Artinject Conversations with Michelle Schenker | Episode 3
About Michelle Schenker
Michelle is a watercolour and mixed media artist living in North Carolina, USA with her husband and two rescue dogs. She loves being outdoors and spending time in nature. She also loves hiking, yoga and travelling.
When she is not creating art, she is busy being the digital marketing wizard for Cover Story Media, an online publishing company co-founded by her and her husband.
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Learn more about Michelle and Kathy Acerno’s Art For Good Project
Tracing Michelle’s journey from the start of her art practice to selling her art
Like many people, Michelle’s creative journey started in 2020 during the pandemic. Like most everyone she was stuck at home, got bored, and decided to take a class with her friend Kristy called Creative Catharsis. It was an online class hosted by Beth Glover, a watercolour artist local to where Michelle lives. In Michelle’s words, Beth created Creative Catharsis as a tool to manage feelings of stress and fear that we all felt around that time.
During these classes, Michelle fell in love with watercolours. ‘And then before I knew it, I had bought nicer art supplies. So it didn’t take me long before I was like, okay, I need to at least invest a little bit in this because I am really enjoying it and signed up for Skillshare and you know, just kind of went down that rabbit hole…’
Soon after she started her art account on Instagram and thereafter she did a 100-day challenge, which helped her develop her skills and find her passion for nature. ‘And so landscapes was really sort of what I was leaning into at that time.’
While Michelle started creating art during Covid as a way of therapy, what made her build her art business, while still having a full-time job, was her background in marketing and branding. ‘And a lot of branding is storytelling and I’ve kind of found my art to be that in a lot of ways, storytelling for myself, for others who maybe don’t have a voice or whatever it might be. So it was kind of in some ways a natural transition.
And I just saw the parallels. And also I’m a business-minded person…I have my MBA, I was a business undergrad. So like my brain just works that way. And so it was, I don’t know if it would have been a natural transition for all people, but for me, it made sense to try at least to make it a business.’
Michelle’s brother-in-law, who is also an artist, introduced her to local art show opportunities when he moved to her town a few years back. And while at the beginning she didn’t think she was ready, once she saw her brother-in-law doing these local art shows, it gave her the confidence to participate herself.
So she submitted her work to various shows and one of them accepted her work. It was at this show that she sold her first painting (to a non-family member). Somebody bought her Winston-Salem skyline painting that was hanging on the wall of the Red Dog Gallery at the opening reception of the art show.
After that first sale, Michelle’s good friend Katie helped her build her website. So Michelle uses her website to sell most of her art, she also sells some of her art through Etsy, as well as having her work at local art shows.
Michelle Finding her Artistic Voice through Collage Art
Michelle joined another art challenge in 2022 called ICAD, i.e. Index-Card-a-Day, wherein you use little index cards to create on using the prompt for the day.
A lot of the artists that do the ICAD Creative Challenge are more into collage. And so Michelle too ended up weaving her watercolor art with a little bit of collage. This challenge helped her get into play with art.
Doing the ICAD Creative Challenge made Michelle reconnect with her love for finding new uses for old things and repurposing. She realised that collage art enabled her to do something that she did as a child and has done her whole life- upcycling.
‘As a kid, I had a business with my next-door neighbour that was making dyes out of things in the yard. So like strawberries or beets or whatever, like making these little dyes and no one bought them except for our mothers, but it sort of speaks to what I’m loving now, which is really anything that can either be brought from nature. Like recently, I made black walnut ink from black walnuts that I collected in the woods behind me. And yeah, just getting into all the upcycling of papers and ribbons that I collect. And now I’m a paper hoarder, officially.’
However, Michelle contributes finding her voice to several other instances.
She also believes that time plays a big role in finding your voice as an artist. With time you get to a place of not feeling like an imposter and confidently stepping into the identity of an artist. But it’s hard, right?… Especially like you and me. Like we’ve been in more professional settings our whole careers. And so it’s a real challenge. It’s also kind of been an identity crisis at first.’
‘The other thing is that art is very helpful for channelling and processing my emotions. So I’ve found over the years, I mean obviously, a lot of complex things are going on in the world and tragic things are going on in the world right now. And we could dwell on that and it’d be easy to do that and to feel hopeless and sad and frustrated and all the things, but trying to make a choice every day of beauty. And how can we bring more of that into this world? Because there isn’t a lot of it right now. So I’m really sort of using it as a way to channel my emotions, but also hopefully help others who may see something in my voice that is helpful for them.’
How to Attract and Nurture a Community of Art Collectors
Michelle has been working in the role of a digital marketeer for 12 years now, for Cover Story Media, an online publishing company that she co-founded with her husband, and has previous corporate brand marketing experience with media companies. And now as a professional artist, she has established a beautiful community that loves and supports her work. Considering this amazing background, I asked her to share some actionable advice with fellow artists on how to attract and nurture a community, which resonates with their work and supports them by purchasing their work.
Tip 1
‘I think the first thing which we really talked a lot about already during this interview is to be authentically you.
..And so I think really the 80-20 rule you were just talking about is probably a good one of not being afraid to be authentically you at least 80% of the time and hopefully the thing that sells came from your heart, too.
I know it did with me. So, it’s just I don’t want to make it over and over again yet. But it is me. It is very me. And so I think one thing I would just not be afraid to be yourself and be confident in that because it’s hard in this world, but no one else is like you and no one else will make art like you. So embrace that.’
Tip 2
‘The second thing goes right into what we were just talking about, which is just understanding those trade-offs you know, between moneymaking items and things that you love to make and making sure you have time for both, because otherwise it’s not going to feed your soul and keep you going.
I am lucky enough, blessed enough, to have a full-time job that allows me to probably not spend as much time as I’d like on my art. But I get to spend time and money on my art because of that. I would say at this point, just to manage everyone’s expectations, I’m probably paying for my own supplies with my revenue I’m making for my art.. I can’t quit my day job. But I think that’s pretty good being able to support your habit and that’s okay.’
Tip 3
‘Saying thank you to your audience whether that’s as a group saying, well, I read 700 followers and so I’m going to say thank you and do a little giveaway, or whether that’s just responding to comments.. or an email or a text for someone that’s local, could be various different ways.
But I think you don’t build community if you don’t participate in the community. So that’s something that’s been really important to me and has built trust over time. So, yes, you know, Jane, who commented on something yesterday and I’d never heard of her, it would be easy to not reply to her because that’s another thing on my to-do list. But Jane may become my customer in six months if I reply to her now and next week.. So I think like any other business.. it’s important to build trust with customers and to create a relationship over time.’
Tip 4
‘Don’t be afraid to toot your horn.
But it’s definitely a balance, right? Like you don’t want to oversell it and always pushing things, but at the same time, if you don’t ask no one’s going to do it. Yeah, but you have to be your best cheerleader.
And I remember like going to shows when I was first showing.. and I would like stand in the corner not looking at anyone. And someone asked me a question, “Oh, is that yours?” “Yeah, (walk away)”. But like, it’s the opposite of what I was just telling you guys to do, like engage, talk to your customers.
So yeah, it’s hard when you’re a baby artist to feel that confidence. But every time you say it, it feels better.’
Art For Good – Philanthropy through Art
Last year Michelle undertook an initiative called Art for Good, which I found deeply inspiring, so I asked her to share what prompted her to start the project and what has her experience been like with it.
Start of Art For Good
‘It was Christmas. And, you know, a lot of people are pushing, at least in the USA, for you to donate to different organizations because our tax year ends at the end of the year. And so there’s benefit, you know, if you donate.. So it was on my mind about giving. And also during the holidays, while it’s a wonderful time, you see a lot of sadness and people who don’t have what I’m blessed enough to have. So I think it was just top of mind. And then with the war.. there’s just a lot that was heavy on my heart.
And because I do have a full time job, I do have that ability to use my art for other things. I don’t have to pay my bills with it. And so I thought a nice way to give back would be to create for different organizations that I believe in and or the values align with mine and create art each month for different things.
..And Cathy was my was my roommate in college, so she reached out to me when she saw I was promoting this.. she joined me.. looked at the list of organizations that I had for the year and she agreed with them, had a couple of inputs about various things. And we just started. So we both agreed to make like four pieces each each month and they could be about the organization or the cause or they could be independently beautiful, whatever.
About Art For Good
‘And basically what we did for it was you contribute directly to the organization and then show us your receipt. So we don’t profit at all. And the individual, if they’re in the US, they did not pay for shipping. If they’re outside the US, then they would pay for shipping. But other than that, it’s just a donation to the organization.’
‘Creating art so purposefully and being able to also work together with a friend.. was just such a meaningful concept. But it also can be quite heavy to be thinking about these things all month and really digging into them with your heart when you’re creating art. So we kind of made the decision to take a break for the month of May, and that turned into the rest of the year.. I am working on reimagining Art For Good for 2024’
Art as a Tool for Social Advocacy
‘I have not found my pieces that are social commentary to necessarily have more of a following, but there is definitely more extreme emotions around them, right. And so that can translate to a sale or that can translate to someone writing something not very nice in my comments, but so it’s a risk and I think, well, it depends on how evocative you get, but it can be a risk.
..but you’ve got to do it. It goes back to what we were talking about, like being authentic to you and who you are. And I mean, you don’t have to do it. If you choose not to do that, don’t do it. Make beautiful things and keep doing it because we all need more beauty as well.
..But I think when you show your desire to support something outside of yourself, it shows you’re not only in it for the money and that there’s more to you as an artist and.. as a person’
Game-changer Mindset Shift for Michelle’s Art practice
Michelle shares that her the biggest mindset shift that has been pivotal for her was going from, ‘Not believing in myself as an artist and not.. believing that my ideas are original’ to ‘I’m just going to sit down with this piece of paper and I got to figure out what I’m going to do next’.
‘And so, you know, you scroll through Instagram, right? And you see all this different art and you can find your art starting to feel like other people’s art.. For a while when I was doing Skillshare classes, I was like, I have to stop because my art looks like whoever I had gone down that rabbit hole of that week.’
‘..Making that transition definitely was hard. I remember I had a couple of months where I was like, not really making.’
What helped her shift her mindset was just forcing herself to do it, to create a habit of creating every day.
Michelle’s last nuggets of wisdom before wrapping up the interview were:
‘I would just remember to have confidence and be you.’