The Thriving Artist Podcast

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. Artists Have to Have a Business Mindset:“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 extr

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.Building A Reputation:“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

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.Affordable Art:“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 pr

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.Why Artists Need Business Training: “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 g

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 Goodacre’s Retirement:“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

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:Artiphile Services: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 thin

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.The National School Art Collective:“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

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:Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity ExhibitionFrom 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 tac

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:Art Thinking: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.”The Suits vs. the Creatives:“I think people are still afraid of the market and people feel that business is a set of rules… People feel l

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:Artist Career Training:Marketing & the Importance of ConsistencyWhat 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

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:ArtsUp!:“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 w

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:World War I Commission:The application process for public art commissionsPublic art as a part of a sustainable businessProcess for designing and creating a 75 foot-long bronze wall that represents World War I with 45 figures in a processional compositionCommunicating an idea in a way that will resonate with the general publicCollaboration:Learning to collaborate as a form of communicationThe process of rebuilding and ripping things a partAn elevation of the compositional processArt as a Business:“If I didn

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:Center for Academic Study and Naturalist Painting:Establishing a foundation in the academic tradition of paintingImportance of developing skills rather than meeting deadlinesGaining 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 disc

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:Price Consultations with Artists:Problem solving using available images, background info, and the piece of artRecommends price structure for individual pieces and overall collectionsExplains how they can defend their prices to interested partiesOlder Art vs. Contemporary:Older art has a secondary market in place with a finite quantity of pieces availableOn 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 the

Elizabeth Corkery is a large-scale installation artist and the founder of Print Club Ltd., a limited edition print making company. Her most recent and ambitious project to date is a spatially transformative sculptural exhibition called Ruin Sequence at Tower Hill Botanic Gardens, opening October 8th. The project is funded by the Clark Hulings Fund Business Accelerator Program. Topics Include:Preparations for Ruin Sequence:“I started conceiving how I might make a body of work that was sculpturally-based and that could be presented alongside the plants.”“Probably about a dozen of the pieces were made at a residency in London. Then I would say another dozen have been made since coming home.”“This is my first foray into a new series of work that was sculpturally based rather than starting from print as the medium.”“Navigating the materiality of the pieces and how I wanted to construct them was probably the most challenging part.”“It’s not a conventional art world or gallery site

Ghost of a Dream, a moniker for the collaborative duo Adam Eckstrom and Lauren Was, create large sculptural installations, collages, and immersive texts made from lottery tickets, romance novels, playing cards, and other raw or discarded materials.Most recently, Ghost of a Dream has been working on a project they call The Fair Housing Project. They’ve created a house from art fair materials, which they’ve immersed in a sea of fog and filmed documentary style. The house, film, and other works created by this duo will be showing at Smack Mellon from September 24 -October 30, 2016. They’re also Clark Hulings Fund 2015 Business Accelerator grant recipients, which means they participate in the educational program of the fund, and they’re also receiving critical funding for The Fair Housing Project. Topics include:The Fair Housing Project:Dealing with project challenges: original goals vs. realityCollecting and reusing materials as a part of their Studio PracticeCommentary on the

What is patronage; and who can be a patron of the arts? For Shannon Robinson, curator and chairperson of Windows to the Divine, wants everyone to understand that they can become a collector regardless of financial means or cultural biases around the art market. She does this through Windows to the Divine’s educational programs that teach about patronage, the art industry, and philanthropy. Topics Include:Collectors & Patrons:“We use the term ‘collector’ or ‘patron’, and it feels like you’re being an elitist.”“Patronage is for everyone; I believe it’s a moral imperative.”“Everybody has to do collect in order to make sure that the visual arts thrive and survive.”“This is the best time in human history to be a collector because anyone can do it.”Getting started as a Collector:Regardless of financial means, anyone can become a collectorBecoming a collector is a “wonderful lifetime journey.”“Go to art shows, get involved in an art museum, subscribe to magazines, take an art history class, consider going to you

How can an artist ensure that their art career is a sustainable enterprise long into the future? Carla Crawford is a figurative painter and Business Accelerator Program participant. She works in the classical tradition and focuses her latest works on displaced migrants.In this nearly hour long show, Carla addresses the importance of making your art career sustainable, how to address lags in sales, and the cross-pollination of traditional and contemporary. This is such an incredible talk that the topics are best expressed as quotations from Carla herself:Establishing a Sustainable Art Practice:“We all want to spend all our time in the studio, but how are you going to sustain that over your lifetime? It’s such an important thing to be able to master.”Mastering the business side of art is “a completely different scale from what you’re doing in the studio, but it’s essential.”On starting over after completing a solo show or big project: “I think it comes back to that idea for me of having

In this 40 minute interview, the listener will learn about building and maintaining a commercial mindset, the importance of networking and marketing, while creating pieces you love. As a bonus, learn about the CHF Art-Business Accelerator™ Program and the importance of combatting sexism and racism within the art industry.Funding your passion:Use existing networking mechanisms, such as your galleryExploring your artistic interests while creating a sustainable and well-funded productAlways be willing to sell your works independently of the gallery network through commissions, local events, social media, and email newslettersSubject matter does not determine salability – there’s someone for everythingBranding:Artists as inventorsMaintain the integrity of the archival qualities of your workDocument the processes and don’t be afraid to share with other artists and your audiencesRemaining authentic in your work: “The uniqueness of my brand is something that I actually don’t worry about”“Create what you love but bal

Increasingly, artists are being asked to professionalize their art business, but as Cristina DiChiera so aptly recognizes, “In some instances, combining arts and business can be putting a square peg in a round hole,” but it doesn’t have to be with the right resources and training.In this hour-long interview, Cristina talks about her career creating and implementing business workshops for artists with the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and Mass MOCA, and her recent shift to Visual Arts Development Manager at Brown University. She underscores the importance of tapping resources at the local level through arts councils, professionalizing business practices, and incorporating them into studio time. With the advent of technology and the internet, it has never been easier or more imperative that artists take full advantage of the resources available to them and craft an art business that is sustainable through their artworks sold. She also gave us insights into using crowdfunding as a ma