Sophie Navarro
ArtCity Pro
Marketing Intern
October 2017 – Current

The skills I have developed over time with ArtCity Pro as a marketing intern are continuing to work on reaching out to artists and professional business owners within Lane County and communicating with artists regularly to build community. I feel that within the last term specifically, I learned how important it is to develop consistent rapport with people every day. I personally value what ArtCity does for the community. I see the impact directly as ArtCity Pro grows. ArtCity Pro meets the 2nd and the 4th Monday of every month. The meetings are from 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM and meet at RAIN. I have included my insights and information into my graphic memoir for my capstone. I have grown immensely from participating with ArtCity Pro for the last 8 months and working with Charly has helped me learn new strategies on how to market my own work, how to connect with other professional artists and to consistently promote ArtCity.

“A wonderful place to network and grow your business is with a professional development organization like ArtCity Pro, founded by Charly Swing. This organization supports artists and their visions by bringing artists together, so they can achieve and even exceed their goals in a co-working environment. There are incredible opportunities within ArtCity Pro to network, learn from other artists’ experiences, and help each other grow professionally.

ArtCity Pro empowers artists. The insights you gain with ArtCity can lead to new job opportunities and collaboration with other artists and organizations. ArtCity is a great place to gain first-hand insight from other artists about the grants and professional opportunities that are available to artists. When artists apply for grants and residencies, it is beneficial to have strong references from artists who were previously awarded those grants or residencies. The same is true for getting gallery representation. Professional networking and maintaining strong professional relationships is vital to the success of an artist.”

Leading Discussions and sharing our artistic processes

Some of our meetings were mainly focused on working on our art businesses and other times we were able to lead discussions on various topics that many of the artists in ArtCity Pro wanted to talk about. Some of these topics were centered around how artists can support themselves, and how artists can work other types of jobs and balance creating new work. We discussed our processes, shared through video presentations and discussed any blocks that we were going through.

We talked about how to charge for your work and how to handle potential job opportunities. It is very common for artists to say “Oh, I can do that for you.” However, the common problem with being too agreeable with potential clients is we end up charging way less to do a specific job or we don’t establish expectations and boundaries in the first place, clear boundaries regarding what we need to sustain our art businesses. You don’t want to sacrifice your work. Your time doing your art is valuable. We talked about knowing your value and how to show others that your work is valuable. Artists deserve to be compensated what they are worth. We ended up having lively and engaging discussions during our meetings. These discussions offered great insight and instilled inspiration within the group. This is a huge reason why ArtCity Pro is important to our community. Artists can meet regularly and have a supportive place where we are all encouraged, where our ideas are respected, and colleagues encourage us to be accountable to ourselves and our work.

Mailchimp Newsletter

I started working with Mailchimp at the beginning of Spring term and I am still working with this particular marketing tool. I believe creating a Mailchimp newsletter will help me create consistent content for my fans and also create another way for potential buyers to attend my upcoming art shows. It’s a great way to keep everything all in one place, blast on a monthly level, and create opportunities to market other artists within my newsletter.

Marketing Strategies

Eugene Weekly Calendar

Mailchimp Newsletter

Communicating with other departments on UO Campus

Eugene Magazine

Facebook ArtCity Pro

Lane Arts Council

Fundraising opportunities

Charly and I discussed that my focus over the summer will be to help with fundraising and outreach. ArtCity needs to raise $6,000 and there are many exciting projects taking place over the summer. These funds help with paying artists, for supplies, equipment, musicians and various events. My goal is to help Charly with marketing, fundraising and continuing working with ArtCity Pro. I feel that these are amazing skills that I would like to develop more as I continue to move forward after graduating from University of Oregon. I feel honored to be a part of ArtCity and look forward to seeing how much I will grow over the next 20 years.

My Own Thoughts

Being a part of ArtCity has given me a new perspective on how I see myself as a professional artist. I take my art more seriously than ever and want to be sure I am only producing high quality artwork. I can see that my style has evolved and now it’s time for me to launch my own art business. I believe as I slowly gain momentum with my own art business, other artists will see my success and will want to learn how they can do it themselves as well. This is what I am passionate about. I want to help other artists grow into their businesses. I want to see artists succeed. I think artists need other artists to help fuel that passion and continue seeing their process unfold. In a way, you never really arrive, I think creating a solid art business comes down to treating it like you would any other business. It’s a balance of creating new work, doing the administrative work and marketing your work. I think more and more artists are doing this and becoming very successful. The way artists become successful is by staying connected with other creative communities on a consistent basis that provides support, receiving constructive feedback and experimenting with systems that work.

Below are several photos I took at one of our ArtCity Pro meetings where we meet the 2nd and the 4th Monday of every month.

Wanderlust Umbrella Project February 19, 2019 — Wanderlust Umbrella Project
February 19, 2019