We recently connected with Jan Riggins and have shared our conversation below.
Jan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?
I was never quite sure what I wanted to do when I grew up. When I went to college, I simply majored in Clarinet Performance because that is what I was good at in high school. I had no career plans and hoped that something would present itself once I graduated. What ended up happening when I graduated, was that I needed a job and I applied with a staffing service to help me . Instead of placing me at a client company, the staffing service hired me as the receptionist. This dramatically reshaped my life. As a timid and shy musician, I was suddenly the voice and face of a small staffing service. I learned how to communicate with people and started to enjoy the prospect of helping people find work. I ended up staying with the organization for over 25 years, moving up to a recruiter, and then into management and eventually as part of a developer team helping the 18 offices in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex grow their businesses. The sales, marketing, and business management skills that I learned in those 25 years have been critical in my success as a full-time artist.
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 always knew that my dream job would be making art. I never knew how to make that work, but I still had the desire. Throughout my 25 years in the corporate world, I always had drawings and paintings that I worked on in my free time. Around 10 years ago, Fort Worth started a small chalk art festival. I remember seeing it advertised on Facebook as a free event where you could learn a new hobby. I showed up with knee pads in hand and set to work, spending the next 8 hours working on a small chalk art piece. I was immediately hooked and eagerly returned the next year where I won 1st place and Peoples Choice in the amateur division. I was invited back as a professional the next year and slowly attended a few other North Texas festivals. In 2020, I decided that I wanted to apply to festivals across the country. I did and was starting to get accepted, but then everything was shut down. I ended up chalking on my sidewalk and driveway…a lot. My teenage daughter immediately joined me and we started creating chalk art pieces for anyone in our neighborhood that asked. I decided to focus on learning anamorphic (3D) art and started practicing. Soon, cities and companies started to hire me and I was starting to make money with chalk art. I couldn’t believe that the way to make money in art was to create temporary chalk drawings! For the next 4 years I made this a serious hobby, and then a very serious part-time job. I was going to festivals across the country and even across the world and found a new community that I loved.
When I turned 46, I realized that I had enough momentum to make this a full-time job, but I felt the clock might be against me. Street art is extremely hard on your body, bending over and chalking or painting on the ground for 8-10 hours at a time. I decided that if I waited, I might lose my opportunity. At first I reduced my hours at my office jobs, but soon I was too busy to even work in the office. I finally move to a full-time artist in January of 2025. I now focus on murals and 3D street art for events. I love using my 3D (anamorphic) skills in mural settings and providing interactive art experiences.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I finally quit my office job and became a full-time artist in January of 2025, I was so excited to focus on my business 100%. I had just finished a very busy December holiday season and was exhausted from all of the work I had. When I didn’t have any jobs immediately lined up, I was actually a little relieved…I had time to rest! That only lasted about a week before I started to panic. I was so used to people reaching out to me, that I had no outreach systems set up. Here I was, a full-time artist with no other income, a very expensive health insurance plan from the marketplace, and a daughter in high school preparing to start college in the fall. I was soon in a full-blown panic, where I would wake up every morning with my heart racing. I spent every day reaching out to companies and organizations, but I didn’t have any way to scale my outreach, and it was woefully inadequate. I chalked a piece on my driveway and painted a free mural for a new business just to keep busy and keep up my artistic skills. While I did start some good conversations that eventually led to amazing opportunities, I didn’t have any immediate money coming in. I quickly blew through all of the money I had saved and was about to start paying for everything with a credit card when one of my previous clients called me with a last minute job. At that point, it felt like everything changed and I started getting jobs. In reality, the weather was warming up and my slow season was over. I started experimenting more and more with email marketing (something I used to do in my office job) and created a system of email outreach that soon started generating more work than I could handle. To be honest, I tried to handle it, I hated turning down any work. But by the end of the year, I had jobs almost every single day from the beginning of October through the beginning of January. Because of the outreach systems I created, January and February were a bit slower this year, but I had jobs lined up and deposits coming in from jobs I was scheduling. I successfully survived my slow season in 2026 with no panic session!
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I wish I was more comfortable early on asking other artists and professionals for advice. For some reason, I was embarrassed to admit that I was becoming a full-time artist and I felt that it was an overreach to ask others for advice. I wish that I had known how important it is to create a network of resources and surround yourself with others in the creative field.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.janrigginsart.com
- Instagram: @janrigginsart
- Facebook: @janrigginsart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janriggins/
