As an artist and a small business owner you may find it hard to grow your business online. Between the competition, trying to predict the search algorithms, and the fees associated with online marketplaces you might wonder if there is a way to grow your business locally. People love to support local artists, there are many ways to get involved in your community as an artist and a business owner, and those customers are the ones who will come back again and again helping to boost your presence online and getting you the reputation so that you can gain notoriety.

The Markets

Ah yes, the grind of doing markets. This is, by far, one of the most grueling tasks of being an artist. The good news is you probably don’t need to be doing two markets a day every weekend and every day from Thanksgiving through Christmas. Here are a few helpful hints to find the right markets:

  1. Look for markets that are going to align with your price point. If you lower your price to match the market price you will end up undervaluing your product and, as a result, working harder to make more art to keep up with the demand
  2. Scope out markets before signing up. Look at pictures online of past events, talk to other vendors about markets they participated in, and attend the market yourself as a customer to see if it is a good fit.
  3. If you have done a market several times and it isn’t working out, don’t double down and sign up again. There are plenty of others that can be a potentially better fit

The Art Shows

Art shows are usually the next step after markets. If you want to be taken seriously as an artist you need to have a presence in the art community. This can be having your work in a gallery, entering it in juried shows, participating in local art walks, or entering your art in competitions. The challenge here is that the curators of these shows are looking for very specific things, and it isn’t always immediately obvious what those are. A few things to consider:

  1. Talk to other artists. Join a local art guild or society to meet other artists and see how they socialize their work. Even if they are artists who specialize in different mediums than your own they will have valuable information.
  2. The pictures of your pieces, as well as the pictures of your booth, should look professional. This means staging your pieces for your pictures. Look at other artworks and how they are being presented by those artists. If you can mimic their presentation that will only help you in applying for these events. Look into guilds and organizations that offer professional shoots to their members at lower costs.
  3. When you are part of a show: talk to the judges, talk to the organizers, and talk to the patrons. Understand what it is that they want. Remember, they are the ones who are judging and buying your work, so it is important that you understand their wants and needs.

Local Venues

More often than not local shops, restaurants, and bars are going to want to adorn their walls with artwork to give themselves a more cultured look and feel. Talk to the proprietors of these establishments. Ask them if they work with local artists. Maybe they will let you put a few pieces up. They may even rotate artwork from different artists from month to month giving you an opportunity to showcase multiple pieces for a limited time. These are fantastic ways to engrain yourself in the community and make a name for yourself.

Whatever you do, don’t limit yourself. Explore as many options as possible while trying to find the locations that best meet the demographic you are trying to reach. Do you have your own success stories for how you were able to establish yourself in your community? Tag us @bz_furfur and, as always, stay unique.