Announcing Art Steady 2.0, Southwest Contemporary’s second career development workshop series for creators.
We’re excited to invite you to Art Steady 2.0. the second iteration of our career development workshop series for artists and creators. All workshops are held via Zoom for safe, easy participation!
Want to demystify the business side of your creative work? Check off the boxes on building a sustainable career? We’ve got a fantastic line-up for this workshop series to help! Thanks to an evolving art market, disruption within the creative industries, the internet, and social media, artists have more tools than ever to turn their practice into a profitable business.
We want to see artists shine in all aspects of their work, so we’re excited to announce a series of five workshops that cover essential areas of successful career development. Join a brilliant group of experts who will guide you in learning about presenting your work, Instagram strategy, grant-savvy, and the oh-so-important topic of taxes for creative individuals.
Join us November 17-19 for the series. You can sign up for workshops individually or for all five workshops at a discounted series rate. If you can’t make it during the live stream, all registrants will receive access to the recording, but we *strongly* advise participating in person to get the most expertise out of these amazing workshop presenters. Read below for the workshop descriptions, and register via our online store.
***Update effective 11/08/21***
Thanks to new sponsorship from the City of Santa Fe Office of Economic Development as part of their Global Entrepreneurship Week programming, we can now offer free registration to any workshop for BIPOC artists! Five seats are reserved in each workshop except for the Instagram workshop, in which two seats are reserved.
BIPOC artists interested in free registration, please email info@southwestcontemporary.com, request the Santa Fe Economic Development scholarship, and indicate which sessions you are interested in. We will register you in the Zoom webinar with no questions asked until all seats are filled.
Free Money?: Art Grants Demystified
with Erin Elder
Wednesday, November 17, 5-6:30 pm MT
For artists and arts professionals, grants can be mysterious, overwhelming, inspiring, and at times necessary. Join Erin Elder for a deep dive into the real world of arts funding. Together we’ll demystify the process of finding, applying for, and managing grants. We’ll discuss how to assess a grant’s potential relevance or impact and tips for making a strong application. Whether you’re simply curious about art grants or actively seeking funding for a current project, this workshop offers a balance of realism, pragmatism, and encouragement for funding your biggest creative intentions.
Erin Elder (she/her) is an independent curator and consultant with more than twenty years of experience supporting artists. Having worked in commercial, academic, non-profit, and experimental settings, and with a studio practice of her own, Erin understands many of the challenges facing contemporary artists in the U.S. In 2015, she launched Gibbous, which offers professional services for committed artists at pivotal moments in their careers. Through confidential, one-on-one, customized support, hundreds of artists meet their potential with authenticity and professionalism.
Erin has secured funding for many of her own independent and institutional projects, including two grants from National Endowment for the Arts and two years of institutional support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. She has received three grants through the Warhol regional regranting program and was a three-time semi-finalist for Creative Capital support. Grantwriting is a favorite activity and one of the many services she provides as part of Gibbous where she has helped win support for artists ranging from local art awards to international fellowships and national art prizes to funding for projects, research, and travel.
This session is limited to thirty participants.
Death Art and Taxes: Tax Basics for Creative Individuals
with Elaine Grogan Luttrull
Thursday, November 18, 12-1:30 pm MT
If it is true that the only certain things in life are death and taxes, this workshop will make navigating one of those things considerably easier. We’ll review federal income tax basics for creative individuals, including common deductions claimed by creative entrepreneurs. We’ll also outline how the tax landscape changes based on the type of income an artist earns and highlight key aspects of tax law that impact financial wellness, including deducting interest for student loan payments and saving for retirement. We’ll touch briefly on some state-level income tax issues (like the dreaded gross receipts tax in New Mexico!), and we’ll conclude by reviewing some tips and best practices to keep excellent records.
Elaine Grogan Luttrull, CPA-PFS, AFC®, is a financial educator and the founder of Minerva Financial Arts whose work builds financial empowerment in creative individuals and organizations through workshops and one-on-one advising. Her workshops have been featured nationally by funders, state and local arts councils, and colleges and universities that serve creative individuals.
Elaine teaches at the Columbus College of Art & Design, where she served as the department head for Business & Entrepreneurship from 2014 to 2018. Previously, Elaine served as the director of financial analysis for the Juilliard School and in the Transaction Advisory Services practice of Ernst & Young in New York. She is the author of Arts & Numbers (Agate, B2 2013), and she contributed regularly to Professional Artist magazine. She is based in Dublin, Ohio (Kaskaskia and Hopewell Indigenous and cultural lands) where she serves on the boards of the Short North Alliance, Healing Broken Circles, and the Lark Play Development Center.
Best Foot Forward: Building Submission-Worthy Portfolios
with Bree Lamb
Thursday, November 18, 3-4:30 pm MT
Submitting for creative and professional opportunities can feel a bit onerous. But with some guidance and a clear, strategic plan at the ready, the process can be easy and streamlined—and the rewards can pay off big-time! This ninety-minute workshop focuses on strategies and tactics for practicing artists to increase professional activity and visibility. We will look at the best methods for documenting and editing bodies of work, preparing multiple portfolios and supplemental materials, maximizing web and social media presence, as well as researching, prioritizing, budgeting for, and applying to relevant opportunities.
Bree Lamb is an artist, educator, and editor based in New Mexico. She is assistant professor of photography at New Mexico State University and holds an MFA from the University of New Mexico and a BFA from Pennsylvania State University. She is a Beaumont Newhall/Van Deren Coke Fellow and is represented by Gallery19 in Chicago. For the last six years, Lamb has been the managing editor of Fraction Magazine, an online venue for contemporary photography. She has reviewed portfolios at national and international events including Review Santa Fe, Medium Festival of Photography, Mt. Rokko Photography Festival, Month of Photography Denver, New England Portfolio Reviews, the Society for Photographic Education National Conference, and Photolucida.
This session is limited to thirty participants.
Check Your DMs: Instagram for Artists
with Robin Cembalest
Session A: Friday, November 19, 10-11:30 am MT SOLD OUT
Session B: Friday, November 19, 2-3:30 pm MT
Now more than ever, Instagram has become an essential tool for artists to build visibility and networks. Join well-known art Instagrammer Robin Cembalest in this intensive workshop to learn more about the creative and practical strategies which will maximize this essential social platform. Cembalest, former editor of ARTnews, offers a content-oriented approach built around messaging, narrative, and storyboarding.
This workshop covers all elements of a successful Instagram strategy—including profiles, photo editing, design, hashtags, stories, highlights, and tips for maximizing the power of that mysterious algorithm. In the first part of the class, Cembalest will share a presentation covering the topics described above. In the second half, she will do a quick review of each participant’s Instagram and provide feedback.
An early art-world adapter to social media and the former longtime editor of ARTnews, Robin Cembalest has spent her career helping arts professionals to communicate effectively. More than sixteen years at the helm of ARTnews, she shepherded the century-old magazine into the digital era, expanding its global and multicultural content and training generations of interns, writers, and editors. In 2014, she launched her business Robin Cembalest Editorial Strategies, working with museums, foundations, galleries, and social-justice organizations to design and implement mission-based content strategies. She speaks often on social media and career development at schools and residencies and offers webinars for artists on the platform vvrkshop.art. An award-winning investigative journalist who has published widely in the art and mainstream press, Cembalest is best known today as @rcembalest, the handle of her popular Instagram and Twitter feeds.
This session is limited to fifteen participants.
Start Fresh: Workshop a New Artist Statement
with Angie Rizzo
Friday, November 19, 12 pm
Sometimes it is best to let go of your old, over-worked artist statement and start fresh! In this ninety-minute workshop, we will work together to identify topics and themes in your artwork, clarify descriptive terms, and create a concise artist statement for use in applications, introductions, and your online presence. In this hands-on workshop, we will take time to respond to prompts and share our responses in small groups to gain insight into the language used to describe your work. The break-out groups will be facilitated by Angie, SWC arts editor Natalie Hegert, and SWC publisher Lauren Tresp, providing each participant with personalized feedback.
Bring a notebook and pen for solo reflection, and a collaborative spirit for giving and receiving peer feedback.
Angie was raised in San Francisco and received her BFA from CalArts in Southern California. She has been based in Santa Fe, NM since 2014, where she works with contemporary artists as a curator, writer, and arts administrator. She has more than ten years of experience in the field of contemporary art and has helped artists from emerging to established reach the next level of their careers. She is currently finishing her MA in Art History at the University of New Mexico and is happy to be involved with Southwest Contemporary as community liaison and photo editor.
