Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Samantha and Sarah Ferrer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Samantha and Sarah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Besides trying to pursue our own careers as visual artist, our meaningful project is our art studio. We have goal of making art more accessible in our local community.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are Samantha and Sarah Ferrer. We are twin artists who were born and raised in Miami, Florida and we are trying to carve our way into the art scene of Miami. We grew up attending a well known magnet high school called New World School of the Arts where we able to start studying art seriously and have our first experience using clay and doing ceramics. We received scholarships to study at the Kansas City Art Institute, and pursued our Bachelor in Fine Arts majoring in Ceramics. After graduating from KCAI Sarah became an English Teacher on the JET Program and lived in Japan for three years and Samantha moved back to Miami and started working and saving to money in order to start the studio. Although we were both apart for three years, we both found ways to continue developing our ceramic practice while having the same goal in mind of opening the studio.
We founded 2win! Studios in 2021, and we were able to use our saved money to buy materials such as the kilns and wheels. When we first started we didn’t have a clear direction of what we wanted to do. Things were slowly starting to open up again after the pandemic, so we started to look for any opportunities to sell our work and tell people about the studio. We began selling our ceramic wares at local art markets, and conventions. We gained a lot of experience, and made a variety of all types of functional ceramics. After a year of producing and vending we made the decision that our heart had always wanted to be more involved in the contemporary art scene and we made the decision to change our focus.
As we continued pursuing our careers as fine artists, we realized that the art scene of Miami is segregated and mainly concentrated to one area. After visiting local galleries and studios often we felt that the art scene was closed off to anyone who wasn’t in those concentrated areas. Our studio is based in Hialeah which is about a 20 minute drive from the Miami art district. In Hialeah there is not much opportunity for artist, or anywhere for people to see art. There was a push for it before the pandemic with the Leah Arts District but unfortunately it did not last after the pandemic. After experiencing and seeing the gap between us and the art scene we decided to change our vision for the studio. We currently have a goal of creating a hub for artist in our city, and we hope to create more opportunities for artists here as well.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

If you are looking to buy art, we hope that people support local artists in their community. These days there are plenty of spaces where art is being sold for all different types of prices. I think people assume that buying a piece of art is going to cost them an arm and a leg, and for some artists yes that may be the case. But, no matter where you live there is an art community, Whether its a ceramicist selling pottery at your local farmers market, or a local museum selling local artist’s pieces in their museum store, there are several ways to support the arts. Besides buying pieces locally, you can always find artists on marketplaces such as Esty, or even online on Instagram. If you want to support artist and can’t afford their work, you can do things such as liking and sharing their art online, or even sharing it with your friends and family. And, if you are an artist and you feel there is nothing going on in your own community for artists, then you can try and start something up. Online, we’ve seen artists all over America currently starting their own local art clubs, or hosting drawing events, and photo walks. There’s plenty of resources online as well, and artists are usually open to helping each other out. Seeing other artists supporting each other inspires us to do the same as well.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

We had a wonderful experience attending a presentation by Magnus Resch on his book How to Become a Successful Artist last year at the Bakehouse Artist Complex . We learned about how social media is one of the biggest resources we can use as artists. Everything going on in your local art community like finding opportunities, grants, and open calls are all on Instagram right now. Artists usually use Instagram to follow other artists that inspire them, but it could be used as a tool for networking and studying as well. We started changing the way we used Instagram, and focused not just on posting our new works but following all the local venues for art as well. Through this we were finding out about all the events going on around town that were not just openings. We started attending workshops, artist’s talks, open studios and through this we were able to meet so many other people who were involved in the industry such as other artists, curators, collectors, etc. Becoming engaged and showing up in the community really made a huge difference for us. Sometimes using just what’s available to you and configuring it to be more resourceful is a small change but can make a great impact.

Contact Info:

• Website: instagram.com/2winstudios
• Instagram: @2win.sam @2win.ssarah @2winstudios
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-ferrer-a57a11288/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@2winSarah