Swimsuit by Lisa Hebden. So, so beautiful. I want.

Lisa Hebden & I first “met” as fellow Blogging Your Way students, but I don’t think that we started really corresponding until she commented on a post of mine this summer. I clicked on the link she provided & was blown away by her talent.  I was thrilled when Lisa saw my post asking for guest bloggers & emailed that she wanted to submit something as she was starting her art career back up & had much to say. While her post below is specifically tailored to artists, I think you can replace the word “artist” with “actor” or “dancer” or whatever you are & still get the same message out of merging your art (fun!) with your business (eek!).

Hello all, I’m Lisa Hebden, a visual artist from Victoria, Canada. I recently told Michelle I was stirring up my art career “with a vengeance”.

What did I mean by that?

When I was six, I put my hands on my hips and declared I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. So, I went to art school, and I’ve been working as a professional artist for 7 years now. When I meet people and tell them I’m an artist, they sometimes respond with “how fun!” and they are right! But, the tricky thing about having a creative mind is how to organize your time and energy to devote to the two different sides of an artists career: creating and business. Eeek! That ugly word, business, makes most artists—including me—cringe.

Yet it is necessary to be business-savvy to maintain our days in the studio. Whether we’re contacting galleries, soliciting grants or selling our work directly to collectors, we need to get our work out into the world in order to make a living.

So, my vengeance consists of setting professional goals for myself like any business person would.

1. I’m re-connecting with my reason for making my work in the first place, and writing a mission statement: something to come back to when I feel like I’m getting distracted. Why do you do what you do?
2. I’m investing money in my career. This is a hard one for me. I’m happy to buy other artists work, and I value original art, but I’ve been so reluctant to spend money on workshops and travel for my own career! Not any more. If you can’t invest in yourself, who will? So, classes on marketing and business tools for artists are in my near future (this weekend, actually, I’m rather excited)
3. I’ve finally invested in a studio. It seems like acquiring a studio should be the first thing an art graduate would do, but I’ve always had a studio room in my home. This has had many benefits: no travel time, reliable heating, and my cat! But I really enjoy leaving the house in the morning, walking or bussing downtown, and keeping workspace separate from living space. Plus it’s big and I don’t care about the floor!
4. Keep those submission packages going out in the mail. I’ve set a number of galleries per month that I’ll send submission packages to. The more you send, the more likely you’ll get a positive response.

It’s easy to play with paint and forget that there’s a whole other side to being an artist, and sometimes just putting pen to paper and setting some goals makes a huge difference. If anyone has tips for artists, please comment!

Thanks for having me, Michelle.

You can find Lisa on her website or her blog & she can be contacted at lisa@lisahebden.com. And yes, I’m bugging her to start offering prints of her work so we can afford to have it in our homes! Feel free to bug her along with me.