Artist’s Guide to Starting a Profitable Side Gig

side gig Santa Fe

By Brittany Fisher

Finding a side gig that checks every box on your list can be challenging. Many people need something flexible that offers more than just seasonal hours, and of course, it has to be profitable enough to be worth your time. However, artists are among some of the most fortunate when it comes to finding a great side gig because creativity can lead to some amazing opportunities. It helps to have local resources at hand, so check out Santa Fe Art Studio to connect with other artists and to get access to a directory for artist services. Here are some things you need to know when it comes to finding and starting a side gig.

Set realistic goals

 Finding the right gig for you will involve several factors. First, you need to consider how much time you’ll realistically be able to commit to it while still being able to work on your art and take care of other responsibilities. You should also think about the intersection of your creativity and the new gig; if the job requires you to be creative, will you still enjoy that activity down the road? It can be difficult to be creative on demand. Thinking about these details first will help you figure out the right path for your needs. Of course, you should consider the advantages of working a side gig as well and weigh those when making a decision. These include the ability to work for yourself, working from home on your own schedule, and growing your clientele or audience as an artist. 

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SITE Santa Fe Three Openings: One Night!

site Santa Fe railyard
Friday, Oct 1, 2021, 5-9pm at SITE Santa Fe

SITE Santa Fe opens three multi-sensory exhibitions with food, drink, and live music!

Join the celebration to experience unforgettable installations by Joanna Keane Lopez, Oswaldo Maciá, and the latest Creative Residencies participant, Johnny Ortiz, musical performances by Nizhonniya Austin and ¡Hijo!, and food by Fusion Tacos.

SITElab 15: Joanna Keane Lopez: Land Craft Theatre
On view through Jan, 9, 2022

New Mexico-based artist Joanna Keane Lopez’s practice reclaims adobe and wildcrafting traditions and celebrates the legacy of the adobera and enjarradora—women who are masters at constructing and preserving earthen buildings. Exploring the boundaries between large-scale installation and adobe architecture, Land Craft Theatre examines notions of home and functions as a stage for stories of connection.An intimate dialogue between artist and material, Land Craft Theatre enriches the viewer’s understanding of land-sourced materials, such as adobe and botanical dyes and brings each aspect of the creative process into focus. Comprising two large-scale sculptural installations (adobe and paper), Keane Lopez incorporates plant and insect dyes, land-sourced colored clays, and hand-harvested aliz (a traditional clay plaster) from New Mexico.

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Oswaldo Maciá: New Cartographies Of Smell Migration | Santa Fe
On view through Oct, 31, 2021

New Cartographies Of Smell Migration | Santa Fe is a multi-sensory sculptural installation by Colombian artist Oswaldo Maciá celebrating movement and migration through sound, smell, and sight. 

Set among hand painted maps annotated with notes on the cultural history and biological role of smell, this olfactory-acoustic sculpture diffuses the fragrance of tree resins sourced from forests in El Salvador and Honduras. These resins have played major cultural, religious, and medicinal roles among Indigenous peoples of the Americas since time immemorial, and have been exported globally since the 16th century. The accompanying audio sculpture features a blend of sounds including wind recorded in various deserts around the world and insects from the Choco region rainforests of Colombia.

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Creative Residencies: Johnny Ortiz
On view through Oct, 24, 2021

Small white flowers arranged on a dark plate centered on a dark background
SITE Santa Fe’s second Creative Residencies installation features the work of Johnny Ortiz, including video and ceramic work documenting Ortiz’s culinary celebrations of place.
Creative Residencies is a pilot program that celebrates creative people doing extraordinary work in our community – work that would not normally be presented in a museum context. SITE Santa Fe works with Creative Residencies participants to develop and realize a project in the museum.Learn More

Music of the Great Earth: Hung Liu at Pie Projects

Hung Liu, Music of the Great Earth II, 2008, 80 x 480 x 4″, mixed media on panels
Opening reception (public)
Saturday, August 21,  2 – 4 pm
 
Discussion with Liu’s retrospective curator Dorothy Moss, Jordan Schnitzer, and Tonya Turner Carroll
Sponsored by Tamarind Institute
Saturday, August 21,  4 – 5:30 pm  
 
Hung Liu
Born February 17, 1948 (China)
Migrated to the United States 1984 (California)
Passage to heaven August 7, 2021
 

Beloved Chinese-born American painter Hung Liu passed away on August 7th. Diagnosed just a month earlier with pancreatic cancer, she left with tremendous courage and grace. Her spirit will keep shining through her art, which she always saw as bigger than herself. We are heartbroken, and honored to celebrate one of history’s most remarkable humanist artists with the upcoming exhibition Music of the Great Earth: Hung Liu at Pie Projects.

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The 2021 Santa Fe Studio Tour

2021 Santa Fe Studio Tour

Santa Fe Studio Arts Collective is proud to present The 2021 Santa Fe Studio Tour. Local artists, engaged in creating fine art in Santa Fe County, open their studios annually for the Santa Fe Studio Tour. Open to the public, a free event, this is an unique opportunity for the public to see the artists’ latest work and their working environments.  
 
The 2021 Santa Fe Studio Tour will kick off with an artists’ reception on October 8th.  This is an opportunity for the public to view all the artists’ work and map out their Studio Tour.
 
Visit the new Santa Fe Arts Collective website to learn more.

The Santa Fe Studio Tour also has a new Progressive Web App (PWA); it has been updated with the 2021 participating artists, so visit it now to plan your tour!

VISIT NEW WEB APP

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SITE Santa Fe SPREAD 7.0 Finalist Projects

Site Santa Fe

Congratulations Site Santa Fe SPREAD Winner!

SPREAD is a long-running SITE Santa Fe initiative that provides visibility, career-development support, and funding for New Mexico-based artists through a crowd-funded micro-grant. This year, through a virtual voting process, our community generated a grant of over $8,000!

Last week, we tallied the votes and awarded the final micro-grant to Mira Burack for her project, Sleeping Huts. Congratulations!

Congratulations to all of the SPREAD 7.0 finalists hazel batrezchavez, Mira Burack, mk, Diego Medina, Dorothy Melander-Dayton, and Martín Wannam for their incredible work. Follow them on social media to continue to support their work!
 
hazel batrezchavez @hazelbatrezchavez
Mira Burack @matterology
mk @mnkndy
Diego Medina @daydreamboy
Dorothy Melander-Dayton @dorothy505
Martin Wannam @martinwannamremix

Previous SPREAD EVENT:
SPREAD 5.0

A Portrait of the Artist: Willy Bo Richardson

willy_bo_richardson_flow

Portrait of the artist

Welcome to Issue 2 of “A Portrait of the Artist”, a series of interviews and photographic portraits inspired by the paintings of Agnolo Bronzino, (1503-1572) an Italian Mannerist painter in the court of the Medici.

This is a project that started in NYC, sprung from my work shooting portraits in the arts and design world.

Willy Bo Richardson paints large scale canvases in vertical fluid strokes, using a non-linear approach. He experiments with this approach by working with multiple canvases at one time. Working in large groups allows Richardson to explore new compositional ideas while continually being spontaneous.

Willy Bo Richardson

Willy Bo richardson
“Portrait of the Artist”, Photo Credit: Jen Fong

Willy Richardson’s luminous body of work is a stellar example of setting parameters, which, instead of being a confine, allows him to discover the freedom and spontaneity that can occur within a constant. He applies paint vertically only. It’s like a language that way, and what we read is the entire painting as a finished work. Is it a word, a short story or an entire novel?

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SITE Santa Fe Mary Weatherford: Canyon – Daisy – Eden

 

Mary Weatherford
Mary Weatherford, Her Insomnia, 1991, Organized by the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College

Over the last three decades, Los Angeles-based artist Mary Weatherford has developed a rich and diverse painting practice: from early target paintings in the 1990s based on operatic heroines, to expansive, gestural canvases overlaid with neon glass-tubing that brought attention to Weatherford’s practice in the 2010s. Mary Weatherford: Canyon—Daisy—Eden presents a survey of Weatherford’s career, drawing from several distinct bodies of work made between 1989–2017. As constant experiments with color, scale, and materials, these works reveal the continuity of Weatherford’s preoccupation with memory and experience, both personal and historical.

Originally from Ojai, California, Weatherford earned a B.A. in art history and visual arts from Princeton University, and an M.F.A from the Milton Avery School of Fine Arts at Bard College. In 1985, she participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program where she began to develop her visual language and earliest paintings.

A career-spanning catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition and will include an introductory essay by co-curator Bill Arning, an interview with the artist by curator Ian Berry, and writings by Elissa Auther, Nick Debs, Arnold Kemp, Rebecca Morris, Michael St. John, Margaret Weatherford, and others.

SITE Santa Fe Mary Weatherford: Canyon–Daisy–Eden is presented by the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. The exhibition is organized by guest curator Bill Arning and the Tang Teaching Museum Dayton Director Ian Berry in collaboration with the artist. It opened at the Tang February 1 – July 12, 2020.

SITE Santa Fe Mary Weatherford: Canyon–Daisy–Eden joins exhibitions at other cultural institutions around the country to participate in the Feminist Art Coalition (FAC). FAC fosters collaborations between arts institutions that aim to make public their commitment to social justice and structural change. It seeks to generate cultural awareness of feminist thought, experience, and action.