THE COMPLETE SMARTIST GUIDE
Highlights and snippets of this guide to being a business smart artist
The Complete Smartist Guide by Ekaterina Popova & Alicia Puig
This book is perfect for emerging artists. Whether you’re literally just starting out or you’ve been down this road a few years, this book is for you. I am a few years down the road, so some parts were redundant for me but the book is a great resource. It’s organized well so that if you want to skip around you can totally do that. I read through it all because even if I’ve heard something before, sometimes there are bits that jump out or are said in a more helpful way.
Popova and Puig are artists but they also have experience in many different fields of the art world such as working for a gallery or starting a magazine. For that reason I felt like they had a comprehensive and helpful look into the art world. They’ve accepted submissions from artists so they can tell us the do’s and don’ts. Where they lack expertise, they interview other established artists for more information.
So, without further ado. Here are some of the highlights I gleaned from The Complete Smartist Guide:
PRACTICAL:
Create 2 folders in your email. One titled “keep” and one titled “pick me up”. In the keep folder you can add all the emails you may need to reference in the future. In the pick me up folder you can put all the encouraging emails you may need to read when you feel discouraged.
“It’s your job to communicate how the viewer can connect to your work and convince them why it’s important for them to own it.” pg 68 This is in regards to storytelling as a form of marketing