We were lucky to catch up with Belle Hulne recently and have shared our conversation below.

Belle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Growing up, I felt intrinsically tied to art. As an only child, it was something that I was able to accomplish independently that brought me joy and validation from the adults in my life who encouraged my artistic pursuits. It was never something growing up that I had considered could actually be my future as a career path. Art wasn’t a career, it was a passion! When I was attending high school at Maple Grove Senior High, Chad Manders was the one and only art teacher at the time so I ended up having him all three years I was there. He was and still is an incredible teacher and mentor who saw my potential and cultivated it through encouragement and critique alike. He was the first one to suggest to me that art school was a real pathway I could pursue for college that would open doors to a more creative future than I was envisioning for myself. The first art school I toured was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago my sophomore year of high school, and seeing a school with such incredible resources and professors that were all full time practicing artists outside of their jobs within education really was all I needed to envision myself in their shoes. From that point on, I didn’t know exactly what my future was going to look like, but that I would be happy in pursing what I loved.

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.

For a little bit of background on my artistic practice, I am a printmaker who uses relief, intaglio, screen, and lithography processes to uplift the external spaces we should protect by bringing those environments into the residential homes we occupy. I learned all of these printmaking processes while obtaining my BFA degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). As stated by SAIC, it is ‘internationally regarded as one of the best art schools in the U.S, offering a comprehensive education centered in the visual & related arts’. SAIC heavily focuses on the visual arts, and alongside of that, what it takes to create a thriving artistic practice. A practice that is centered around selling work to galleries, obtaining residencies, and spending the majority of your time making. Having two architect parents working in the corporate sphere, I always envisioned my future work-life to portray more of what I witnessed in their day to day reality. So, graduating with a BFA and leaving school with the hope that I’d make it big through galleries right off the bat felt unrealistic and vague. While at SAIC, I always had anticipated that a professor might cueing me into a creative based job I had never heard of. The ‘dream job’ in my head was always somewhat corporate, yet it understood the value of handmade fine art, allowed me flexibility to continue expand my own artistic practice, etc, etc, etc. I still don’t know what this magical, mysterious job is. I don’t think it exists! Graduating college in the spring of 2020 didn’t help my case either. The whole world was shut down and I was forced to let go of the idea of staying in Chicago, where internship opportunities had been cancelled due to COVID-19. I headed back home to Minnesota, where after some time, I was able to re-established a routine that worked for me to coexist with life and my practice. I started to work back at my old job as a manager at Color Me Mine-a paint your own pottery studio. I took up making stickers and earrings to sell on Etsy when I didn’t have access to a print shop with the proper equipment I needed. My friend’s dad reached out about a commission he was interested in me doing, two separate woodcuts depicting scenes of the Temperance River on the North Shores of Lake Superior. This commission lead me to obtaining the biggest commission of my career yet which also consisted of the largest carving I’ve done. It was for Bluefin Bay Resort up on Lake Superior. The owner, Joe Swanson, ended up purchasing the entire edition of prints along with the original woodblock-which is not something I group into a sale often. Because of this large commission, I had to establish myself and my practice as an official LLC in the state of Minnesota to properly conduct this sale. Since establishing my business, Art With Belle, it has opened countless doors that have brought me to where we are now! I have just experienced my first full year of fine art fairs in 2024, and I’m gearing up for my second year of fairs now. Outside of that, my original prints are available for purchase all year round on my website: artwithbelle.com, and in a brick and mortar store ‘Joy&Co’ in Grand Marais. I’ve also had exhibition opportunities from coffee shops, to art centers, to galleries that have brought my work to individuals like Amy Klobuchar who has purchased some of my original woodblock prints!

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

Value the handmade, original thoughts, ideas, and visions that come from artists! We are in such a particular period of time of over saturation and overconsumption of media. AI is being used to write scripts, create instantaneous images stolen and generated from a plethora of artists. Fast fashion/cheap junk websites like Temu are actively stealing artists work for their cheaply made items that are destroying the planet, while giving no credit or payment to the artist. Etsy continues to give a platform to drop shippers stealing branded content and kicking off actual handmade artists for alleged violations of ‘intellectual property’ disputes without a notice. You can go buy cheap art at Home Goods, or Target, or off of Amazon that’s owned by millions of others and will ultimately be thrown out when it’s no longer ‘trendy,’ but where’s the joy in that? Art is something you connect with, ponder, and cherish. We need to uplift those who are dedicating their livelihoods to producing artwork that has a soul, that originally captures the beautiful essence of the world around us, that has something to say! We can’t let the world of convenience we’ve built snuff out the inherent creative nature that has always accompanied human history. Go to an art fair! Stumble into a booth where something inspires you, something that calls out your name. Compliment whoever made it. Financial support is great, but artists appreciate words of affirmation, acknowledgement that what we do matter, a repost or a like when something is shared on social media. Maybe you can’t support at this time, but someone else you know can! It doesn’t have to be big, but the more we dive deeper into this artificial world, the less time we spend apreciating all we are capable of as humans.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

It feels cheesy, but the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is truly getting to do what I love. I can’t picture myself doing anything else, even on the hard days. I still work my part time job, and when I clock out, I’m instantly clocked into my practice. Whether that be spending several hours afterwards down at Highpoint Center for Printmaking inking up a block, or painting out the next layer of my screen for a reductive screen print I’m in the midst of, or going home to pack up an order and take it over to the post office, or spending several hour out baking in the heat greeting hundreds of people coming into my booth to take a peak at my work. It fills me up, it keeps me going. Every day looks a little different from the last, and it feels so rewarding to be the one to have to push myself to get the job done. If I don’t spend the time investing in my art, the art will not exist. There’s something so special about that. Additionally, getting to share my perspective visually on how I see and respect these natural environments that exist outside our four walls, and connect with those that don’t regularly practice art is something indescribable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artwithbelle.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/art_with_belle
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtWithBelle

Image Credits

All me! Except the photos take of me in the studio are taken by my friend Karleigh Johnson