Running a growing art studio is running a business…sort-of.
So, once again, I am musing about things. My workflow has recently become a bit more than I can sustain.
Good things are coming my way a bit more frequently. Even good things take time to accomplish. Fulfilling deadlines and data needs are eating into creative time with materials. Has there been an uptick in income to match this activity? a tiny bit….but mostly the demands on my time have increased. So, once again I had to look at my actual personal financial budget and determine how much I could carve out for a studio assistant and what I needed them to do.
What does a studio assistant do?
I feel certain that some of you think that means people to build armatures, mix paint, schelp things around the space. And, certainly that can be part of it. But what I really needed was someone who could do something closer to office management: data entry, data organizing, wordpress maintenance, photoshop, instagram, facebook and, yes, brainstorming upon occasion, skilled photography would be great and generally walk-on-water.
The needs were high.
All exhibiting artists have loads of mundane as well as skilled tasks outside of artmaking that need to be taken care of. After the art is made, you need to:
- Photograph it
- measure it
- title it
- price it
- box it and weigh it
- store it
- inventory it
- put it on your website(s)
- tell people about it (marketing, social media, email, etc)
- research where it can be exhibited
- contact those places
- build shipping boxes
- ship it to galleries/museums/other exhibition venues
- maintain email list of customer, potential customers, galleries, critics, curators, collectors
- order materials
- graphic design
- write grants
- write artists statements, press releases, get scholars and critics to write essays
- curate shows and mange the artists that I represent in the gallery owner part of my career
- OH! And then make more new, innovative artwork
There is probably more to add to that list that is NOT MAKING THE ART. More than 50% of my time was spent doing this stuff! As I have been fielding commission inquiries, launching new shows on artsy, developing new bodies of work…
Something had to give!
I thought long and hard about the kind of person I wanted in the studio and what kind of environment I wanted to create. So I came up with the core values of the studio:
Kindness
Innovation
Collaboration
Openness
A couple of friends pointed out that that sounded like a corporate HR speak. But they know me and they know that I am so not corporate, and never have been. I think the biggest business I worked for had five people, some of them a little nasty, but mostly tolerable. Sure, in larger businesses with more moving parts, there is more opportunity for toxic use of these values as an excuse to pile on work for no reward or as punishment or as power-plays. I get it.
But it is just me and 2 people who between them work 12 hours a week…combined…on a heavy week. It’s gig work.
It’s to everyone’s advantage if I apply those values, creating a fluid work environment where people can learn new skills, apply existing skills, add to the conversation in the art and, yes, eventually leave with more knowledge and experience to take to the next job, along with, hopefully, a glowing letter of recommendation.
Yes, this is business.
This is how I will always strive to run my business. Maybe someday, one of these lovely helpers (and almost all of them have been lovely!) will become my studio manager as my work spreads farther and wider in the world.
Just musing again!
