Art is a Business, and Artists Should Run It
The marketplace is changing—not just technology, but HOW art is marketed, bought, and sold. You, the Artist, are at the center of this. Take charge of your career, mesmerize your audience, maximize your extraordinary professional advantages, and Sell-Sell-Sell. This is going to be an amazing event. Tickets are on sale now.
Join Us for This Important Learning Event
Registration also includes Colleague-level access to CHF's Digital Learning Portal.
Price: $395
The team at CHF have diverse backgrounds and are able to organize a curriculum that applies to many artists across several mediums regardless of their career stage. I highly recommend utilizing their online resources and attending their conferences.
Alejandro Castanon
Painter
The conference exceeded my expectations. My goal was a 101 class about the business of art, but this was much, much more. It was so informative and forced me to expand my thinking in a creative way.
Seetal Varughese
Mixed Media Artist
The Art-Business Conference gave my wholesale business the jumpstart it needed ... The workshops were informative, motivating and eye-opening. I recommend this event to all passionate artists who want to make a living doing what they love.
Alene Geed
Jewelry Designer
Artists & Makers Studios
11810 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, MD 20852
SAT: AM
Shape Your Own Art Career
Check in at the desk, get hand-outs, ask questions now. Get coffee. Meet your fellow artists.
Elizabeth Hulings will open the Conference with an introduction to its purposes, hosts, speakers, and sponsoring organizations. She'll focus on the event's core assumptions: Art is a business, and artists should run it.
Get at your "why" and turn it into a clearly defined goal that advances your career and gets you more of what you want. Take advantage of the powerful changes in the market that offer new, unique opportunities to thrive.
Build your art business plan. Good intentions are like crying babies; they should be carried out immediately. Goals without execution are a dime a dozen. Goals that get acted upon are the result of continually taking the next right step. Those are the ones we tell our grandkids about. This workshop helps you break down a pivotal goal into an action plan, so you can be relentless about always taking the next right step.
Every artist is a brand, and every brand wants a wider audience. What defines a brand is a compelling brand story; that's not the same as a better bio, portfolio, or resume. Every story uses a universal arc or format that anyone can learn. YOUR creative story is unique—get past the artist bio trap and nail your story.
This is a great opportunity to bond with other artists. Be back on time!
SAT: PM
Deliver Your Powerful Message
Let's have some fun. Where are you with your business objective? Are you willing to let us use your career goal as an example? Bring your cases. Elizabeth will take on 2-4 cases to help you crack the part you're struggling with and focus your career on thriving.
Every artist is a brand, and every brand wants a wider audience. What defines a brand is a compelling brand story; that's not the same as a better bio, portfolio, or resume. Every story uses a universal arc or format that anyone can learn. YOUR creative story is unique—get past the artist bio trap and nail your story.
See how other artists are killing it with their brand story. Nailing your brand story is one thing, but telling it is another. You don't tell it once. You tell it continuously, in different venues and formats (social, email, press, blogs). Learn how to distill your overall narrative into bite-sized chunks that keep your audience engaged and in the loop.
We'll look at the importance of a cohesive portfolio with a signature style and concept; presenting your portfolio professionally through the use of excellent visual and written materials; types of photos necessary and how they can be deployed.
Online sales of art and handmade goods are growing every day. This presentation addresses the many options for selling work online, including third-party websites and your own artist website. It includes strategies on how to give the best presentation, maximize sales, and avoid the most common mistakes made in online selling.
Let's have some fun. Where are you with your brand story? Are you willing to let us use your brand narrative as an example? Bring your cases. Daniel will take on 2-4 cases to help you crack the part you're struggling with and help you keep your audience in the boat.
SUN: AM
Sell – Sell – Sell
Make connections with your fellow artists that can have lifelong potential for collaboration, exchange of skills, and mutual contacts.
Strategically create a body of work that’s designed to be collectible and emotionally resonant, and learn how to add perceived value. Discover turnkey products and the power of niche markets. Explore price point spreads, multiple formats, limited editions, and other ways to increase art sales.
Artists may pursue a number of different sales channels to sell their work B2C or B2B. This overview addresses the artwork that is appropriate for each, an explanation of the business model, and how revenue is generated.
Pricing formula breakdown; understanding markups; how to reduce expenses and increase prices; the “two halves” of a price and why it matters; pricing for fine artists including knowing where you fit in the art market, your baseline, and working with galleries.
This is a great opportunity to bond with other artists. Be back on time!
Bring your business questions to our panel of experts—established professional artists who are also former CHF Art-Business Accelerator Fellows (see below). They'll give you quick answers and advise you on the questions you REALLY need to be asking, to help you move forward.
SUN: PM
Maximize Your Advantages
Artists and corporate employees have something in common: all that time spent in the studio/office on the immediate goals limits the ability to acquire powerful relationships that advance our long-term objectives. It also shortchanges one's social life. Those aren't separate realities–they're the same problem. This workshop will give you tools to form powerful relationships with other artists in ways that facilitate shaping your own market, industry, and professional destiny.
All the things that stop us from achieving our business objectives are not random–they are interrelated. Identify the culprit as an external force to be overcome, and achieve your dreams as an artist.
Now that you've acquired new skills and clarity, update your action plan to more closely suit your professional goals.
This closing session summarizes what we've learned, provides some helpful next steps, and asks for your input, which will help shape our next Art Business Conference.
Solve for y–your why! Bring your sales, marketing, and business strategy questions. The speakers will give quick answers, and also advise you on what questions you REALLY need to be asking and what answers you need to get to move forward.
Time to decompress, have a glass of wine, and make future plans to meetup and continue working together. Let your hair down, and relax at our after-event event.
Conference Leaders
Elizabeth Hulings
Director, The Clark Hulings Fund
Elizabeth Hulings, daughter of famed artist Clark Hulings, is the founder of The Clark Hulings Fund for Visual Artists. Elizabeth is a strategist who drives organizational achievement by insisting on clarity of purpose, detailed planning, and conclusive action. Her leadership at The Clark Hulings Fund brings practical business training and strategic toolsets to working artists who are not provided those things by art or business schools, but who increasingly require self-reliant entrepreneurial skills in the evolving marketplace.
Carolyn Edlund
Sales Director, The Clark Hulings Fund
Carolyn Edlund’s background includes owning a production ceramic studio for 20 years, selling extensively at retail and wholesale. Subsequently, she spent several years as an outside sales rep for art publishers, and paper and gift lines. In 2009, she launched Artsy Shark, which is recognized as a “top ten” art business blog. She does extensive private consulting for artists, has written seven e-courses on the business of art, and authored hundreds of related articles.
Daniel DiGriz
Corporate Storyteller
Daniel DiGriz is a corporate storyteller who writes a Forbes column, hosts podcasts, and is a charismatic speaker at national conferences. Daniel leads organizations and entrepreneurs to find and deliver their brand narrative to motivated buyers and constituents.
Roundtable Participants
Our panel discussion, on Sunday at 12:30pm, will feature the following experts:
Blake Conroy
Prior to joining CHF’s Art-Business Accelerator in 2017, artist Blake Conroy had a full-time job at a leading foundry in Maryland, helping other artists realize their visions while creating his own work on the side. Now that he's completed year two of the Accelerator, Blake has realized his objective of leaving his day job to focus solely on growing his own art practice, which involves creating and layering metal and paper laser-cuts of his own intricate drawings to shine a light on the complexity of our environment. He has embarked on joint projects with various artists, participated in a paid artist’s residency in Belgium, and had his work featured in various solo and group shows around the US.
Donna Lee Nyzio
CHF Accelerator Fellow Donna Lee Nyzio has worked extensively with museums and private groups to build her brand as a painter who is capturing and preserving America’s maritime history. Based in Beaufort, North Carolina, Donna is capitalizing on the success she’s achieved in her coastal community to take her art career to the national level. Collaborating with a nonprofit that shares her mission, she’s been been producing events to promote a joint project, and applying for residencies and funding to support these efforts. In the past year, her work has been shown in various national and international shows.
Kristin LeVier
An MIT-trained molecular biologist, sculptor Kristin LeVier now uses her extensive scientific knowledge to create fine art that shines a light on the depth and complexity of the natural world. Her two years as a Fellow in CHF’s Art-Business Accelerator have helped to transform the way she manages the business side of her practice, targeting her marketing efforts at an audience that is particularly passionate about science, medicine, and natural history. After just a few months in the CHF program, Kristin made more sales than she had the previous year, and her increased profile led to her work being included in exhibitions across the US.
Acknowledgments
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