A few years ago, I met with a small business advisor, and he immediately pointed out that I did not include myself in any of my marketing materials. In fact, I had actually failed to include my own name on my business cards, only using my business name: JK Mosaic, LLC. The advisor lectured me that artists need to tell their own story; that the identity of an art business is inherently tied to the person creating the work.
You should have heard me trying to defend my anonymous approach to marketing. The fact is, I’m a lifelong introvert. As a kid, I often joked that I planned to be a hermit when I grew up, and I refer to my remote homestead as “the hermitage.” I seriously do not leave for a week or two at a time, and when the pandemic hit, I was fine staying here in my sanctuary for two straight months, leaving only once to take my cat to the vet. I’ve always hated that moment in a group setting where you have to introduce yourself, and everyone turns to look at you at once. And I still have that same anxiety when I make a public post that is in any way personal.
For a while after reluctantly receiving that advice, I did step it up. I re-ordered business postcards with my name added. I opened an instagram account and started posting regularly. Back then, I posted about my life, animals, family, travel and art. Slowly, I guess I became more self-conscious again and my feed has been almost exclusively my work, as I slid back into my comfort zone of the invisible artist. (By the way, my main instagram handle is @jenn.kuhns. But I have a separate page for community projects: @jk_community_mosaic. And I even have a separate page where my posts are related to my interest in folk art, mythology and travel: @folkartadventures.)
Realizing that I’ve been hiding behind my work for a while now, I thought I’d write a post about me for my “About the Artist” page. I am originally from Michigan, but I moved to Washington State right after graduating high school, in search of a more diverse life (in every way; people, landscape, culture. Northern MI is very homogeneous. And flat.) But that’s very old history as I’m 50 now (in 2020) and have been living in WA for most of my life. I dabbled in just about every art medium I could through my 20s and even exhibited and sold things, from drawings to jewelry to ceramics to linocuts. In 2000, I discovered mosaic, and that one stuck.
I got married in 2001 and we found this property in a rural area not far from Olympia, the capital. It was very affordable at the time – 5.3 acres with a 30′ waterfall, pasture and forest, outbuildings, well and septic already here. We lived in a 1970 mobile home for the first 5 years, then replaced it with a modest house. We put in gardens, collected a menagerie of animals, and we now have a little sanctuary that sustains us.
In 2003, I had my daughter. We didn’t have local family or a support system, and my attempts to return to work were beyond challenging. The cost of childcare and other work expenses exceeded my income. Around that time, I was beginning to be hired for commissions. I didn’t yet have all of the skills and information for architectural work, but I began to really focus on learning the technical aspects of mosaic.
I found that I could net more of my income making art than by working part time in my social work job, while being available as a parent, so I threw myself at it with full force. In 2007, I took a micro-business training course through Enterprise for Equity that was pivotal. That spring, I was selected as the featured artist for a popular Olympia art festival, and I completed 16 commissions that year, including dynamic work for Swing Wine Bar. And that’s how I got started on a career in mosaic.
Since then, it has been a sometimes-rocky road. Freelancing as an artist means a lot of really hard work that never stops. I’m almost never NOT working, whether I’m doing admin, marketing, studio work, developing workshops and teaching, or hands-on artwork. I do not have a very operational left brain, so being organized and anything involving numbers is really challenging. My dream is to get to a point where I can afford to hire someone to do that for me. But I’ve managed to make it work, mostly.
For a full picture, this guy is the real backbone of my work. He has been supportive from the beginning, always believing I could, and should, pursue creative work. He is a high school teacher and has the steady income that keeps us afloat when mine lags. But more than that: He built two studios for me. He pushes me to set standards for myself and know my value. He’s the pep-talk guy who keeps me from sinking into an abyss or drifting off into Lalaland (I am prone to becoming absorbed in imaginary realities.) He’s a sounding board and a diving board, and he’s the part of the story that doesn’t get told in my social media, but none of it would be possible without his support.
Phew, enough about me. Back to art!
