Chris Parmelee relates how producing and sharing knowledge is one of the best things a community of artists can do to expand their experiences in the world and support one another.

Ewa Szypula describes how changing the way she talks to herself by using the language of a producer and not a procrastinator has improved the way she thinks about choices, money and work.

State of the Art is a show being developed by an artist to talk about what it means to be an artist right now (today) in an effort to raise up artist voices. The first episode works to define what an artist is by talking to artists who are innovating and using their abilities in ways only artists could use them.

One of the major issues I see with my peers as artists is this need for external validation. There are gatekeepers to the art world, regardless of what art practice you are in, and, as artists, we can feel at the mercy of a small and hard-to-penetrate community of decision-makers. And because we don’t necessarily receive steady and consistent financial support for our practice, I think it can make us crave this validation even more and pursue it, sometimes, without the most strategic plan for why we are doing it. The best tool I’ve found for becoming less focused on these external validation opportunities is to engage in my own goal setting for how I want to build my art practice and setting my own financial goals. It is both empowering and also increases self-sufficiency while making you less driven by this need for external validation. There is definitely something powerful in that mind shift to say, “I don’t need to get into six new shows this year for people to recognize my art career is meaningful and making progress.” If I set my own set of goals that I know that I’m moving towards, I can see that my goals may not require any new shows in the next six months and stay focused on more relevant tasks. It’s okay to be in a period of reflection, of planning, rather than chasing after projects and short-term validation at the expense of really building capacity, thinking long term, and putting the foundation in place for your art practice to be successful over a lifetime. There is definitely empowerment that comes with trying to move yourself into that mindset, which is challenging because we’re always driven by the short term. Especially as artists: whatever you’re making at the moment feels like the most important thing in the world – and it should be. So, the trick is to have that drive alongside the longer-term goal setting. Most artists are incredible goal setters and goal achievers when it comes to our creative practice. If you can harness that natural skillset in areas outside the studio or onstage or wherever, you become very powerful.

I think another key is to remember the importance of having a team of people with different expertise. One good example I saw was of two glass artists who have a studio here in town, who applied for and received some funding a couple of years ago. They used the funding to make a long-term investment by hiring a business consultant to work with them on building their studio practice and improving their marketing and sales skills. Since then, they have built their business up to the point where it is profitable. They’re making a number of different objects that they’re able to sell within the studio space, a gallery space right at their production facility. It’s not a very large facility at all, and they’re not doing tons and tons of volume, but they’ve been able to take what they had learned through that experience with the consultant to make their businesses profitable. And I know that they had kind of a rough start because they were not business experienced, so this was a really good way for them to obtain the business skills they needed. They learned how to market to their audiences and really sell their products successfully from identifying areas they needed to grow in and investing some funds in their own development.

Elaine Grogan Luttrull, Department Head of Business & Entrepreneurship at the Columbus College of Art & Design, describes the experience of an artist shifting her perspective to view budgeting as a tool for fulfillment rather than a chore.

Elaine Grogan Luttrull, Department Head of Business & Entrepreneurship at the Columbus College of Art & Design, shares a story about teaching students to price their work in a real-world setting.

Debs Webster describes her learning curve to find balance between time for her large family, the business side of art, and her studio practice through scheduling as well as separating her home, work and creative space.

Tristan Hessing offers his perspective on the importance of considering your personal energy as a valuable, finite resource and carefully considering how much of it you want to give to each endeavor to maintain balance.

Ali Groves describes how small acts of generosity can snowball into more significant shifts in the ways artists work together, share opportunities, and enable each other to overcome obstacles.