Artists build businesses together

For two days, students, alumni and artists in the community explored the new opportunities and markets that are opening to them, many of them on the web.

Art sales are moving online. Artists today not only are selling their work on their own sites but also in new online marketplaces, from such mega-spaces as Amazon, Ebay, and Etsy to smaller niche sites like Artfire, Artist Rising, ArtPal, Artplode, Artsy, and CafePress.

Not surprisingly, the online world was a major focus of the Arts Business Workshop co-hosted April 9 and 10 by the College's Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative, Saratoga Arts (where the program was held), and the Arts Business Institute. Elizabeth Dubben, who teaches "Marketplace for Artists" in Skidmore's arts administration program and is coordinator of the Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative, organized the program as a way to bring together students, alumni, and local artists to discuss ways to better meet the challenges of producing art as a successful business. The Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative is part of Skidmore's Arts Administration Program and was created and developed by Molly Haley '64. The program is supported by Haley and her husband Ed Freitag.

Among the sessions this weekend was a panel in which ABI Executive Director Carolyn Edlund explored with four artists how they use electronic media to better "leverage their energies." All agreed that it's essential for showing work to galleries, for networking with customers and other artists around the world and for sourcing materials.

"If I need bronze safety pins for my hang tags, I'm on the web," said Saratoga Springs-based Betsy Olmsted '02, who produces textile housewares and accessory collections. "I look at the work of other artists to be sure it's different from what I'm doing. I link to my stores. I post all the photo shoots we do, and I post all of my book promotions."

Olmsted prefers Instagram to Facebook because it's more visual, and that's what paintings are all about. "But you have to learn how to hashtag and tag stuff. That's where a millennial can really help you."

"That's when I call my granddaughter," said Beverly Mastrianni '76, generating scattered laughs around the room.

Mastrianni is a sculptor and painter living in Saratoga Springs who says that, while she finds the web essential, it may be of a bit less utility to her as a sculptor working in three-dimensional art.

"People like to walk through a work," she observed.

Artists are coming up with remarkable ways to connect with buyers on the web, observed painter and art instructor Takeyce Walter. For example, nothing quite compares to the experience she had in January of joining more than a thousand artists around the world in the "Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days Challenge" that abstract painter Leslie Seata hosted on her blog.

"When you're an artist, you feel you're alone working in a studio," she said. "But I was connecting with bloggers and selling art to people on Facebook and Instagram around the world."

For Skidmore junior Cameron Campbell, who is taking Dubben's "Marketplace for Artists" this term, the program covered much of the same material. "But this was more like hardcore, in-your-face, bootcamp-style training."

"I focused in more detail on who I'm targeting as a market, who my customers are, and how I'm going to brand myself as an artist."

For Albany-based painter Dorothy Englander, who started at Skidmore in the Class of 1960 and graduated in 1980 after raising three children, the program presented an opportunity to connect with other artists, get new ideas, and "catch up on some things I might not be exactly in tune with."

Dubben was delighted by the turnout, the fact that many of the participants were still talking and connecting after the formal program ended, and the balance of students, alumni and artists in the community who attended. "It's very likely we'll offer it again in two or three years," she said.

"This workshop is a great example of how we can engage Skidmore students with working alumni artists and professionals in the community," said David Howson, executive director of arts administration at Skidmore. "Using the power and breadth of the Skidmore network has always been at the forefront of Molly Haley's vision for the initiative."