This week’s article examines what career milestones artists should be aiming towards to further establish their careers. This post is a good reference when setting goals to move your career from emerging to established.
This blog post is in response to a previous post that outlined the top 5 goals for emerging artists. You can read that post here.
1. Professional Website – If you don’t have a professional web-based portfolio by now, it’s overdue. Having a website for professional and promotional reasons is key to establishing your career as an artist.
2. Solid Body of Work: By now, you should have at least one professional solid body of work. Your exhibition history should be consistent and expand beyond local galleries and craft shows. You should be working towards solo exhibitions, high-profile opportunities, and looking more regionally and nationally.
3. Diverse Revenue Streams: At this stage in your career you need to be generating multiple revenue streams. While you most likely will be selling your art, what else are you doing to bring in income? Have you created merchandise or prints of your work? Do you have a collector base? Do you have gallery representation? Are you obtaining grant or foundation support for your work? Are you writing and receiving grant funding for projects?
4. Brand Your business card, marketing approach, art fair set up, logo, email signature, and way you communicate all need to come together to create your brand. You should be establishing your brand marketing and sticking to it, or updating old marketing materials for a professional fresh look.
5. Balance: As you continue to develop your career you will need to make time for all parts of your career. Marketing the art, making the art, selling the art, and the other business management skills required. You will need to have systems and processes in place to balance all of the demands of a mid-career artist to make everything operate smoothly.
