The economics of making art

Inventing new economic models for artists to make a living

So what’s this all about?

I wrote this essay in 2019 before COVID and before giving birth to my second child. At the time, I was also working on a project called Prana that helped artists of color cooperatively save together to fund their individual projects. Since then a lot has happened. Four years down the line, I can safely say that I stay committed to creating a space for artists to carve out a decent living with their projects. In keeping with that value, I am starting this newsletter project to talk about the economics of making art and surviving on an art income. My intention is to interview successful artists who have achieved this unicorn dream so that others can learn from them. I will also be spending the next year figuring this out for myself and this will be the place where I plan to share this experience. My hope is that my research, insights, and inevitable mistakes will be valuable to others and will help save time and effort to evolve your practice and make it your main source of income. I have made slight edits in the following piece to update you on my present family and situation, other than that, all of it still rings true.

Here is the 2019 piece :

The definition of art has expanded but the economics of making art has remained the same in the past century or so. The prevailing question for all artists is pretty much the same — How does one live off their art?

This is a personal challenge for me. I’ve been running Urban Matter Inc., a mission-based art and technology studio, with my husband for six years now. Things got ‘real’ when we added another member to our family two years ago (I have two kids now!). Childcare, health insurance, and everything that goes with bringing up children in the US was staring us right in the face.

Given that we work in the field of art and design, a lot of our friends are creatives. From what I know, none of my friends sustain themselves purely through their art. Some teach some do commercial art (illustrations for books, writing for magazines), and others like my husband and I consult for agencies and startups. I met a visual artist who does staff portraits for websites. Most of the artists I know have part-time or full-time jobs. That seems to be the norm, not the exception.

Income from art or elsewhere

Creative Independent, a publication by Kickstarter conducted a study with 1067 visual artists from all around the world to understand financial stability within this group. The top source of income for funding artwork came from contract or freelance work where 61% of the artists listed it as a source of income. Just 12% of artists listed ‘gallery sales’ as a comfortable source of income. Also, for more than half the surveyed artists, just a small amount of their income was generated through their art practice and only 17% said they were making most of their income through their artwork.

A very absorbing article by Monica Bryne, in the ideas section of the TED website, hits the nail on its head. She talks about the hardships artists go through to get their work out there. If you don’t pay artists, there is no art, if there is no art, there is no culture, that is pretty much her message and it rings true on so many levels. She further emphasizes the need to find or rather invent new economic models for artists that place artists first.

About 42% of the artists in the Creative Independent study stated that their present source of income is not related to their artistic practice.

Personally, finding a balance between work that pays the bills and working on our artistic projects is a constant struggle for us. We recently took up a teaching gig which involved traveling to a different city to teach a class. Even though it takes hours out of our week, we view it as an opportunity because it is directly aligned with our work at Urban Matter. Income generated in a way somewhat connected to our artistic practice is a good thing because it helps get the word out. Teaching gigs, leading workshops, and sharing skills and techniques using sites like Skillshare all fall in that category.

In the past 5 years, we’ve won just over 5% of the total commissions for which we applied. Others may have a better win rate but this is ours. That said, we create large interactive installations for cities and there isn’t necessarily a huge market for that. Talking about a market for artwork sounds strange, it is as if I am talking about electronic toothbrushes or shaving kits for women. What I have learned in the past few years of making work and trying to make money from it is that if you are pushing your work, you need to know who will buy it. Which brings me to the onset of crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is good for one-off projects

When Perry Chen (one of the founders of Kickstarter) came to give a talk at my university 10 years ago about Kickstarter, I thought he wasn’t serious. Why would anyone want to support my project? Looks like he had it figured out. Kickstarter along with many similar crowdfunding platforms have taken off in the past few years. Crowdfunding has become as mainstream as getting a loan from a bank. We’ve tried to crowdfund three projects and succeeded at one. Creating word of mouth online and attaching a payment mechanism to it so that the supporters are putting their money where their mouth makes a big difference. The aspect of getting the word out and closing a sale becomes a lot easier with a platform like Kickstarter.

According to the Kickstarter stat page, the total number of launched projects on Kickstarter is around 434,076 of which 157,878 are successful, so around one-third of complete projects are successful which is not a bad average at all. That said, the top three categories for projects that are successfully funded happen to be Music, Film & Video, and Games — not Art. Kickstarter is also a one-time platform that is good for raising money for prototypes and not necessarily for selling art on a regular basis.

Selling on Instagram means having a large following

A quick look at some of the art and craft subreddits to research what other online platforms exist to sell art reveals Red Bubble and Society 6 amongst others. If you are selling T-shirts, stickers, phone cases, etc., in bulk this seems like a good way to monetize. That said, artists making a living off of these platforms are few and far between. The democratization of art through social media, especially Instagram, is being furiously discussed amidst art circles. Instagram can allow artists to build wider audiences and transact through the platform. That said, the hustle still remains. Replacing in-person art openings and art fairs with Instagram accounts may increase the odds of selling a piece of art because of a large number of eyeballs, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of sustainably selling art for a large number of artists without a huge online following.

Relationships and support network is where it is at

This is not a surprising finding, that in the survey conducted by Creative Independent, most artists credited their relationships and support network as things that contributed to their financial stability. An interesting online economic model around patrons is Patreon where content creators can make money from a fan-based membership model. It is definitely far from perfect but a step towards a more sustained income. That said, an article aptly titled ‘Scraping By’ published in The Outline in Dec 2017 quoted statistics from another blog called Graphteon that highlights Patreon stats. It stated that 0.8% of Patreon creators made a minimum federal wage of $15/hr.

Monica Bryne in her article about sustaining herself credits Patreon for paying her rent when she was preparing for her TED talk. She already had a network of fans who were willing to contribute towards early access to her content.

Re-examining all the commissions we’ve picked up in the past, a large percentage of our work came from word of mouth. Creating a large community or network of fans willing to buy work can be a challenging task but creating a smaller close-knit network can be a lot easier, especially if you have a really good sense of who could be a good buyer for your artwork.

What’s next: back to 2023

As I figure out newer and better ways of supporting artists and financially scaling my own practice, I would like to learn from other better, bigger artists, and would like to share that with you all.

The “peer effect”, socio-economic background, race, and generational wealth, all contribute to whether an artist is able to enter the creative field and most importantly live off of it. The richer your family is, the higher the chances that you could be an artist. Practicing artists earn less than average income in the country, according to an article by Hakim Bishara for the Hyperallergic. In short, odds are stacked against artists from Black and Hispanic backgrounds whose median family incomes are significantly lower than the median income of white families.

Throughout the ages, the history of art and culture has been written by the rich since they are the ones who create and buy art. They wrote the rules of the game. This needs to change. So where do we start? That is the journey I am embarking on, and I would like you to join me as I uncover what success means in the art world. My plan, for now, is to speak with artists about their journey to financial independence or not and rethink my work at Urban Matter. Sign up for my newsletter as I dig deeper into race, art, money, success, financial freedom, and more by signing up for my newsletter here. Until next week!

---