Hope Barron is a CPA in Wellington, Florida. Not only that, she’s an artist in her own right, so she understands when artists need to buy more equipment before they’ve even made sales, and when they need to hire an assistant to help them with their administrative tasks so they can concentrate on making art. Hope makes beautiful fused glass, and she uses that as her creative release to balance her time with her thriving tax accounting and consulting practice. We’ll talk about her glass for a little bit, then we’ll dig into the world of business and accounting. We talk about: how to set up your business how to keep track of your sales and expenses, how you will report your taxable income to the IRS the tax benefits of having a home office or studio what you need to do when you’re ready to hire employees and how you can set aside some money for retirement. Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher. Hope Barron This is her glass piece before it is fused in the kiln. The top one is the piece after it was fused. Hope Barron is located in Wellington, Florida. Her firm is Barron and Kogan CPAs. If you are not in the Palm Beach County, Florida area, Hope suggests that you talk to your artist friends and small business owners to get recommendations for local CPAs in your area. Here are some great takeaways from our conversation: Hope has taken fused glass classes with a local glass studio called Northwood Glass Art and Gifts in West Palm Beach, Florida. She has established a relationship with the owner of the studio who has become a mentor to her. Local shops are a great way to find experts in your art medium so that you have a source for answers and an opportunity to learn more advanced skills. Local stores are also a great way to use larger equipment that you may not be able to afford or fit in your own studio. Hope has a small kiln for fusing glass in her home studio, but she uses the larger kilns at her local glass store to fire bigger pieces. Fused glass is fun for Hope because it’s a very forgiving medium. It’s also a nice surprise when you see the finished piece. If you’re looking for an art medium or technique to try, search for classes in your area so that you can try it and see if it gives you as much joy as fused glass gives Hope. Now for the accounting and business tips. First of all, we’ll about how you set up your business. When you start making art, and then you start selling your art, you need to first decide if your artmaking is a hobby or a business. Even with a hobby, you could be selling your art, but it may just be that you’re wanting to sell enough just to…

Amy lives in Massachusetts and formerly worked as an art therapist. She’s taken those skills and she now helps artists find the time and the space to create art. Whether it’s getting past a creative block or tackling your self-doubt, Amy can help creatives to get back on track. She offers a variety of tools on her website that she calls Mindful Art Studio, like live retreats, self-lead retreats, and mentoring. Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher. Amy Maricle Amy's website is mindfulartstudio.com. Amy has a lot of video-based classes. You can find them all on her website under Shop Classes: Classes. This is Amy's free Facebook group called Creative Self Care You can also find her on Facebook at Mindful Art Studio. On Instagram, she is @amymaricle. And on Pinterest. Amy also has a Youtube Channel. Here are some great takeaways from our conversation: Back in Episode 124, I interviewed artist Caylee Grey. Caylee does a week-long business retreat near the end of every year so that she can plan her next year. This year, Amy Maricle joined her on it. And when I say Amy joined her, she did it virtually. I highly recommend doing a new year’s planning, to the level of detail that makes you feel comfortable. Caylee planned out her programming for all 12 months. Amy went deep for the first quarter of next year, a little less detailed for the next quarter, and so on. But by taking a week to do this planning, she has a great idea of what she will be doing for her business next year. Amy works with two types of artists: The artists who are dealing with a lot of self-doubt, and the established artist who have hit a block or want to get into the mindfulness aspect of making art. When Amy helps artists, she is process-oriented rather than product-oriented. What she means is that the art that you produce is not the important thing. It’s the process that you are doing that is going to help you. For Amy’s classes, she sets up a Facebook group for almost every one. That way the students can post their work and encourage each other. Amy offers live retreats that she and her students do through Zoom. That’s a great way to really be present with a class because you have the accountability of doing it with other people. She also offers self-lead retreats. For those, you are given the PDF of the class and you can do it at your own pace. Offering both styles is great because then she has something for everyone’s desires and situation. One of the things Amy does is she helps you to get back to your creative goals by helping you identify those goals. She also helps you to move forward when something is getting in the way. She doesn’t focus completely on what is getting in the way, but more on getting…

Dina Wakley is an artist based in Arizona. She has developed her own artistic style of mixed media art, using bright colors and many different mediums, like inks, sprays, stencils, stamps, and scribble sticks. She’s also a Ranger Signature Designer, and she’s developed her own lines of acrylic paints, brushes, rubber stamps, and more. Each year she teaches her techniques in cities all over the world. In 2020, she is even teaching at an art retreat in Mexico and combining that trip with her new love, scuba diving. Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher. Dina Wakley Dina's website is dinawakley.com. Her Facebook page is Art of Dina Wakley. You can find her on Instagram @dinawakley. We talked about Dina's art and diving retreat. You can find out about it on her website here. Dina recommended the book Art and Fear by Ted Orland and David Bayles. Dina mentioned that she also offers  online classes on  Jeanne Oliver's website. Dina and Ranger Ink are doing A Year of Gratitude Challenge. You can find the details on her blog here. Here are some great takeaways from our conversation: Don’t be afraid to make art in your own way. At the beginning, Dina got a lot of grief from people because of how she altered photos and just slapped things on to a page. But that was the way she always worked, and it worked for her. She was making art for art’s sake and wasn’t using photos with the purpose of preserving memories, and that was O.K. As Dina says, “the great thing about art journaling is, it might be ugly, but it’s not wrong.” So make art, and love your art, and don’t worry about what other people think. Another thing she says is, “if you release yourself from the outcome, you can embrace the process.” Because the process in art making is what’s fun and can be very satisfying. And the next thing that happens is: Through the process, and making things over and over, you will become good at it. And surprise: You’ve become an artist! Dina teaches a lot of classes and independently owned craft stores. She urges you to support those stores and take advantage of the information and tips you can get from the store owner when you walk in and ask them about art supplies. If you have a few classes that you teach live, you may want to offer a list to potential locations so they can choose which class they think their customers would like you to teach. The venue owners will have a good idea of their customers’ experience levels and needs. Dina now offers an acrylic pouring medium with her line of Ranger products. When she does acrylic pouring, she likes to do it on a rigid surface so that the pour doesn’t flow down the valleys in a flexible canvas. She pours on wood panels or media board. Media board is…

Artist Sandi Keene was new to Port Orange, Florida and wanting to further explore mixed media art, so she reached out to a local artist and asked that artist to show her what she does. From there, Sandi has developed her own artistic style, which includes watercolors, creating handmade books, using stitching on paper, and adding lots of other materials to her art pieces. Now she teaches online classes in book making and watercolors, and will be adding more classes later. She prefers to collaborate with other artists, so she teaches her classes with a partner, Rae Missigman, and she also hosts a podcast with artist Roben-Marie Smith, called Creatives Get Real. Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher. Sandi Keene Sandi Keene and Rae Missigman co-teach their online classes. In this watercolor class, they give examples of how they use the same techniques but their results are very different because they maintain their own creative art styles. Their most popular class is their Pocket Journal class. Sandi Keene's website is sandikeene.com. You can get to her online classes through the Popup Art Classes tab, or you can go directly to popupartclasses.com. These are the classes that she co-teaches with Rae Missigman. Sandi did The Documented Life Project with Rae Missigman, Roben-Marie Smith, Barbara Moore, and Lorraine Bell. It is run by others now and it has continued on Facebook as Life Documented. Sandi's podcast with Roben-Marie Smith is called Creatives Get Real. You can find that on any podcast app, and it is also linked on Sandi's website. Here are some great takeaways from our conversation: When you admire artists through websites or Instagram, look them up and see where they live. You may just discover that someone lives in your hometown. Sandi discovered that artist Roben-Marie Smith lived near her, so she invited her for a cup of coffee. It’s great to venture out of the online world and meet a fellow artist in person. You may end up collaborating like Sandi and Roben-Marie have with their podcast, Creatives Get Real. When teaching a class, a nice thing to do for your students is to make kits of supplies that you can hand out to them at the start of class. Students love this, and it’s exciting to open a little bag and see what kinds of scraps and supplies you’ve gotten. Seeking out other artists to learn from is a great way to expand what art means to you and to develop your art style. When learning new techniques, it’s a great idea to just try them out on paper first rather than expensive canvas. You’ll feel less pressured to make things perfect, and you can just throw it away and try it again if you’re not satisfied. When you start making art regularly, I suggest you also start an Instagram feed. Start posting your art daily, and don’t worry if you don’t think you’ve fully developed your style.…

Artist Carol MacConnell painted in oils for many years, and often in a figurative style. Now she is doing abstracts with acrylic, and adding other mixed media to her art. She even does acrylic paint pouring, but in a different technique than what most people have seen. She’s a lifelong learner, and takes classes from other artists both in person and online. Listen here or use a podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, or Stitcher. Carol MacConnell Abstract tulip created by Carol's acrylic pour technique. Another abstract made by acrylic pouring. "Peacock" mixed media artwork. Gerberas are Great First Class Flowers This photo shows how Carol does her acrylic pouring technique. She starts with unstretched canvas and pulls up and down on the four corners to make the paint flow into patterns. Carol's website is carolmacconnell.com Her Instagram is @carol.macconnell.art and her Facebook is Carol MacConnell Fine Art. If you're in Cincinnati, Ohio, you can visit the Pendleton Art Center to see Carol and her studio, as well as the studios for 175 other artists. They have open studios the final Friday of every month. Carol has taken art classes from many great artists. Here are a few she mentioned in our conversation: Lynn Whipple Ardith Goodwin Betty Krause Paul Jenkins (it is his poured acrylic technique that she uses) We talked about Carol's latest blog post where she mentioned some great apps that can be used with Instagram. Here is a link to that post so you can read about her favorite apps: Splice, Word Swag, When to Post, and Panoply. Here are some great takeaways from our conversation: Carol contacted her local ballet company and asked them if she could do a photo shoot while they practiced. She now has thousands of photos to choose from as subject pieces for future paintings. Another way Carol painted figures is she would sit at a restaurant and paint the other diners. She did that for about a year. A good place to look for artist studios in your town is repurposed manufacturing buildings. A lot of towns are renovating vacant buildings and offering them as studios for artists. Carol is a proponent of constantly learning and taking classes from other artists. She tries to do two in person workshops a year, but if she can’t see the artist in person, she will take online classes. The list of things you can add to your paintings to make it a mixed media piece is endless. Carol uses inks, pencils, oil pastels, and all types of paints. Carol works with companies that supply paintings for hospitals and other businesses. She makes large pieces for them, often acrylic poured paintings. When Carol wants a black background for a painting, she actually buys black canvas. She uses these because she doesn’t want brush strokes from a painted background to effect the flow of her poured acrylics. Carol uses GAC 800, which is a Golden product, to extend her paint when doing pouring.…