Art Heroes Radio

How to get started in public Art, a conversation with Jon Pounds, Director of Chicago Public Art Group

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Art Heroes Review (in production)

Public art projects offer both great opportunities and specific challenges for artists. While the budgets and opportunities for exposure of public art are extremely attractive, such large scale projects also require very specialized skills beyond purely artistic merit.

In this conversation, Jon Pounds, Executive Director of the Chicago Public Art Group, discusses the origins of contemporary public art, the principles of managing large scale and collaborative projects, current practices and design considerations, the value of balancing humility and ego when working with collaborators and communities, and how to get started in public art.

Market agoraphobia: how to stand out when everyone is different, a conversation with Lucy Knisley

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Lucy Knisley makes comics, puppets, songs and food. She graduated from the School of the Art institute of Chicago in 2007, where she went to study painting, but wound up making comics. She was the comics editor of the award winning FNews Magazine for two years, and was published in a number of anthologies including (among others) You Ain't No Dancer and I Saw You; A Missed Connections Anthology. Her first book, French Milk is a drawn travel journal about Paris, food, and the bond between mothers and daughters. It was published by Simon and Schuster in 2008. She went on to self-publish a number of collections of work, and to get her MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies, a tiny comics college in the woods of Vermont.

She now lives in Chicago where she is working on a new book for First Second Publishing, freelancing as an illustrator and comic artist, drawing a series of comic essays published online, and teaching drawing and comics part-time to elementary school kids. Her most recent collection of work is entitled Make Yourself Happy, and is available on her website.

Success outside the art system, a conversation with Hazel Dooney, a Dangerous Career Babe

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Art Heroes Review (in production)

Hazel Dooney has been an inspiration and role model to many artists seeking to self-produce their own careers, including myself and many past guests on Art Heroes. Uncompromising, driven and dissatisfied with the art world as she found it, Hazel pioneered her own path to global recognition.

Raised by parents seeking a sustainable alternative lifestyle in the isolation of rural Australia, Hazel Dooney emerged at a very young age as a rising star of Australian art. In 2001, when she was just 22, she was invited to join nine of Australia's most famous male artists – including John Olsen, Tim Storrier, David Larwill and Robert Jacks – on a high profile, privately funded artist's expedition to central Australia. The unusual journey was the subject of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV documentary, The View From Here, directed by Liz Jones, and a best-selling coffee table book, William Creek And Beyond, and the resulting artworks toured museums and regional galleries around Australia. Just six years later, Dooney was the only female artist under 30 included in Christie's prestigious London auction, Modern And Contemporary Australian Art, which featured major works by Brett Whitely, Arthur Streeton, Sydney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Tracey Moffat. Two of Dooney's early enamel paintings sold for over $A23,000 each.

How to plan a successful trunkshow for sales and exposure, a conversation with EC (Lisa) Stewart

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Trunk shows are an approach to selling art that can be highly effective during rough economic times. When sales are slow, galleries and other venues become skittish about investing in stock or producing big shows for artists they haven't worked with in the past. But they still have to have something to put in front of their customers if they are to remain in business. Trunk shows can solve this problem by providing a ready-made, low-risk solution for the venue while at the same time providing artists with an easier way to get in the door. A trunk show is great way for a venue to see if your work is right for their customers before making a larger commitment of money or floor space.

The appeal of trunk shows for art buyers is that they are an event, an exclusive preview of work before it is made available to the general public. EC (Lisa) Stewart describes trunk shows as "a party with an opportunity to sell art." In her Trunkshow Manifesto, she has created a strategy and implementation guide that you can use to make it easy for venues to say "yes" to your proposal.