 |
| Denise
Wallace's Old Bering Sea III pendant of sterling silver, 14K
gold, and scrimshawed fossilized walrus tusk. The fish can be
removed and worn as a pin. Photo: Mark Nohl. |
When you’re an artist, you have to look at the context of
your profession as something that lasts a lifetime,” says Lainey
Papageorge, jewelry designer and former owner of the Illumina gallery
in Atlanta. “It’s not just something that pays the bills.
You have to nurse it, take care of it, and treat it like something
that’s valuable and worthy. [But] like the snake shedding its
skin, you also have to be willing to leave things behind and let
them die.”
 |
| A
pair of Breadfruit earrings of sterling silver, 14- and 18K
gold, and carved fossilized walrus tusk by Denise Wallace. Photo:
Mark Nohl. |
Finding the right balance of creative design time and what is needed
to manage a business is not just a pursuit for the well-seasoned
jewelry artist. Even novices must balance time to reflect, design,
and produce what’s essential to market their product, show
it, and (hopefully) sell it. In fact, it’s not just about finding
balance. It’s about striking a compromise between art and business.
In her book, Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul —
A Woman’s Guide to Promoting Herself, Her Business, Her Product,
or Her Cause with Integrity and Spirit, Susan Harrow stresses
that you can’t achieve your goals if you’re playing by
someone else’s rules. In fact, marketing yourself, and your
work, does not necessarily have to mean compromising your values
or your quality of life. “Don’t wait until you’re
dying to make your choices,” Harrow writes. “Exercise
your choice muscle regularly to keep it flexed and sturdy . . .
your children, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your
community, and the world will remember you for it.”
Many designers live with tunnel vision, only focusing on getting
their work recognized. While that pursuit can insure survival, it
also can devour years of time and energy. Designer Denise Wallace
achieved a high level of success with her unique figurative pieces,
famous for their scrimshaw detailing, while working with her husband,
Sam Wallace, from their home base in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At one
point, the two managed 10 employees and showed their work in nearly
40 galleries and retail outlets across the country. But after more
than 20 years living and working in the Southwest, Wallace and her
family moved to Hawaii in 1999. “I’d reached a plateau
in my personal and business life. We needed to create more of a
challenge for ourselves in our field professionally,” she says.
“Also, I felt like Santa Fe was not the place for us anymore.
Our kids were 16 and 14 at the time and the crime rate was increasing.”
Raised in Seattle, Wallace’s mother was an Aleut and this
cultural influence runs deep in her design aesthetic. Wallace’s
husband selects and cuts the stones, such as fossilized walrus tusk,
turquoise, sugilite, petrified dinosaur bone, and lapis, while Denise
performs designing, metalwork, scrimshaw, and finishing. Together,
she says, they spend almost as much time finishing the pieces as
they do soldering and fitting stones.
“Before, in Santa Fe, it was like we worked and worked and
worked. I spent a lot of my summers indoors working and having children,”
Wallace recalls. After making a trip to Hawaii with a group of artists
in the early 1990s, Wallace fell in love with the landscape. “My
husband and I were really intrigued with the idea of moving. We
had just started to downsize our business. Until that point, we
had quite a few employees and were selling all over the place. I
wasn’t really happy in that situation. I was running a studio
full of people, as well as managing it all. We downsized, brought
our kids into the business and taught them what we were doing, started
home-schooling them, and moved to Hawaii.”
 |
| One
of Ricky Frank’s cloisonné
pins. Photo by Ricky Frank. |
Family-influenced, Atlanta-based enamel artist Ricky Frank had
a similar turn in his professional life. After more than 20 years
on the business-building treadmill, Frank realized other priorities
three years ago when he and his wife, Pat, adopted their daughter,
Lily, from China. “The biggest turning point for me, though,
was back in the mid-’80s. I had already decided that I couldn’t
support myself with my artwork,” Frank admits. “I had
a list of reasons why I couldn’t sell it. I had gotten my Master’s
degree in psychology and wanted to be a sports psychologist for
kids. I had studied about self-esteem and self-image and one night
I had to count my pennies to go to the grocery store. I decided
I couldn’t do it any longer, and decided to apply everything
I’d learned as a sports psychologist to myself.”
 |
| Ricky
Frank’s cloisonné pin in high-karat gold with stones
chosen to complement the colors of the enamel use dreamlike
imagery reminiscent of Matisse and Chagall. Photo by Ricky Frank. |
In order to hone his focus, Frank combined the nontraditional tools
of visualization and meditation with more traditional goal-setting
techniques to turn his career around. “I was coaching soccer
and supporting myself at craft shows. I knew that to be good at
anything, you have to be committed. Finally, a friend dragged me
to a guide visualization meditation night and during a visualization
it hit me there was a way of thinking that could connect my two
passions.”
Frank’s limited-edition sterling silver cloisonné enamel
jewelry and one-of-a-kind pieces in high-karat gold feature colorful
and illuminating tones combined with stones such as amethysts, tourmalines,
pearls, and diamonds, in designs often reminiscent of the dreamlike
imagery of Klimt, Chagall, and Matisse. “I remember thinking
that I didn’t have the money or confidence I needed,”
says Frank. “I didn’t believe I could make it because
the work took too long, no one appreciated it; it was too complicated.
In order to progress as a jewelry designer, you have to invest,
buy a good booth. I wasn’t convinced it would be a worthwhile
investment. But one changing moment was when I started to set goals
for myself. My first [goal] was to reach $40,000 in sales that year.
I picked the number out of a hat and it was probably four or five
times more than I’d ever made.”
Frank reached his $40,000 mark. “I would visualize myself
juggling a big ball with $40,000 on it. The next year, I visualized
$70,000 and came within $1,000 of that goal.” Soon, Frank began
hiring apprentices to help with production. The expansion increased
his commitment level. Frank’s business continued to grow, although
he did only five or six craft shows a year, due to the time-consuming
nature of cloisonné.
“Then I reached a point where I got seven rejections from
retail shows in a row. I realized that I had my income tied to a
few people who looked at slides for a few seconds. I applied to
ACC at Baltimore and drained any savings I had to pay for an extra
employee and promotional material. We did well and our business
took off. Since then, I’ve been trying to do a balance between
retailing and wholesaling. As things got bigger, we took a lot of
orders, got a lot of buyers, and then maxed out. I started feeling
I wasn’t having enough time to design. Every year, I would
say I would take time off and it never happened. Part of it was
that the business was doing well and the economy was doing better
and it was hard to stop.”
 |
| Lainey
Papageorge's cuff bracelet of sterling silver and 14K pink gold
set with spinels, carved moonstones, and zircon; Photo: Art
Science. |
“You have to discern what serves the higher goal of producing
top-quality work that has an underbelly of soul to it,” notes
Papageorge. “I don’t want to just make money because other
people can be duped into wearing something I’ve made. My priorities
are what best serves the creative process, how to find outlets,
and how to stay organized and manufacture my work. What I have maintained
in my business today are the things that I can manage and still
be able to do what it is I’m supposed to be doing as an artist,
a mother, and a business person.”
Before closing her gallery a few years ago, Papageorge showcased
the works of 60 to 70 jewelry artists with a special focus on lapidary
art and carved objects. “The corporate structure of running
a business finds you paying all the self-employment tax and insurance,
and dealing with all the hassles of a company where you have to
keep all the employees and their families happy just to be able
to sell your work and have a high-visibility gallery. When the economy
gets shaky, it really impacts your life. You spend your time doing
everything else rather than your work,” she says. “It
has to do with letting the business eat you up. Really good business
people need to put in those 20-hour days. That trait works when
you’re climbing up the ladder. But when you get to a certain
point, you need to discern what serves you versus what is spinning
the wheel.”
 |
| Dressed
to Kill pendant by Lainey Papageorge, with a capybara molar,
carved rhodonite, rhodolite garnet, and a Great White shark’s
tooth, set in sterling silver and 14K pink gold; Photo: Jennifer
Marshall. |
Papageorge recalls when she made the move from Atlanta to Ithaca,
New York, while still running her gallery long-distance. The move
was an effort to bring balance to her work life. However, she soon
saw that the gallery couldn’t survive without her. “For
me, being in two places didn’t work. Illumina may have looked
okay to the uninitiated, but the internal workings were not healthy.
My manager was burned out from not being able to handle the creative,
employee, and clientele aspects on her own.”
Now focusing on her own work, Papageorge has found that the differences
lie in the growth, heft, and weight of her business. There are fewer
corporate perks today, she admits, and no corporate veil to hide
behind. She’s scaled down on eating out, renting cars, and
any number of things that businesses often allow. With this has
come a freeing up of her creative side that was once smothered.
No longer sitting at the bench, her labor and bookkeeping are farmed
out, as well. “I used to be embarrassed about that. But now
I realize that what I do best is working with the stones and the
design process. I feel good about the work I’m turning out
now,” she adds.
“Being home when the kids come home from school and being
able to take them to soccer practice at 4:30 wasn’t a possibility
before. Having the freedom to manage my life in a productive way,
rather than my life managing me, has been a gift. In the long run,
it might not be as good in terms of income. But I have more contentment.
Money can’t buy that. I never got to watch sunsets like I do
now. Years went by and I was in my gallery in a shopping mall or
on the telephone.”
 |
| Lainey
Papageorge's Go Fishing pendant of Montana agate, hessonite
garnet, boulder opal, and a Mako shark’s tooth, set in
14K yellow gold and sterling silver, Photo: Jennifer Marshall. |
Frank’s business and creative priorities also shifted with
the call for more personal reflection. “When we came back from
China with Lily, it hit me that I no longer had the time for myself.
I had a major time commitment. We’d always known we were going
to share the responsibility of raising Lily. I started working a
lot less in the studio. I didn’t stay on top of things as much
as before, but I laughed a lot more than I ever did,” he says.
With new commitments and passions, Frank made changes in how his
business worked. Some of these changes included paring down staff,
while letting go of control and learning to delegate responsibility
so that he could put more creative time into his life, design more,
and do the things that help lead a business. “I’m exploring
other ways to work. I’m learning a Cad/Cam program for casting.
I started my Web site last year and recently had a half-price sale
for local customers.”
While some designers find new technologies aid their progress and
ability to maintain balance, Papageorge opted not to pursue the
Internet. “The process of sitting at the computer wasn’t
worth it for me. It just took too many hours a day to manage. I
would rather be talking to or meeting with people. I’d rather
be on an airplane traveling to meet and work with people, instead
of sitting in front of a computer.”
Frank, however, finds that the Internet has opened up new avenues
for his work with his current site, www.rickyfrankenamels.com, which
features pieces from his Quilt series. In this series, Frank says
that he’s looking at the balance of everything in his life.
While most of the pieces have a central image, he says they represent
different aspects of his life; even the ladybugs represent his daughter’s
favorite motif. “Having a child is really affecting how I look
at my work now. I am looking at the world through a child’s
eyes of discovering joy. There’s a little bit of joy in everything
I do,” says Frank of his brooches, earrings, bracelets, and
cuff links.
“Now the challenge is learning how to incorporate the Internet
into our business, which includes galleries that I don’t want
to be in competition with, while not keeping other wholesale customers
away,” he says. “I plan to have two different Web sites,
one only for retail customers, specials and discounts, and a generic
Web site where anyone looking for me on the Internet can find me,
and find my gallery shows, too.”
For Wallace, downsizing was a family affair. She and her husband
began home-schooling their children while still living in Santa
Fe and her daughter (who now attends the Fashion Institute of Technology
to study jewelry design) and son continue making jewelry and contributing
to the family business. “Technically, they both know everything
that we know. I feel like I’m still transitioning a bit after
moving to Hawaii,” admits Wallace, who now does three shows
a year and sells her work through a gallery in Vermont, the museum
shop at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Institute of American
Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Santa Fe Indian
Market. She also has plans to start a Web site soon. “We just
got our studio built. I keep telling myself that it was okay to
take some steps back and work toward something again. And, I couldn’t
be happier.”
To contact Lainey Papageorge, call (607) 277-3092,
e-mail papageo555@aol.com,
or send mail to 167-1 Calkins Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850; to contact
Ricky Frank, visit his Web site at www.rickyfrank.com
or call (770) 552-7890; Denise Wallace may be contacted by mail
at P.O. Box 192, Hilo, HI 96721, or through her Web site at www.denisewallace.com.
Annie Osburn is a freelance writer based
in Boulder, Colorado, and is a frequent contributor to Lapidary
Journal. More work by Lainey Papageorge, Denise and Sam Wallace,
and Ricky Frank are now online in our Designer’s Gallery,
www.lapidaryjournal.com/gallery/
|
