We were lucky to catch up with Jamie Kough recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jamie , thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I think being an artist and allowing oneself to make a business out of one’s practice is a risk.
You never know how much money you will make a month, there aren’t benefits, and trends in art change often. If you are willing to ride the waves and go on the adventure of creating and exploring different ways to make money then you can make it. The biggest risk is learning how to run a business and being firm in the worth of your product. Business takes comfort and intelligence with communication, money, marketing, and clarity on what the product is and who it is for.

We live in a time when almost anything you want has an authentic version as well as a manufactured or cheap version. So it is possible to have what you want at a very low cost. This makes it challenging for makers to communicate value. Competing against machines and a disposable economy is a risk. Will people see and value the art and the maker? The risk of clients and the public not understanding or approving of your work is constant. I still hold my breath with every client that what I am producing, is satisfactory. I want to start over nine times out of ten in the eleventh hour. Typically at this time, the risk feels the greatest to keep moving forward to not judge my entire career on the exhausting moment of critique.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have been an artist my entire life. It sounds cliche but I grew up with an artist mother where the decor was constantly changing, and friends were coming over to pose for paintings. The garage was converted into a home studio where I recall painting on the floor and dancing on the table. When I was 12, she opened an art school to provide a space for me, her energetic oldest child, to create and be seen. At that same time, the public school system faced extreme budget cuts and the arts were hit hard. Schooling was ok for me growing up but it was the moments when I could make something that I thrived. If I could tell you what I knew via a visual opportunity, then communicating wasn’t a problem. I am still that way. A throughline from living life as a student to working as a professor and teacher is to give whomever shares my space, the opportunity to communicate in the way that best serves them. All the curriculum I write, and the training I do in education and communication all revolve around the idea that people learn and communicate differently and how crucial it is to present information in many ways. This is a consistent comment or undertone in the work I do and the jobs I choose to take. My passion is to help others learn how to teach and learn via movement, story, art, and music. The personal gallery work I do speaks to this as does the public murals and curriculum I write.
My business is diverse. It houses physical pieces of art, curriculum, speaking engagements, teacher training, installations, and live art performances.
The works that define my business are all things colorful, creative, and marked. Meaning anything you want painted, I’ll paint it! This includes clothing, walls, set design, murals, installations, live artworks, performance art, and custom paintings Although a big menu of offerings, each one is executed with a passion for using art to bring joy, understanding, learning, and voice.
My masters show and cohort reminded me how important each of our individual stories are and how important it is to be invited into a community with others. In 2023 it had been a long time since I told any part of my story. As a muralist, I am a part of a community for a moment in time. As artists, I believe we are problem solvers and communicators. Each client brings forth a problem, a task to be solved. Each new job creates a new relationship and a new challenge. My favorite jobs are those that are not fully realized by the client but rather require creative freedom and space for ideas to present themselves. Everything around me becomes inspiration and possibility. I enjoy picturing all the different color schemes and ways images might work for the design. Sharing options and end products with a client is both thrilling and nail-biting It takes an investment of time, talent, and emotion to be able to provide meaningful work. The idea of teaching visually comes full circle and I understand the struggle in school and life and how those journeys did and continue to build a visual vocabulary that can clearly communicate ideas, messages, and emotions.

I believe my experience of 38 years sets me apart from many other artists because that experience is so varied and diverse. I have skills in woodworking, installation, basic construction, performance, dance, movement, theater design, interior design, and landscaping.

I am most proud of the projects that partner with businesses and organizations that align with service and interact with the public. I enjoy working with youth and having other hands help manufacture and create the tangible final product. The relationships and community connections are most important and create lasting memories for me as an artist.

When people think of Jamie Kough I hope they see beauty, honesty, hope, reality, permission, fun, humor, and themselves. My work often has strong juxtapositions creating opportunities for new messages and imagery to appear each time one views the work.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

My career has morphed many times. In my late teens, while going to school and teaching, I started a side hustle as a muralist. That then became my main hustle in my early twenties as I finished my teaching credential. I started having kids and my husband began getting deployed, my world shifted and the desire to use my time for my art and my murals began to dwindle. It’s hard work and you are away from home for long periods.

As my kids got older I worked as a full-time artist, teacher, curriculum writer, speaker, and performance artist and opened a gallery/school. And when asked, I’d paint murals. In the last few years, murals have become the primary request of my freelance work.

I love painting big and my favorite mediums are spray paint and house paint, so murals are the perfect canvas for me. Painting for the public is also an amazing experience. Murals typically convey a group of ideas that have to consider the onlooker, the neighborhood, and the political and religious climate. There are so many factors that go into painting work that “lives” amongst people.

In 2023 I received my MFA in Social and Environmental Justice Art Making. It was in this program that I learned the how and why of where we create work and the importance of being invited and becoming part of the community the work lives in. It’s a very different way of making public art. Allowing the projects to choose you, rather than you choosing them. The process feels much more organic now and requires a lot more research, patience, and relationship building, but the reward of being a part of some of these messages via art is incredible.
As a teacher one of my greatest joys is collaboration. I’m often creating murals with students ages 4-adult. I prefer to have these “partners” because it becomes a family of ideas and talents. Every time one of the students passes the wall, they have their own story and imagination about what the mural is sharing with the community. When working with a school, my goal is to invite the ideas and voices of the students into the project. Students learn so much about the creative process, responsibility, skill, and business from the mural-making journey.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I believe that if you are creative and have learned to market and package yourself and your gifts as a product, then resilience is built in and gets stronger every day. There is no way to be an artist of any kind and not be resilient with the amount of rejection one faces vs the amount of praise or confirmation. Everyone has an opinion. Part of understanding this business is understanding how subjective it is. Running an arts business is also so much about relationships and being specific in the product being offered. I often have so many ideas and want them to be produced and marketed overnight. That isn’t the way to success. When I had a brick-and-mortar business it was easier to launch new ideas because the brick-and-mortar was labeled a gallery and school. People came for lessons and events. Anything I wanted to try, I tried in the gallery. People were very open to that. Now that I am the business, I have to be very clear about what I offer and whom it serves. This lifestyle has always been a great teacher of boundaries and pacing. Being the business also reminds me often to not sell myself short and to build a reputation of work that deserves to be paid for and to be able to walk away from those who don’t value the work, because, in the end, the work is me. All of this whether you want it to or not builds strong character. You can’t keep doing it, without growth and strength building. The heart, the mind, and the discipline all act like muscles…they get tired, they keep building and they support the overall strength of the body. Resilience is ongoing, it’s the battery that keeps the body and mind determined.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://JKDesigns.info
• Instagram: Jamie_Kough
• Facebook: Jamie Kough
• Youtube: Jamie Kough

Image Credits

Jamie Kough
Kris Kough
Mya Kough
Ava Kough
Cathy Lozano
Mathew Sam