Art Lab helps build ‘creative’ economy

A recent exhibition called “Sticks & Stones” at Art Lab featured well-known Fort Collins artists Bob Koontz and Gary Hixon. Temporary walls with shelving were installed in the storefront on Linden Street, transforming the space into an elegant gallery to best display Koontz’s sculptural jewelry and Hixon’s vibrant paintings. “Sticks & Stones” illuminated the possibilities of Art Lab, a space in which art, experimentation and the entrepreneurial spirit intersect.

Art Lab Fort Collins is a cooperative, experimental art space open to the spectrum of creatives, including but not limited to fine artists, musicians and performers. “The idea for Art Lab came from having artists hanging art in the Toolbox offices,” says Dawn Putney, one of the founders and owner of Toolbox Creative. “We saw that some artists didn’t know what to do. It’s a way to help build the design and creative economy and a cool Fort Collins experience.”

Now in its second year and second location, Art Lab is not only a resource for artists, but a training ground for the business of art. “Resources for artists are desperately needed,” says Putney. “Art Lab gives people the latitude to experiment in an accessible and safe space.” Accessibility extends to financial considerations. For visual artists, Art Lab requires a two-week commitment and no commission is taken. Artists keep what they make on sales, and one may offset small usage fees by volunteering.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Commercial Solar is a big investment, but not an overwhelming one

Solar offers a significant economic benefit for commercial property owners while also positively impacting the environment and offering a path to compliance for new municipal requirements like Energize Denver. A local, experienced solar installer will help you navigate the complexities of commercial solar to achieve financial success for your project.

The cooperative, experimental model leads to exciting and sometime mixed results. “The plus is that it opens the space for people to try it out, to see what it’s like to hang a show, to construct the gallery, to promote it and communicate with the community at large. We had a kid who hung his first show at Art Lab, and then went to Aspen and got his work into the galleries there,” she says. “We’ve also had some really unsophisticated art. Artists need to do it to gain proof of concept – if no one engages with you when they come in the gallery there might be a problem. At Art Lab, artists are allowed to fail and allowed to succeed.”

This kind of artistic development extends beyond the gallery to offerings like the Art Lab Build-Your-Own-Website Workshop. “Selling yourself is part of the process,” says Putney. Websites are now an integral part of constructing an artist’s portfolio, cultivating attention, and sales. She describes Art Lab as a “pre-incubator” graduating people in to business classes at CSU or into arts incubators like Beet Street’s Creative Capital Workshop, which will run between March 30-April 1.

Creative Capital is a national nonprofit organization, based in New York City whose mission is to provide financial and advisory support to artists in five disciplines: Emerging Fields, Film/Video, Innovative Literature, Performing Arts, and Visual Arts.

Painter Amelia Caruso, who participated in the Creative Capital workshop in April, says the workshop “helped me clear out a few things. For example, I wasn’t confident about licensing deals for my art. It was the kick in the pants that I needed. As an artist, you should be looking for the opportunities to get your work out.”

For Caruso, this means translating her immediately recognizable abstract style of dots and color to fabric and phone cases or skins for electronics. Part of the challenge is, “finding the things that fits well with your work. The bigger picture is defining your brand, seeing the wider range for consumer projects.”

This kind of marketing can help develop revenue streams, but it also serves to introduce people to the art itself. Caruso, who painted the first transformer box in downtown Fort Collins, says projects like the fabric or the skins “allow people to take a piece and that may lead to them purchasing an original work.”

Fort Collins realist painter Kirsten Savage reiterates in conversation an idea she recently explored on her blog. “The reality is that traditional gallery sales are often a small percentage of what makes up the local artist’s viable income,” she says. “The artists that I know in the Northern Colorado region who are ‘making it’ are either creating true high quality work and selling in multiple locations nationally, or they are diversifying their skill set. The idea of dropping your work off at a gallery and waiting for the checks to roll in doesn’t really play here.”

As she notes, full-time artists in Fort Collins seek out all kinds of things to support themselves: commissions, private lessons, classes, workshops, public art projects, online sales, or travel to larger national arts festivals.

Business acumen continues to transform the job description of fine artist in Fort Collins, but an exciting question remains: how will business-savvy artists shape the gallery scene and visual culture of the city at large?

Kiki Gilderhus, Ph.D., Dean of Fine + Liberal Arts at the Rocky Mountain College of Arts + Design in Denver, covers the arts for the Northern Colorado Business Report. Contact her at news@ncbr.com.