erinzam ... Kansas, USA

Artist: Erin Zamrzla
Business: erinzam
Web sites: erinzam.com, erinzam.etsy.com, erinzam.com/blog
Location: Hays, Kansas, USA

What do you create?
Hand-bound books and paintings and more.



Where and when do you do your creative work?
Here and there. I have a small studio where I paint and I will shamelessly sew books anywhere... especially when waiting in line.

Do you have another "day job"?
As of yet, nope! I recently completed graduate school. In the meantime I've had enough of a taste of "self-employment" to cause me to take my sweet time in entering the rat race.



Where and what did you study?
With an emphasis in graphic design, I also studied painting and art history at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas.

Where do you find inspiration?
All over... often in the little things that I see and use every day. I love giving a new purpose to something that's considered mundane or even junk. I'm also very inspired by the artists in my life, especially my husband. He is a designer and illustrator who is always creating something fantastic. Here's a shameless plug for his cool website at benschlitter.com.



What motivates you?
Internally, I have a little creativity motor that must keep running. If it stops, I get grouchy.

When did you start doing this?
I first learned bookbinding about seven years ago through a college course. For some reason, I never took a painting class until I entered graduate school. When it was time to choose a minor, I picked the one that would irritate my sensitive skin the least... and fell in love with acrylic paint.



Do you remember getting into art as a kid?
Heavens yes!

When and why did you decide to start your own business?
It kind of happened accidentally. I taught a book design class when I was a graduate student and as I created examples to assist my students, the books began to pile up. I thought I'd try to rid myself of them via Etsy. It didn't take long for me to realize that I could continue to make books (and other stuff) and not have to store them (yay!).


How did you choose the name for your business?
I couldn't think of anything cute or clever and my last name is virtually unpronounceable. So, I went with a non-cute/clever abbreviation of my name.

What do you love most about creating your work?
As much as I love the process, there is something extremely satisfying about completing a project.

What's the most fascinating place you've been?
Israel... it is a country full of contrast and mystery.


A book you love:
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.

What is the most interesting thing about you?
Interesting... or strange? I grew up in a town of less than 300 people in the middle of Kansas. I went to space camp. I don't eat beef, even though I'm surrounded by cattle ranches. I have an affinity for contemporary Icelandic music. I love going to grocery stores.

What achievement are you most proud of?
Anytime someone enjoys something that I created.


What advice would you give women starting their own business?
Take a good inventory of your goals and your personal needs. Once you know that you're headed in the right direction, give it your best shot! Things change quickly and often, so it is important to be flexible and willing to learn.

What's the biggest challenge you face in your work?
Creating is the easy part. Keeping my mess to a minimum is a challenge.

What do you love to do in your free time?
I love to cook and I love to eat! Thank goodness I also love to ride my bike.


What are you working on right now?
I'm just about done with a book made from a fantastically cheesy Tiffany cassette tape.

yellow monday ... Sydney, Australia

Artist: Linda Kruger
Business: yellow monday
Web sites: yellowmonday.etsy.com, yellowmonday.blogspot.com, trunkt.org/lindakruger
Location: Sydney, Australia

What do you create?
I make images on paper, and textiles.


Where and when do you do your creative work?
Aahh! The question at the heart of most art practice, especially for those of us who live in the city. We have to be prepared to fit into whatever spare space and time there is.

For many years when I was doing lots of etching, I used a community access studio here in Sydney. Lately I’ve become more interested in other ways of making images which can be done in smaller areas and require less equipment, like screen-printing, drawing and painting, and I also love using the computer.
I do the computer work in my little studio (ie spare room) at home.


Painting, drawing and thinking and planning can be done almost anywhere – in the garden, in a café, in the lounge room. Printing textiles (or paper) is a bit trickier, but I have worked out a system for doing that on the dining room table – unfortunately not three-metre lengths of textile like I was able to do in college, but smaller dining table size pieces.

I also love to go away for weekends or holidays and take lots of stuff for painting, printing and drawing, because it’s so nice to be away from other distractions.


Do you have another "day job"?
Yes, I am a video producer.

Where and what did you study?
I studied film theory and practice, and printmaking (etching), and textile printing and design.


Where do you find inspiration?
Being around people who are passionate about what they do, people who like to have fun, people with a generous spirit. Eccentric animals. Beautifully made and designed domestic objects – particularly mid-20th century furniture and kitchenware. Pattern and colour in nature. Amazing shapes in nature. Handmade objects. Walking in alpine areas. Tokyo.

Inspiration can come from anywhere really. Actually it often seems to arrive at the most unexpected time and in the most unexpected places, and I think the surprise of never knowing where it will come from is part of what makes it inspiring.


What motivates you?
I think I am mainly motivated by the fact that I really enjoy doing this. It’s lovely to sell work and to know that someone has appreciated what you do, but really I’d be doing it anyway, just for the sheer pleasure of it.


When did you start doing this?
I started printmaking about 12 years ago and did a course in textile design in 2005. And drawing and painting always.

Do you remember getting into art as a kid?
Yes, anything and everything! I’ve always loved it.


When and why did you decide to start your own business?
For many years I did occasional exhibitions and group shows, but it wasn’t until very recently that I was told about Etsy, this great online venue where people sell all kinds of handmade objects. I had an enormous backlog of images and sketches and ideas for images that had never been exhibited. And so it seemed like a really nice project to prepare a group of works to put on the site. I decided to rework or develop a lot of the images and once I’d started, I found I was really getting into it, and really enjoying myself. I finally opened up shop a few weeks ago under the name yellow monday which is the name of a particular cicada found only in Australia.


How did you choose the name for your business?
Just sitting around with a friend talking about how her nephews were collecting the discarded shells of cicadas, and my partner said he used to collect them too, and that the most prized ones were called yellow mondays. It tickled my fancy. Especially since it’s an Australian cicada.


What do you love most about creating your work?
I love it when things come together as I imagine, but I also like to be flexible and change direction as the piece develops. I also love it when the materials or process or a clumsy brush intervene to give an unexpected outcome that after all is pretty good – maybe even better than I imagined.


What's the most fascinating place you've been?
Toss up between Tokyo and the Warrumbungles (an incredibly beautiful eruption of ancient rounded hills in northwest New South Wales).

A book you love:
There are lots but most recentlyAudrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife.


What is the most interesting thing about you?
My partner thinks I know what dogs are thinking. He always asks, “What’s that dog thinking?” But that’s really something interesting about him. I don’t know. I’m pretty boring really. Although I am capable of drinking twice my own body weight in tea over a 24-hour period.


What achievement are you most proud of?
I think it’s great that I still love making images. I don’t know that it’s an achievement exactly, but it’s something that gives me happiness.

What advice would you give women starting their own business?
Do something that you love, and then you will be happy to work hard at it.



What's the biggest challenge you face in your work?
Finding enough time and space.

What do you love to do in your free time?
I live near the beach and I love to walk along the coast. I love to swim there in summer too. Travelling as often as I can. Hanging out with friends and family. Drinking tea. Reading, films, music. Yoga. Beer.



What are you working on right now?
I have lots of things on the go at once. I have a huge backlog of ideas and sketches for paintings and prints. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few weeks setting up the Etsy store, and also the Trunkt site and blog. It’s all been a very steep learning curve, and quite exciting too, but I think I need to get a bit of a routine and make sure I actually leave enough time to produce more work.



What do you hope to achieve next?
I’d like to develop the Etsy shop more. I plan to do more painting. And I’ve been working on a range of textiles and pattern-based artwork.

Suspect Shoppe by Mati Rose ... California, USA

Artist: Mati Rose McDonough
Business: “Suspect Shoppe” by Mati Rose
Web sites: suspectshoppe.etsy.com and matirose.com
Location: San Francisco, California, USA

What do you create?
I create paintings, primarily with acrylic paint that incorporate collage and silk-screen. I like to re-invent things: cut up lace doilies and make them elephants, birds made out of silver leaf, found fabrics and vintage photos reclaimed. I hope to make art that is beautiful, colorful and has an unsuspected narrative.


Where and when do you do your creative work?
I do my creative work in my studio behind my home called Compound 21 that I share with eight other artists. I create any time of day, depending on what else I have going on – always with music loud, making a mess, and with many tea/coffee breaks so I get built-in perspective.


Do you have another "day job"?
I currently do not have a day job and am at a point of transition with where my art and work are going to lead me. My art collective called Beehive is looking for a space where we can teach art classes to create a more steady income. While I was in school I worked at several incredible San Francisco restaurants and ate like a millionaire on an art school budget, but I left two months ago and vow to never work in food service again if I can help it!


Where and what did you study?
I majored in Latin American Studies at a small liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota called Macalester. I minored in Art, but didn’t see that as realistic to pursue being an artist, plus I had so many other interests like Spanish. I ended up merging the two in ways by studying abroad in Bogotá, Colombia and teaching art classes to women in prison.


My favorite semester was one January term, where it’s 20 below in Minnesota, and I signed up for an intensive painting class where I lived and breathed oil paint all day every day for a month and was so happy. That should have been a clue! I got a second degree at California College of Arts (CCA) in painting and illustration and just finished six months ago.


Where do you find inspiration?
My neighborhood the Mission is very colorful — the street signs, dollar stores, taquerias with papel picado (cut paper) hanging like streamers and open markets full of fruit and flowers. San Francisco in general has so many pockets of inspiration – Chinatown, Japantown, the ocean, urban gardens, hidden stair cases, art museums like MOMA, Yerba Buena, De Young and tons of galleries and murals and street art. I love the Bay Area, and I’m getting inspired just thinking about how much there is to be inspired by!


What motivates you?
Other artists I admire in books, galleries and museums: Beatriz Milhazes, Amy Cutler, Margaret Killgallan and Kiki Smith to name a few. My studio-mates, my fiancé Hugh D’Andrade, my three-person art collective Beehive, my artist friends and of course art and craft bloggers! I also have to mention my mom, she is forever crafting and motivating.


When did you start doing this?
I had my first show in a local gallery in 2002 that was sort of my coming out as an artist and it surprisingly sold out (mostly to friends, but still, it gave me hope!). Shortly after that my fiancé and I moved to Oaxaca, Mexico for a few months. Oaxaca is a very artistic and inspiring city and we made our own artist retreat by renting a little place and painted, mostly watercolor because it was lightweight. I applied to art school the following year with a portfolio made mostly from that time, and just recently finished in January, so I’m finding my way again.


Do you remember getting into art as a kid?
Yes. I cut up socks and stuffed animals and put them together again Frankenstein style, swapping different heads with different bodies. In grade school we made books out of cereal boxes and wallpaper and volunteers typed them up and this seems formative for me in my desire to illustrate and write books. And later on I tried to replicate “Teen Beat” and “Seventeen” by making my own magazines with actual perforated tear out ads for “Baby Soft” perfume and '80s hilariousness.


When and why did you decide to start your own business?
I got laid off in 2001 when the San Francisco economic bubble burst from an administrative role at an Art Law firm, where I was supporting all these amazing artists and living vicariously through them, but felt really sad about my own career path.


When I got laid off I started making messy explosive art on my kitchen table, much to my roommate’s annoyance, and decided to take some art classes, and specifically loved a children’s book illustration class (and repeated it three times!) and decided that I wanted to be an illustrator. I then took a very practical class called “Starting Your Own Business” and saw how much further I wanted to go and went back to school for illustration. I also (gosh I’m realizing how much research I did and forgot about) found a creative coach who was amazing, to work with me towards my goals.


How did you choose the name for your business?
Suspect Shoppe was a name I put on my first creations — I made magnets and silk-screened underwear with little images of suspicious looking girls and a cat with a patch over its eye. Suspect things. Other words that come to mind are curious, surprise, twist and unexpected.


What do you love most about creating your work?
Freedom and being my own boss. I love being able to roam the streets at any time of day and bring big packages to the post with turquoise sharpie script, doodles and stickers on them to send to my people. The whole thing makes me very happy and like I’m regressing to my childhood, but I think there’s the bliss.

What's the most fascinating place you've been?
My friend Jessie and I drove cross-country from Boston to San Francisco and there were some places in the deep south of New Orleans near swamp lands and gator tours that I found fascinating.


A book you love:
So many! I like to read about five books at a time, and literally fall asleep with a few lying on top of me and Hugh has to pick them off of me. Lately these have been wedding centered. Recently I read Chronicles by Bob Dylan and surprised myself by loving it. I especially liked reading about how hungry he was for knowledge of folk music and that time period of the old ballads. He would study old headlines of newspapers in the library and soak up the information and said he could “send a train back later” for the information. I love that idea of learning and letting it seep in for later use, instead of worrying it’s going to pass you by. I am also a big fan of writing in your books, highlighting, dog-earing the pages so that you really feel like you own them. I learned this by example after borrowing books from my artist friend Sabrina Ward Harrison, who is another inspiration to me.


What is the most interesting thing about you?
Hmm. I am simultaneously cautious and a risk-taker. I am shy and yet very outgoing. Fearful but bold. I use a lot of self-trickery.

What achievement are you most proud of?
Going back to art school even though it was incredibly risky financially and felt a bit like an old lady turning 30 with kids who were just having their first legal beer, but I really am happy I gave myself that time and luxury to grow.


What advice would you give women starting their own business?
Interview people like crazy. And then interview again when you’re at another perhaps smaller crossroads. That is something I have to remind myself is that you can always jump off your particular trajectory, and start anew. Also, find your support systems. Whether it be bloggers, studio mates, or friends who will listen to your trials and triumphs.


What's the biggest challenge you face in your work?
Focus. I like to dabble. I grew a lot in art school and have a bigger skill set than I once did, and sometimes I feel it is helpful to have limitations and to push those limitations. Right now I’m feeling like I have too many brushes! Obviously I can see the advantage of this... another challenge I have is that I always see both sides to every coin, and because of that it takes me a long time to make decisions. Fortunately when I do make those difficult decisions they are authentic.


What do you love to do in your free time?
If I could have my perfect day I would go with one of my friends to our neighborhood French bakery Tartine and talk art and life over a bowl of a latte and a morning bun and then thrift or go to a fabric store (specifically Britex) or SCRAP (recycled goods) or even Anthropologie for inspiration and then go home and create, later on in my perfect day I would have a date with my man Hugh and go to a movie and dinner. I also love to kick-box, cook, read and ride my bike.


What are you working on right now?
In all honesty, planning our wedding in a couple weeks! Since my fiancé and I are both artists it is definitely a creative party from the invites to the table cloths to the tissue paper flowers we are amping up color!


What do you hope to achieve next?
First, I am dying to build a new portfolio website come fall. I dream to publish a children’s book — write and illustrate one. I would also like to have a solo show someplace exciting, like Italy! Mainly, I would like to figure out a balance of creating art and living off it in a steady fashion, so we’re not sweating to pay the basics.

Jennifer Davis ... Minnesota, USA

Artist: Jennifer Davis
Web site: jenniferdavisart.com
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

What do you create?
Acrylic/collage paintings and drawings.


Where and when do you do your creative work?
I have a studio in the spare bedroom of my home so I can paint whenever the mood strikes me. I try to paint everyday.

Do you have another "day job"?
I have been making art full time since i was layed off from my job in October 2003. I was the office manager at an advertising agency.



Where and what did you study?
I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing – and a minor in Art History.

Where do you find inspiration?
I am inspired by art, artists, music, books, films, travel... all of the usual stuff. Specifically, a lot of my art work is inspired by found images. I collect vintage books, magazines and postcards.


What motivates you?
I’m not sure. My favorite thing to do is paint. I just enjoy it. (I suppose the fact that I rely on showing and selling my art to make a living is also a big factor.)


When did you start doing this?
I didn’t start thinking about art as something I could really do until college. I finished all of my general requirements and still had no clue about what I wanted to “be.” I took an art class and was instantly hooked. After that I took every kind of art class offered at the University of Minnesota: ceramics, sculpture, photography, print making, painting, drawing.



Do you remember getting into art as a kid?
My mom says that I was always a creative kid – drawing, “coloring” and talking to myself (yikes!) but I never thought of it as anything other than play.

When and why did you decide to start your own business?
Getting laid off from my job (in 2003) was a lucky break for me. It nudged me into taking the leap toward doing what a really wanted to do. It gave me the courage to try what I had been wanting to do. I took it as a sign.


What do you love most about creating your work?
Painting is a rush. It is fun. The high only lasts for a little while though – then I go back to painting and try to find it again.

What's the most fascinating place you've been?
A vacation to Italy: Florence, Rome, Venice... beautiful, inspiring.


What advice would you give women starting their own business?
My best advice would be to continually and actively pursue new opportunities. Waiting around for things to fall into laps takes too long.

What do you love to do in your free time?
I love to walk. I take a looooong walk every morning. I also like to eat, drink cheap beer in bars, go to art openings, look at other people’s art, dance, watch movies, read...


What are you working on right now?
My next big show is in January 2008 with Amy Crickenberger at Rosalux Gallery in Minneapolis. Rosalux is a cooperative gallery that I have been working with since 2002. Amy and I are just getting to work on the paintings for our show.