Cola advertises!”

Dean Mitchell is a nationally recognized painter of figures, landscapes, and still lifes, and his work often depicts themes from his southern upbringing. He’s won top honors from the National Watercolor Society and American Watercolor Society. Among the museums that house his work are the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and the St. Louis Art Museum. Dean is also a member of CHF’s advisory board.

• “I had to figure out a platform in which I could get known. The competitions started early on and that’s how I started nationally and internationally.”
• “Shows were the best way I knew to level the playing field. I did try to get grants, but that didn’t work out for me. Competitions worked out for me.”
• “Galleries have other artists they’re representing. And so I’d look around and think ‘how am I going to separate myself from the pack?’ So I’ve always looked at ways to market myself.”
• “Galleries are interested in selling the work. I was interested in getting known and [wanted] to be part of a conversation nationally.”
• “I’ve been in small towns and people think ‘there’s no art market there,’ but some of those people who live in those small towns are friends with people who are in the museum world.”
• “Galleries are a piece of the puzzle, but they are not the complete puzzle.”
• “When I did my first book, galleries told me ‘don’t do that, it’s a bad deal.’ And after my book, one of the galleries that said that, it’s sales tripled. That told me right there marketing was a huge part of it.”

• “I don’t think I could ever get too well known that I wouldn’t want to do them. Why should I quit the very thing that gave me the platform for the voice I have?”
• “Shows were the best way I knew to get my name out there because they also did catalogues, and those catalogues became a marketing tool for my work.”
• “I thought the best way to build my platform was put my work in front of my peers, particularly in shows where they were giving out prize money. Sometimes when a painting wins a prize, a collector will suddenly be interested in it.”
• “You have to be your own critic. Sometimes the painting that’s edgy, collectors don’t necessarily want; but curators and museum directors who are judging shows like [it]. That’s something I think artists have to recognize.”
• “In order to get attention, I have to merit attention. I can’t just say ‘oh, I’m a great artist.’”

• “I’ve had galleries say to me ‘oh, we can’t sell that’. But the paintings they said they couldn’t sell, ended up selling for $40,000 each. So I will not have someone tell me what to paint.”
• “I’m controlling this narrative; no one else can control it. How someone wants to perceive it? That’s up to them. I have nothing to do with that.”
• “The brand isn’t consciously created. I’ve always, as an artist, explored my own emotions.”
• “I’m no Salvador Dalí, but I have built enough of a market that now I can start to work on leaving a legacy.”

• “I looked at watercolors and thought ‘people are not willing to pay as much for these. This could possibly be another competition entry that’s a little less expensive.’”
• “I recognized...

Mary Ann is the founder and owner of Weems Galleries & Framing, with two locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico—the first of which opened in 1981. The galleries’ holdings represent a wide range of styles, priced from five dollars to $8K, but Mary Ann emphasizes affordable art. A dedicated supporter of the Albuquerque arts scene, she also ran a major art festival there for 32 years, which drew 50K+ customers in its final year.

• “Affordability has always been looked down upon. Art in the earlier days was always for the wealthy. And what you’re doing in creating affordable art is you’re taking artists who are willing to receive less for their artwork, which does not mean they’re lesser artists; you’re giving them a chance.”
• “I learned early that what I liked wasn’t the [popular] taste, I couldn’t use my taste alone. It was a balance … Price was absolutely imperative.”
• “We used to tell the artists, you can’t always look at time [to price it]. You’re going to have to put it in a price range that someone walks in and is inspired to buy it because it’s beautiful.”
• “Average people were very afraid to walk into galleries. Affordability became the key. You didn’t feel the intimidation.”

• “I loved marketing. I realized artists (and this is a generalization) were very poor business people. My idea was to teach them and take it out of the ivory tower.”
• “I’ve told my artists: get out of the state you’re living in. You have to travel and get into other markets. Get out to other galleries, or do the art fairs.”
• “When I entered the Arts and Crafts Fair in New Mexico in 1982, the highest-priced item in my booth was $100. And I sold out. I had a ball and made incredible friends, and I developed followers. Looking at other artists who weren’t doing as well as I was, they weren’t recognizing their audience.”

• “Trustworthiness. There is a tremendous amount of fraud in the art world. Hard work, seven days a week when I first started.”
• “I am an artist, so I get it. When we [at the gallery] get some money in, the artist gets paid. We have a very good reputation.”
• “If an artist sells through their own site, but feels as though the sale initiated through our gallery, they will bring us that commission…artists should have some loyalty to their gallery, too.”

• “[People] who buy art off the Internet are idiots if they’re not familiar with the artist. Seeing art in person and knowing what it looks like [is imperative].”
• “I’ve known multiple people who frame what they bought on the Internet and say ‘that just doesn’t look like what I bought’.”
• “The other thing I do differently is we have a ‘check-out’ program: you come into the gallery, check out the piece and you have it for 48 hours. So you get to see that piece in your home prior to purchasing. It’s very important to see how it changes with night [and] morning light in your home.”

• “It has changed rapidly since the 80s and 90s.”
• “I have seen a generation of younger people who appear not to have an appreciation for art and who will fill their wall with an 80-inch TV, and in the days prior to that being available, would fill it with a beautiful piece of art.
• “[Galleries] will have to be very smart and give the best service possible…and have a broader range of artwork.”
• “The gallery can’t be threatened by a fair, and the artist can’t be threatened by sending [people] to the gallery.”
• “When I sell, I tell [the customer] ‘you are not buying a product, you are buying this person… you are buying someone’s sweat,...

Betsy Ehrenberg is the founder of Glass Alliance New Mexico and Glass Alliance of Northern California, organizations that further the development and appreciation of glass art. She is also a business strategy coach and president of Bridges to Santa Fe, a company that helps businesses achieve their goals through marketing and product design consulting. Also, Betsy’s company is co-sponsoring an upcoming event called the Santa Fe Art Business Summit (now at capacity), in collaboration with the Clark Hulings Fund and the Art Business Institute.

• “Sometimes they [artists] think earning money, charging for their work, is not something they want to do. They feel embarrassed to do so. It’s an attitude, I have no idea where it begins, but a lot of artists just look at the word ‘money’ and see a four letter word.”
• “They need training on how to differentiate themselves, how to price their work properly, how to reach out to collectors. They’re not getting this in university.”
• “What is copyrighting? What is trademarking? What is the difference, and how do you know of you even want to copyright or trademark your artwork?”
• “Each artist has their own little concern. One of them is pricing. They don’t know whether they should be pricing their work based upon the material that they use, or on the time it takes, or whether they are pricing their work because it looks like somebody else’s, in context.”
• “The art educators, in many cases, have not been successful artists as measured by the amount of money they are able to make because they are an artist. They’re really not aware of the skills that they should have, and therefore, they’re not even teaching the artist the skills that they need to have, and should be able to demonstrate once they decide they’re going to make a living as an artist.”
• “Artists sometimes abandon the products that they have, that can make them money. They don’t have to do that…If it’s so popular, it’s okay, I believe, for them to get fabricators to help them make more of them. Artists often don’t want to even entertain that thought.”

• “With over 200 galleries in Santa Fe, the participants will have a chance to visit as many galleries as they want, to be able to see how work that they believe is similar to theirs is actually priced.”
• “The organization, the Art Business Institute, so coming to Santa Fe for the first time because, number one, there’s a big audience, and number two, artists from all over the country want to have a chance to experience Santa Fe, an art centric city.”

• “We have invited the art educators from the three universities in Santa Fe, who are teaching artists skills and how to be in business…My goal was to update the three universities on how to teach the business of art.”
• “The instructors are artists, people who have their MBA. They may be making somewhat of a living from selling their art, but because they’re in a learning environment, they want students to be fed a bunch of information, and demonstrate that they’ve learned it, even if the information is irrelevant.”
• “If it is a marketing website and they’re also selling their work in a gallery, the gallery owner is going to be annoyed that the artist is now trying to sell directly to the...

Dan Anthony is a sculptor and has been the business manager for Glenna Goodacre since 1987. After 30 years working together, Glenna Goodacre is retiring. She is known for her work designing the Sacagawea impression on dollar coins, sculpting the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall, and the Irish Famine Memorial at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. Dan Anthony took an hour to tell us about Glenna’s retirement, some important upcoming events, and what he is planning to do next. Her final piece before retirement was created in collaboration with the Clark Hulings Fund, the bas-relief Helping to Push. Topics Include:

• “Glenna wants to wrap things up and to focus on being a grandmother, wife, and friend…. We started an archive project.”
• “We closed down a rental studio we had. We gave away the clay and the tools, the sculpture stands, equipment, Glenna’s sculpture and art books. We gave those last October to the New Mexico School for the Arts, which is an arts-based high school headquartered here in Santa Fe.”
• “Sculpture is very physical and it’s very demanding, and so as sculptors age they really do kind of wind down a bit.”
• The significance of breaking all of Glenna Goodacre’s molds.

• A collaboration between Glenna Goodacre and Clark Hulings, post-mortem.
• “Glenna adored Clark. They were very, very close friends. She met him, we’re guessing, in the early ‘70s in Texas. He was having an exhibition there. She was a fan of his already and went to meet him, and he was of course very gracious, and helpful, and eloquent, and they became fast friends.”
• “After Clark’s death, Elizabeth Hulings wanted Glenna to be involved in the Clark Hulings Fund somehow. Glenna couldn’t travel anymore, so she couldn’t be on the board, but they hit upon this idea of trying to create a bas-relief from one of Clark’s drawings.”
• “Glenna and I agreed to do that [create a bas-relief] before we actually saw the drawing we were going to get. Then, Elizabeth sent out this drawing of the donkeys Helping to Push, which was from one of Clark’s trips to Egypt.”
• “In the relief, it’s unusual in that there are a lot of lines; Clark used a lot of lines in his paintings. You’ll see lines in this that I think give it a unique quality. I think we succeeded in channeling Clark Hulings into the bas-relief.”

• “It’s a retrospective exhibition of Glenna’s work, from her very first piece to almost the last. Clark’s relief is the last thing, but there’s a very late piece in there, so it’s a big retrospective exhibition. It’s wrapping up the career of one of America’s favorite sculptors.”
• “After downsizing, Glenna still had a big personal collection of her own work, and we had a significant inventory of larger works that were scattered around the country.”
• “Moving all of that art into one spot in Scottsdale took months. We still have one sculpture and a two-dimensional work to get out there: 114 lots in total.”
• Find out how you can participate in Glenna’s auction on April 6, 2017.

• “Basically, it’s someone who can do the money work and the paperwork while the artist is making artwork.”
• “As an artist, you need to be as prolific as you can...

Maura Kehoe Collins is an art collections manager and the founding director of Artiphile, an independent art advisory which provides museum-standard services for care and maintenance of private collections. Maura assists artists, private collectors, foundations, estates, and corporations in inventory, assessment, and administration to address the physical and practical needs of a private collection. Topics include:

• What is art collections management?
• “Museums have many departments that are caring for their collections, conservators, registrars, curators, even the maintenance staff you know a whole lot of folks working in an art museum. I try to bring all of those functions into my advisory and provide those services to my client.”
• “Most private art collectors don’t have the information to properly steward a collection.”
• “It’s a special collector that wants to hire and pay someone to do the inventory, do a condition survey, rather than just calling in a conservator to fix a broken thing that they are aware of.”
• Services offered to prevent benign neglect

• “I saw a need for the private collector to care for their works of art more to a museum standard and to recognize their role as stewards – as the temporary custodians to these works of art that should go on and outlive them.”
• “Certainly, a collector’s nature is going to want to buy and collect more and acquire.”
• “It’s not always so much fun to find out that this painting needs $20,000 worth of conservation work immediately just to stop this progressive problem, or just to make it safe for travel because you want to lend it or something.”

• Inventory horror stories
• Importance of UCC Forms
• What should artist be documenting?
• “Documentation is a very important part of the object and the care of collections.”
• “I can’t help anybody or do anything until I have a very clear and accurate kind of accounting of what is there, where is it, and what its condition is, and try to get a handle on that inventory. I consider that the keystone function.”
• For artists: “Be really careful and very detailed about what paper, what materials were used to make this work of art because that information stays with the object. Goes on the bill of sale, it gets into the hand of the collector and then it could get into the hand of the conservator if it should come to that at some point in time. We all know some of the new materials aren’t as stable as older, just oil on canvas there’s been some issues with new materials so the more the conservator can know the better the outcome.”

• “A lot of the framing materials of earlier days were not acid free, so this causes an acidic environment. Then, you have this acid migration that can go from these backboards, the matting and all of this stuff through to the work of art the paper itself. You see discoloration or spots and things start to happen, especially in combination with heat, humidity, and light.”
• “If I could do one thing, I would see that the collectors understood that people who were selling works of art should put on the frame, ‘This frame is temporary.’ Or ‘We don’t know the materials of this frame; please check with your conservation framer that it is sufficient.'”
• “It’s still a great work of art I’m sure with everything you’ve bought, but the frame might not be what you think it is.”

James is founder and president of the National School Art Collective, a non-profit created to develop student curated and student owned fine art collections in high schools. He has developed art collection and is looking to start another at Tippecanoe High School.

• “One of the goals of the National School Art Collective is to bring an art experience to students in a school every day.”
• “A small group of students come together and run the program much like a museum curator would. They make the initial selections. They reach out to the artists. They put together the program to get the artists to submit just like they would for an art competition.”
• “Once the students have narrowed the submissions to a small number, they will put forth the artwork, the artist’s information to the entire student body, and then the student body will end up voting on it on one day. After that, the selections are made.”
• “When we talk about the funding aspect of it that’s where the National School Art Collective would come in is that essentially we would help a school start it and get their feet wet and help give them the tools.”
• “Once you have a number of artworks up in the school, now you’re selling the collection.”
• “The beauty of having professional artwork in a school is that many of those people really have no connection to the art world and this is forming that connection, and hopefully, at an early stage in their life.”
• Next steps for the National School Arts Collective

• “Forming a committee of students was a real key in making sure that the selections were going to be up to a certain standard.”
• “The committee would look at, obviously, the basic elements and principles of design. They would look at the artist’s background, their level of education, the number of shows they had been in, the prices of their artwork, their prestige.”
• “We would also have the artwork on display prior to the event for a few days so they could really see the artwork up close.”
• “Because it’s their collection, it means something to them to have variety, to have a range of work whether it be different types of media, different types of themes, different types of artists, artists who are self-taught, and artists who have multiple degrees and MFAs and so many solo exhibitions that they can’t put it onto two pages on their resume.”
• “I don’t know how many people walk through a gallery in a day, but I can guarantee you at some of these large high schools around the country, we would have anywhere between three and 4,000 people coming through the doors. That was probably a low number at times, especially some of these mega schools.”
• “It changes the atmosphere of a school, and when you walk by and you become engaged in something like that it takes you away from those minor stresses you might have at the moment…”
• “What they hopefully, end up seeing years from now is the interests, the themes, what was happening at that time. Almost like a time capsule because they’re in tune to what’s going on in the world right now.”

• “We’re more mobile now than we used to be in the past, but I get very, very few students that talk about a gallery experience or a museum experience.”
• “Over the years, I’ve seen it even as a teacher that we take fewer and fewer trips to museums. Buses cost money and gas costs money and substitute teachers cost money, so it’s not in the best interest for an administrator to arrange a museum trip…”
• “Young people need to have that experience and the effects can be dramatic over a lifetime. Experiencing an artwork in person is so much different than seeing it on a...

Peter Trippi is editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur, a bi-monthly magazine for collectors of representational paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints. He’s also the president of Projects in 19th Century Art Inc., the firm he established in 2006 to pursue a range of research, writing, and curating opportunities, including the recent traveling exhibition, Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity. Topics include:

• From obscurity to resurrection:  “The resurrection is only partial, let me be clear. Interestingly, Alma-Tadema has been doing just fine on the commercial market.”
• “His pictures, the major ones, now sell in the millions of dollars, at Sotheby’s and Christie’s and Barnham. In fact, there is respect for him, and that has been the case since the 1970s, on an ever-growing basis.”
• “A lot of museums around the United States, Canada, Western Europe own his pictures, but they don’t really know what to do with them.”
• “We decided to tackle him in a new way, and the paintings that we selected reflected that different vantage.”

• “The likability factor of some art is worrisome to some intellectuals. They feel like [some art] is just too accessible to be good.”
• “Alma-Tadema certainly was criticized that way over many decades. People felt that they were well-crafted pictures, but they were too likable, too charming for serious museum display or exhibition. Therefore, they were kept in storage and not really talked about.”
• “It denies the public a chance to see things that they enjoy. Now, balancing that is a little tricky… there is a kind of line where you need to track the balance between popularity and quality.”

• How to get featured in Fine Arts Connoisseur and their “Three to Watch” features
• Why do some artists make it and others don’t?
• “I’m very much a curator on paper. I am thinking about how this is all going to look together and also what is the message of the article.”
• “We don’t just do features on individual artists. We also do themes, and we do a series of hidden collection articles… We’re trying to get people interested in the passions of other people.”
• “Coming to my own little world, with the magazine, absolutely, we want to encourage collectors to collect more discerningly.”
• “Our role is to go one notch down on the fame chart, not on the quality chart, and put in front of our readers those names–whether they’re historical or contemporary–because that’s more of a service.”
• “We’re telling stories, highlighting individuals who are not so familiar. We don’t need to replicate what the mainstream media is doing already.”
• “I felt that this was right because it was very much going to be advocating for quality in the kind of art areas that I support, personally.”

• “All of the issues of legacy are in flux enormously, right now. Part of that has to do with this huge generational shift. As the baby boomers come into legacy planning, there is this frenzy of anxiety about how that’s going to all be rolled out.”
• “How do the works of art get preserved, as people grow ill and pass away? And how does the next generation take care of them and celebrate them, and so on?”
• People who are working today, in their prime, need to be thinking one step ahead as well, because there’s this tidal wave occurring now with that generation of baby boomers.
• “The art world, as interconnected as...

How do you deal with changing industries? How do you make sure that your business remains viable for years to come? Amy Whitaker, author, business person, artist, and Assistant Professor at NYU Steinhardt, addresses these questions and more in her book Art Thinking. As she puts it, “even if you are succeeding at something, you have to force yourself to go back to the drawing board all the time.” Topics Include:

• Design thinking vs. art thinking
• “Facing the blank canvas of having an idea or the direction you want to move but not knowing if you can really get there and having to explore.”
• The importance of “carving out this space of the market to support your own early exploration and forays.”
• “If you’re making a work of art in any field, it’s a process.”
• “This has to do a lot with the things that make a business continually remain viable over time.”

• “I think people are still afraid of the market and people feel that business is a set of rules… People feel like they’re selling out. I don’t think that’s the case.”
• “I think business is incredibly creative and that it’s a set of structural building blocks.”
• “Many of the things that people approach in business – when they’re talking about a business plan or return on investment – they’re really talking about similar things to what happens in art.”
• “As a creative person you can take your way of working, whether that’s as a visual artist or a visual practice artist or a choreographer, and you can move business around like a form.”
• “In the same way that oil paint has its limitations and its advantages, there are things about capitalism that are limited.”
• “Business is a creative design medium where you’re moving around these pieces of class structure and investment return; and you’re figuring out what works for you that supports your practice and feels okay with your politics.”
• “Art world history is littered with examples of artists doing something structurally artistic in the marketplace.”

• “The vector of creativity is curiosity and skepticism; they undergird the process of science but also the disciplines of faith.”
• “You don’t want to be a scientist who has no imagination, and you don’t want to be an artist who has no rigor.”
• “To become the next Google is not to follow the Google template, but to become the next whatever-you-are-trying-to-be from first principles that you believe can be as transformational and as important as Google.”

• “Museums are no longer built in lockstep with the human experience.”
• “People get bored and tired because they’re overwhelmed by the scale of the experience. They feel like they should see a much larger quantity of art than certainly I can take in.”
• “Museums are oriented toward the voice of the art historian as opposed to the voice of the artist… That’s a very different voice than identifying with the artist at the moment the art was made, thinking about it as a process, being a fellow creative traveler, and enjoying the beauty of it.”

After recovering from a health scare, Aletta de Wal took her skills in corporate training and development and applied them to artists in Artist Career Training, a business coaching enterprise that focuses on small group classes, home studies, and one-to-one advisement for artists. She is also the author of My Real Job is Being an Artist, which is the winner of the 2016 Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Voice in Non-fiction.

In this hour long show, Aletta takes the time to talk about her transition from corporate life into artist advisement, and her take on balancing life and business. Topics Include:

• Marketing & the Importance of Consistency
• What is an Artist Advisor, anyway?
• Creating a signature body of work
• “The general curriculum began as one single program; then, I gradually said one size does not fit all.”
• “As I saw artists struggling the last 15 years, I began to realize that most of them are coming to me with some knowledge of what they had to do, but they didn’t know where to start.”
• “Most of them, will take my home study programs, for example, and they’ll go through the first and the second one on their own because I like people to be able to manage their learning as their time demands. Then, they will come to me for some coaching.”

• “If you look at some of the performance management systems that corporations use, they’re elucidating for artists, and I use them in my coaching.”
• “An art business is a business, so artists could use [corporate] tools to look at their careers in a different way.”
• “If corporations could open up to the fact that they use art and artists every day in their business, they could be supporting artists and overall creating a more vibrant economy.”
• “There’s a real need to bring back the essence of what art is for humanity and culture.”

• Art as a hobby
• “Artists have to realize it’s not going to happen in two years, for most of them.”
• “The first thing an artist needs is a very strong body of signature art because if you have that and continually refine it, that takes you back to the reason you’re doing all of this.”
• “The second thing is, if you want a sustainable career then don’t build a business vision that is so far away from where you are now that it feels impossible because you’ll just give up before you really go far.”
• “Artists need to have good work habits. If you don’t go into the studio every day, it’s unlikely you’re going to have a body of work to travel across the country in 25 years or even 50 years unless you’re actively working at that.”
• Artists need to ask themselves, “What do I need to support myself and my family and my art business in the way that I’m accustomed to or want to and what it’s going to take for me to get that?”
• “Artists typically don’t and that’s why I think organization like yours and Artist Career Training have an important role to play.”

Carolyn Edlund is the Sales & Events Director at the Clark Hulings Foundation, and our resident subject matter expert in Sales Strategy. In the first episode of this two-part podcast, Carolyn joins us to answer questions about making a creative career virtual. Artists and makers, you can make a great decision to thrive during the pandemic and beyond: learn with Carolyn and the CHF Faculty in real time by registering for the online The Virtualize Your Art Career™ Conference Oct 19-30th.

Carolyn is the founder of ArtsyShark—a popular blog that publishes features on artist portfolios and articles on the business of art—and the former executive director of the Arts Business Institute. An artist herself, Carolyn pivoted to sales in the art-publishing business—she learned the world of price points, merchandising, building collections, and closing deals, by working a territory and becoming a top rep. She has designed curriculum for multiple art-business platforms and has presented hundreds of live seminars for artists and makers.

• “Artists are being pushed into getting online and becoming experts at communicating and selling online. We don’t have much of a choice. The events are closed, postponed, canceled. They’re not happening in person. And as wonderful as the in-person events are (and, you know, we’ve traditionally relied on them) just like Hiscox [Online Art Trade Report 2020] noted: this is a transformation. We’ve been moving towards an online economy, an art industry that is robust in the online space, and this is forcing the issue.”
• “This is putting people in a sink or swim position where you’ve got to make decisions. You aren’t going to change your whole life, but you’ve got to make decisions about getting into the online market and making it work for you. And that, to me, is a huge opportunity. It might not be something that every artist is looking forward to, but ultimately they will really benefit from it.”

• “It becomes very crowded when everyone is jumping online—and we know that’s true because art website providers are reporting record numbers of new clients coming in. They all want to set up websites.”
• “Anyone who is in the virtual marketplace has to fight for attention—establish that space, gather the people who are their followers, either through social media profiles or a list that they’ve built so that they can continue that conversation, and then use those interested people to turn into customers and clients.”
• “The personal touch is very appreciated these days. If you’ve got a collector who feels like they know you, they like you, they appreciate your work, and you say: ‘I want to reach out to you because I’ve got a new body of work and I haven’t shown anyone yet. But you own two of my paintings, and I really want to give you first dibs. How about we jump on a Zoom call? How about we literally get into a face to face conversation. I’ll show you what I’ve got.’ I like the personal outreach. And even though that might be a little bit scary, I think that over time, as you get to know your customer base, there will be people that you can reach out to and you’ll find that they appreciate and love hearing from an artist, and love talking with you, and that that engagement excites them. It’s part of the collector experience.”

• “There’s going to be a range for some people. It may only be that they get a website, and then they’re continuing on with what they’ve been doing for years. For other artists, virtualizing means a new format.”
• “For example, you might be an artist who teaches. You’re not going to be...

How does an artist bridge the divide between the art and business worlds? Neil Ramsay, founder and director of ArtsUp!, hopes to address this divergence by utilizing the 5,800 square-foot ArtsUp! facility as both an events space and a gallery, with massive installations that are located 12 feet off the floor. In this space, the artist becomes the CEO of their own project and must work in a cross-functional team to accomplish their vision.

In this nearly hour long show, Neil describes how he became an artist advocate and why he designed and teaches the Visual Arts Marketing Course at Florida International University. This is such an incredible talk that the topics are best expressed as quotations from Neil himself:

• “It’s a platform for artists and creators to experiment with their particular craft.”
• “It is an artist-centric organization and it also endures as a private events space.”
• Came from “the idea of implementing a gallery that is literally available twelve feet above the ground where you’re standing up to the ceiling is how I developed that.”
• “Each project is almost like a start-up experience of its own.”
• “What I do is I really try to facilitate and remove many of the bureaucratic hindrances and things of that nature that make it repetitive.”

• “The team forms a flat hierarchy so they [the artists] are absolutely in charge of their vision.”
• “As opposed to delivering a lecture or giving a series of instructions or something of that nature, it’s creating the environment for the individual that they can actually immerse themselves in.”
• An individual artist or creator runs the facility “by their willingness to actually join in with the facilitation of their idea.”
• “We share tools and equipment to help facilitate whatever the artist’s idea is for that particular space, and whatever site-responsive or site-specific project they want to realize.”
• “Each project each artist, like Vanessa Diaz, is treated individually.”
• “The level of involvement and responsibility in-and-of-itself is more than some artists are willing to endure, or that they feel that they’re above or below the contribution. We understand that. It’s just not for everyone.”

• “The art market, I can tell you, is one of the last unregulated markets.”
• “The art fair and the gallery, all of these things, are intermediary. That is their job. That’s what that business is constructed to do. It is supposed to market, it is supposed to match the artist with collectors.”
• “Galleries start to form their own brand and their own interest and they might have their own niche and things like that. That’s entrepreneurial.”
• “If they believe that an art gallery is the only way, that artist needs further education. That’s what our purpose is. To say ‘you know what? There are other ways’.”
• “I think the point is that the artist has choices and it’s up to them to figure out what are all the options available, and every year a new option becomes available. We’re just in a very entrepreneurial and capitalist society.”

• “Business has a hard time understanding the arts, so… I’m advocating for the professionalizing, that within the organization, the artist is seen just as professional as the accountant, just as professional as the director and the other typical roles…”
• “Artists went to art-school, not business-school. It’s not...

Sabin Howard is a classical figurative sculptor with over 33 years of experience. Known for his works of heroic scale, including Hermes, Aphrodite, and Apollo, the New Criterion has called him a “sculptor who’s work radiates a startling presence, while finding its roots in the classical past.” He’s part of the winning design team for the National World War I Memorial in Pershing Square Park, Washington DC, and he also offers drawing and design webinars in a digital format. Topics Include:

• The application process for public art commissions
• Public art as a part of a sustainable business
• Process for designing and creating a 75 foot-long bronze wall that represents World War I with 45 figures in a processional composition
• Communicating an idea in a way that will resonate with the general public

• Learning to collaborate as a form of communication
• The process of rebuilding and ripping things a part
• An elevation of the compositional process

• “If I didn’t have a really, really high end product and I hadn’t spent 50,000 hours in front of a model over 33 years, no shortcuts … I wouldn’t have a business.”
• “As an independent artist, you have to decide how to create your own life.”
• “There is a creative aspect to entrepreneurship and business that I really wish more artists could see that.”
• “I have to do the business to drive the art.”
• Teaching drawing as a way of breaking the art market system.

• “It’s about making an energetic connection with other people and talking about my mindset.”
• “Your greatest skill is your craft, but you’ve got to learn how to present yourself.”
• “Artists need to be able to share with people and create a value for that special talent that they have.”
• “As an artist, you need to go out and show that there’s a different version, there’s a different vision that is available and possible.”
• “It’s important that an artist be involved in showing their work and takes ownership of what he makes rather than have somebody else take over his business.”

• “You have this thing called “the art world”, art world is run by the status quo.”
• “Art is seen as a commodity. It’s seen as something that a lot of people will buy because it’s like a stock that will go up in value.”
• “The gallery system did function once, but it doesn’t anymore because the gallerist would encourage and push artists through the sales.”
• Started his own gallery for 7 months to sell his work publicly.

Ryan Brown is an artist who works in the naturalist tradition, studying figures, still life, and landscapes. He’s dedicated himself to the methods practiced by the masters of Western European art and has established the Center for Academic Study and Naturalist Painting in Utah to continue this tradition.

In this hour-long show, Ryan talks about his intention to have a long-term art career, how he sustains himself, his current work at the Center for Academic Study and Naturalist Painting, and how he markets and brands his work. Topics Include:

• Establishing a foundation in the academic tradition of painting
• Importance of developing skills rather than meeting deadlines
• Gaining non-profit status and moving to France
• “Starting a school on my own seemed like the only option because it had to have an infrastructure or a way of organizing it that was more geared to student progress than it was to the machine of the university.”
• “There’s a great amount of discipline and a good training required to work at the highest levels.”

• “Art is a really expensive profession.”
• “Be clever with how you manage your funds and manage your business and understand that there are ups and downs.”
• “You never want to cut corners when you’re trying to be professional. You always want to use the best materials for shipping and framing frame so it doesn’t get damaged.”
• “As an artist, you’re a small business owner and you’re in charge, you’re the boss, and you have to manage that like any other small business would be managed. You have to keep your books organized, plan for big expenses, and plan for investing in those big projects.”

• “You’ve got to put it out there and you have to find an audience.”
• “If you can develop a social media presence it’s not artificial. It’s a very natural form of marketing because what it allows you to do is just share your perspective on your work.”
• “Marketing is a huge part of becoming financially successful. Even more so, I would say, than good skill development.”
• “My balance is maybe a little offset to doing great work but it absolutely cannot deny the need for marketing it.”

• “My brand is a non-brand.”
• “Some people want financial success a lot earlier on so their efforts to brand themselves early are more focused in.”
• “If I choose to brand a little bit less I know in the long run, there will be a common thread and the brand will be more recognizable so I have invested in the long game.”

• Starting out, “the only real option that seemed viable was to sell in galleries. That was the epitome of making it as an artist was to get in a good gallery and sell with other good artists.”
• “I knew that I wasn’t doing the quality of work that I wanted so that’s when I went and studied at the Florence Academy of Fine Art and really developed those skills.”
• “The goal then was still to try and make a name in galleries and sell for a good amount of money and gain the respect of my peers and be in big shows.”
• “When I got into it and was selling well and a part of that world I realized that’s not actually my definition of success. Selling well in galleries isn’t the ultimate for me. The ultimate is doing really great work.”

• Using sketches as learning tools – sellable ones
• “When I was in galleries I felt like I had to sell it all like it was the most amazing thing. You’re trying...

Alan Bamberger is an art consultant, advisor, author and appraiser who specializes in research, business management, the marketing of original art, and art-related documents, but he is best known for his regular post to ArtBusiness.com, which he also manages. With nearly 40 years of experience in the art world, Alan works with artists, collectors, other art professionals and galleries to solve difficult art situations. Topics Include:

• Problem solving using available images, background info, and the piece of art
• Recommends price structure for individual pieces and overall collections
• Explains how they can defend their prices to interested parties

• Older art has a secondary market in place with a finite quantity of pieces available
• On older art: “I price based on the moment, based on available information, and based on primary market information.”
• “When an artist is still active, it’s not clear what the future trajectory of that artist will be, where their prices will go, or what they’re going to do” all of which can change the value of their art.

• Step into the role that you want to fulfill
• “I’ve met so many artists who know so little about business, and business was not something that was taught in art school or even discussed.”
• “You can’t survive as an artist if you’re not selling enough art to pay for food and rent.”
• “Artists have become far more aware that it is not simply a situation where you sit in your studio and paint or create or sculpt…”
• “I focus on what happens when the art is done, when it’s ready to go out into the public, now what?”
• “Artists have never had more opportunities to advocate on their own behalves, to get their work out there, to talk about what’s behind it, to talk about themselves as artists.”
• “If you can’t sell your art, you’re not going to survive as an artist.”

• The artist website as the portfolio
• Importance of having an identifiable brand
• “The artist has to present themselves in ways that pretty much anyone can understand and connect with and appreciate.”
• “Having confusing online profiles or presentations would be, I think, the most common mistake”
• Don’t leave it to your audience “to figure out the brand of this artist, what’s their unique voice, where are they coming from, what’s the story that this artist and the art, what’s the narrative, what are they trying to tell us?”

• The characteristics that make famous artists famous
• “Document everything that you’re doing.”
• “Narrative makes a piece more buyable.”
• “Take a photograph of it, take some notes, write down a couple of sentences, keep decent records, because if it turns out you’re a long running success, at some point, institutions or collectors or whomever will want to explore and learn the whole story.”
• “You can’t take long sabbaticals between individual works or series or bodies of work.”

• Things to consider when purchasing a piece of artwork.
• “Contact your insurance company and ask them what they need in terms of an appraisal in order to insure your art.”
• “At the beginning, you can, for a while, just use the cost of goods as the approach.”
• “Monitor market activities for the artists you collect just in case there is a substantial price fluctuation, you may just want to have those pieces revalued for insurance purposes.”