Today we’d like to introduce you to Keira Curtis.

Hi Keira, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

Not sure where to start because it’s been a long journey to get where I am now, so I’ll start with when I started my business itself. Shortly before I’d started my business, I had been working a the local county jail before this as a correctional officer, but decided it was not for me. My roommates encouraged me to pursue my art since that’s what I had wanted to do to begin with. So, I used the money I had saved to invest in my business. This was both good and bad for a number of reasons, but you live and you learn! Going in, I thought I’d be able to make enough to both support myself, and fund my business, but that was not the case. However, it did give me the time necessary to create the body of work necessary to get started and create a firm foundation.

When I first got started, I took inventory of my skill set and what I needed to get started. I had done research on other brands I wanted to be like. Hot Topic and Box Lunch being two of them. After I did some poking around, I made 3 collections of work, my trash pandas, crackhead squirrels, and later my avocado puns. After that, I created a website, business cards, and I used a drop shipper called Printful so that when an order came through, it went straight to the manufacture to be made and eventually shipped to the customer. This opened up a lot more options for me since I was on a budget.

Since my skills are predominantly with in person interaction, I decided to lean less into online advertising, and more into gorilla tactics. I ended up marching up main street in Manchester, Concord, and Portsmouth NH with business cards and doing my best to network with local businesses. I also started going to open mics in the areas as it was a good way to establish myself in both the art and music community. This allowed me to network a lot with local businesses, musicians, other artists, potential buyers, and locate various local events so I could find places to vend.

While I was doing this, I also started looking for a place I could set up consistently so that it was easier for people to find me. The idea being, I wanted a safe place customers could purchase art and pick up orders. This brought me to the flea market scene. There is an all year flea market in Salem NH, so I tried here first as they have indoor spots, but after almost getting hit by a car and having my painting run over, ended up deciding elsewhere as I found the outdoor area to be a lawless land, haha. I then moved to the Londonderry Flea Market, which was recommended to me by someone I met at the Salem Flea Market, and ended up being a seasonal vender there for the next 3 seasons! Results where hit or miss, but it gave me the consistent location I was hoping for and led me to expand my business to being just prints to also providing pet portrait services for pick up, tarot card reading, palm reading, and henna services. Going to the various events and markets helped me a lot in identifying what my target audience was, but also what events are good for selling what. I found henna and tarot card readings to be better for the flea markets, and magical markets, but the prints sold better at music events and bars.

After about 3-4 months into starting my business, I had to find extra income, which led me into finding work in teaching and paint parties. This heavily limited my time, but it also taught me how to both manage my time and value it more. It taught me how to prioritize my immediate needs as it could really impact my life in unexpected ways.

I am 3 full years into my art business as I started towards the beginning of 2022, but with each year I feel more and more confident as I have built a strong network and am learning how to utilize my strengths and time accordingly to build and ever evolving plan.

After recently getting into a better financial place, I was finally able to move into my own space with my new roommate, which is opening up new opportunities for me and my business endeavors. My band Ashborne is also gigging locally again and we are getting ready to record our originals, and I am getting ready to take some next steps after my space is fully set up so I can jump back into the market and get building again! This life is full of turns, but it’s moments like these I feel like its worth it and it reminds me of all the things I am grateful for and helps me see what my next steps need to be. It feels like all of the the time and effort I have invested has helped me a lot and I am really looking forward to seeing where it takes me next!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

No! Definitely not a smooth road! There have been many obstacles and challenges. When I first started my business, I didn’t have a clear idea of how much it was going to cost or how long it was going to take to realistically get started. I had saved about 6k from my previous job and thought that would be enough to get everything up and running, but I was wrong as I hadn’t considered I was also living off of that as well for that duration of time. Starting up an art business, or any business for that matter, is expensive. You have to invest money to make money. So you have to be willing to invest, but also take a risk as you may not sell what you believe you will. I was able to figure out what sold and what didn’t by trying to buy small batches, but in large variety. I bought prints from Walgreens as they were inexpensive to get around that. That helped me a lot when I was getting started to identify what sold and what didn’t, where the demand was, but also who I was marketing to as different people had different interests. So different focus groups would gravitate towards different prints. That said, it took time to figure that out and I just wasn’t making what I needed to both support myself and my business, so I had to get another job. If you don’t first succeed, try try again with new wisdom and a new perspective and approach!

When I was looking for jobs, I knew I wanted to remain in art, but I also needed to make enough to support myself and give me the time necessary to invest in my business. I took on both an art teaching job at the time, and a part time paint party host job. This gave me income to at least pay my bills, but not what I needed to save or invest. My goal at the time was to offset my income enough to support myself and help me make enough I could get my own space as I was living with some friends. The issue being student dept and my car loan was eating almost all of my income which but into both of those goals. Working multiple jobs also made finding time difficult as well to make new products. I found myself fighting through physical and emotional exhaustion. I spend about several years fighting to find a job that paid what I needed, but also trying to find the time I needed to succeed in these areas. Over time this really weighed on my mental health and I questioned my path a bit because I found myself feeling frustrated and trapped.

In a moment of destination, I ended up getting an insurance license and trying my hand at life insurance. I ended up hating it, and it was a poor decision made out of fear and frustration, but it also put me in a better path. Since starting my business, I focused hard on networking and building connections. I had done commission work for other musicians and artists, connected with local businesses, and had found my audience. While it was hard to see at the time, I’d done a lot of leg work necessary to get me where I needed long term. Businesses are like plants. They take time to grow and they need water and sunlight to succeed. Businesses take time to grow and are a learning experience. You have to be willing to be patient and to keep going as there are gonna be times where you may not see the progress you want, but you are making the progress you need.

After I left my insurance job, I was able to work on the mural, pick up more paint parties, and do a number of craft fair festivals, and other events I didn’t previously have time for while I was job hunting. This also allowed me to really branch out and find what specific events I should go for and what ones to avoid. This was a vulnerable period for me, but it ultimately pushed me to trust myself to navigate the situation.

After 3 months of this, I ended up at a paint pottery place called You’re Fired, and I’ve been there ever since. Honestly completely changed my life as I was at almost rock bottom when I started. I had to take a break and focus more on work, but it also gave me the perspective I needed to take my next steps and helped me see things a new way. Time is such a valuable commodity, and working smarter not harder is extremely important when you have so little time for yourself. It’s up to us to decide how to spend it, but we have to decide what’s important to us as a result so we can understand the end goal as well as what we need in the moment. It’s also a sobering lesson as sometime we have to take a step back when things just aren’t working to find a new and more affective path/tactic. I’m just very thankful I have such a supportive group of friends and was able to find a place of work I love so much!

I am finally in my own space and financially where I need to be. Being able to take a step back has also allowed me to see how much I’ve accomplished and help me reflect so I can keep progressing. It’s teaching me to spend my time wisely so I can be a happier person and keep fighting for my goals and dreams! I’ve learned I have to work smarter not harder, but I also need to give myself more time to enjoy things in the moment and the people I care about. It can be so easy to get lost in the sauce when you’re a dreamer, but it’s important to stay grounded and not get too lost in the dream you can’t find your way out. It’s taken me a long time, but I am happy with where I am now and I feel like I have a firm foundation that’s allowed me my freedom and given me a clearer path for the next faze of my life and creative journey.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?

I’m a bit of a jack of all trades, so it really depends on where I go for what people know me for. I’d say I’m predominantly known as “The Avocado Lady” or “The Racoon Lady” in a lot of places because I make and sell prints of my avocado and racoon puns. I am also known for my music as I go to a lot of open mics and am in a band. I’m also known for my henna since there aren’t a lot of henna artists in my area. I’m just kinda everywhere all the time doing a little bit of everything.

I have a lot of interests, so it’s hard for me to stick with one thing. I tend to go big or go home, so when I find something I like, I go all in until something else grabs my attention. Over time, I tend merge my interests to as I like to learn and find ways to bring things together to make new things. In this, my creative endeavors are constantly evolving with me as I continue to grow.

Of my various projects, I think I am the most proud of the avocado puns. I just love that something I did to get a rise out of people turned into something so many people have gotten into. It was never intended to be serious, just something I did cause I thought it was funny, but now it’s something I feel has become something I’ve unexpectedly been able to connect with a lot of people on. Sometimes absurdity is one of the universal unifiers and I love that it’s something that people can enjoy as much as I do!

I’d probably say my love of the absurd is likely what sets me apart, but also my tenacity. Many people don’t quite know what to with me as I am quite good at getting myself unintentionally into trouble and laughing it off. I cope with humor, but I’ve found that we can learn a lot about ourselves by observing the world around us. I’ve come to believe that happiness to a degree is a choice in which we have to find things to be happy about, even when there is seemingly nothing to be happy about. For me, it was creating something absurd and running with it, but also having the vision and willingness to work for it to make it happen. I had to create a something to make me laugh and make me happy or allow the world to break me. It was a hard lesson, but it taught me that there is always something that can bring one happiness if we have the will to look for it. The world can be a dark enough place as it is, so why focus on that when I can create a space full of laughter and acceptance away from it all?

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?

I was always a bubbly and very independent child. I’ve always had a thirst for knowledge and exploring new things, so it has been hard settling on one thing. I grew up in a family full of people who’d traveled the world, gone on adventures, and all were very heavy into academia. My parents were both English majors and loved to read, and had lived in Asia for 3 years shortly before I was born. This heavily influenced the types of things I was exposed to as a child. My parents wanted to me have a well rounded education, so they would often educate me on histories from around the world. This ranged from documentaries, to books, to story telling. My grandparents were like this too as they’d also traveled a lot and were into history on WW2 since my great grandparents were in the war. My neighbors growing up were also biologists, they had a daughter who was close to my age, so I spent a lot of time with them. This exposed me to a lot as well as we used to go to the Museum of natural history together, go on hikes, and a number of other things that taught me a lot about the natural world around me. Both of these aspects of my childhood pushed me to want to explore and understand the world around me, but also how I perceive it and interact with it. This made me a very curious child, but also a mess around and find out kind of child. I was very good at accidentally finding myself in unusual and sometimes dangerous situations because I was too curious and/or clumsy for my own good. I was also a bit too sarcastic for my own good and found myself in trouble frequently for being facetious.

Since I was small, I’ve always loved art and music. I was always singing and drawing growing up. They both run in my family, so this definitely fed into my love of both. My mother’s family has their own choir and band, and she took several years of music while she was in college and was in a traveling choir before she changed majors. My dad was into sound systems and had a thing about clear well rounded sound. His taste in music varied a lot, but between my mother and my father, I was exposed to many different styles of music, how they were composed, the balance of sound, and other things. Music became a staple in my life as it was always in the background and it made me want to make music of my own. I loved that music was both a means of self expression, but also a means of telling a story. This led me to making up my own songs. I learned to make them by ear using harmonies since I couldn’t play an instrument. If I didn’t know how to do something, I often found myself finding ways around it or finding alternatives so I could still achieve what I wanted. In this case it was creating melodies and layering harmonies on top. Later it would be discovering garage band and using loops to create background tracks I could use to sing to and layer harmonies on top of.

Both my parents being English majors, liking literature was kind of a necessity. I was wicked dyslexic and had rampant ADHD as a kid, so this was a major point of contingency during my early childhood. We’re talking running laps around coffee tables as a young child, and the inability to hold still and stay focused levels of energy. This made things very difficult for me as reading was a struggle, and made it difficult for my to connect with other kids as I had a hard time staying focused and couldn’t connect intellectually with the other kids. I was really into exploring larger concepts like history, religion, or philosophy since that’s what was often talked about at home, while they were into normal kid stuff. This eventually led to outside tutoring, and IEP, and remedial reading classes. In 6th grade I went from a 3rd grade reading level to an 11th grade reading level in a school year because of all the hours of time I had to put into overcoming it. It was hell, but I found myself finding ways to make it bearable. I enjoyed using the writing prompts to write morbid stories to mess with my tutors. It wasn’t their fault I was there, but I liked to harmlessly troll people even as a child and it made the tutoring sessions more fun. This fed my love for stories as I found the world around me to be very interesting. My father was into creative writing, and both of my parents were sure to critique all of my writing and teach me how to properly format my work as I was not allowed to be bad at English while I was in school. Between that and a lot of tutoring, English became my best subject. This helped me be able to articulate and understand things later in life and I think helped me in my creative endeavors. As a kid, I used to create elaborate stories and dramas both on my own or with friends which we’d either act out ourselves, with dolls, or stuffed animals. Life was definitely never dull as I was good at keeping myself entertained.

We moved around a fair bit, I’ve lived in 5 states. I’ve lived in Maine, Florida, Michigan, Massachusetts, and now New Hampshire. Moving around long distance created another aspect of my life as each location was very different culturally. I had to learn to adjust my communication style and how I think to each location I was in. At times I found this to be frustrating because I felt isolated or misunderstood as I was a teen in new places going through a lot of changes, but over time this ended up being an asset because its made it much easier as an adult to connect with others. I learned it takes about 4 years to put roots down and really connect with the community. As a result, having to start over frequently taught me to be comfortable with myself and eventually become more comfortable with both endings and new beginnings.

Growing up was hard as I was very sarcastic and had way more energy than I knew what to do with, but overall I was able to meet a lot of people and learn a lot along the way that made me who I am now. Still a bit chaotic, but definitely wiser, happier, and confident in my ability to build the life I want.

Pricing:

• Basic Custom 9×12 Watercolor Portraits $50
• Custom 9×12 Acrylic Portrait – $100
• Mural Services $500-$700 on average, price depends on space and time
• Tarot Card Readings $20, Party Packages also available
• Henna $12-$60 range, party packages also available

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.keiracurtis.art
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekeiracurtisexperience/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheKeiraCurtisExperience
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thekeiracurtisexperience/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheKeiraCurtisExperience

Image Credits

Kendra Goodness from Photography Goodness