We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brandon Long a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Brandon, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
I took a major risk to start my own art/graphic design business in 2021.
I was working at an art center, and the pandemic had taken a major toll on me. At the art center, we had taken on the challenges of the “new now” head on in ways that we never had previously considered. We got into video production, changing the way we did exhibitions, take-home art kits, and adapting our summer camps to be at-home via Zoom. Where some non-profits just shut down for a year, we kept going – adapting to all of the changes and challenges that approached. We went above and beyond.
With post-pandemic burnout, I felt like I needed to try to do my own thing – to simplify things and focus on my creativity. To make things. I knew that if I never took the chance to explore the possibility of being a freelance artist – I prefer the term “mercenary artist” because it sounds more lucrative – that I would forever live with the question of “what could I have been?”
As an active member of the local arts community, I had always had side hustles come along – a mural here and there, a poster design, graphic design gigs… I would take these on in my spare time, sometimes even taking vacation days to paint a mural.
Leaving the safety and security of a full-time job, I decided to make my side hustle the main hustle, and I’ve been hustling ever since.
Brandon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m Brandon Long and I am an artist. I have always identified as an artist. When I was very young, my mother used to do little doodles on scraps of paper – whatever she had available – to keep me occupied in church. I’d sit still and watch as she’d draw little cats and tractors using basic shapes, and that kept me focused. I later learned to do my own doodles and realized that art was a lucrative career when I sold my grandmother a little drawing to put on the fridge – for something like ten cents. As most artists would do, I quickly did another drawing and tried to sell it to her for about ten times more, and learned an early lesson about pricing your work. When I went to kindergarten, I was telling everyone I was an artist.
I majored in art in college and I’ve always enjoyed art as a side-hustle and a passion, even finding ways to weave it into my jobs. Even in jobs that weren’t art related, I found ways to become “The Art Guy.” Art has been my primary identity and creativity has been my driving force.
It wasn’t until 2021 that I decided to take my passion for the arts and turn it into a career, starting my own business – Brandon Long Art & Design. As an artist, I do a lot of different types of freelance artwork, everything from traditional painting, murals, and graphic design. I also do some art instruction when the opportunity arises. When I’m not working on commissioned work, I find time to create my own art – usually assemblage made from found objects and repurposed materials. Being an artist from a small town like Lancaster, Kentucky requires you to have a multitude of abilities and skills to adapt to the demands of the clients.
I think that one of the things that I’ve done best as an artist/business has been focusing on the local identity – creating work about where I live and what things that our local culture values. Around here, we take a lot of pride in our history, whether that’s reflected in the architecture of Main Street or in the preservation of local storytelling.
I feel like Appalachia is in a place of change. Things have changed so much in the last few years as farm land has turned into strip malls; old tobacco fields have become distilleries, and local dairy farms have almost completely disappeared as larger corporations have started to build their own mega-farms. I feel like it’s imperative for artists in my region, like myself, to be there to reflect these changes – this cultural shift from agriculture to whatever comes next. That’s the exciting part – we don’t necessarily know what comes next.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I think that the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is to make something that your clients love, and that you – the artist- take pride in as well. I tend to see the client as a collaborator in most of the work I do. Some of the gigs that I do aren’t necessarily what I would do if I were given free rein over the project, but when I get to put my spin on their idea and everything aligns – it becomes magical.
Recently, I painted a temporary mural in downtown Danville, Kentucky to celebrate the current holiday season. It’s a painting on glass – probably about one hundred feet long on the windows of an empty storefront. I decided to incorporate many of the iconic downtown buildings into the design, stripped down to an almost cartoonish simplicity. And because I like to create self-imposed rules (creativity grows best in small boxes) – I decided to do all of the work in a monochromatic blue color scheme – just three shades of blue, with black and white. About halfway through the project, a lot of people saw me working on it and said, “I thought you were finished,” to which I replied, “this last bit is for me.” I still had a lot of details, maybe even superficial details to add, but I needed to put them in to make it something I was proud of. The last few turns, those last few details of a project or a design are often the most risky, but also the most rewarding.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
It takes two types of people to have a creative ecosystem – the artists, and those who can appreciate and support them. Both of these are essential. If you want to support creatives – let them do their thing. People who are driven by creativity absolutely MUST create. They’ll make things even if no one supports it or understands it, but they reach their fullest potential when they have people that will say “I can appreciate this work, this is valuable,” whether they say it directly to the artist, on social media platforms, or with their checkbook. In rural Kentucky, not everyone can afford to support artists financially. Not everyone can invest in owning handmade, original art – but everyone can invest in encouragement. Encouragement is one of the most powerful, renewable resources available – and it’s free! Encourage artists to do their thing, even if it gets weird or you don’t understand it.
Of course, artists always need financial support. If you have the means to do so, BUY REAL ART – art that is handmade, handcrafted, built from years of experience. I’ve been criticized for promoting the idea that people should buy real art, that it’s some kind of elitist attitude, but they may be misinterpreting my definition of “real art.” That doodle your kids did that you’ve stuck on the fridge? That’s real art.
Contact Info:
- Website: artofbrandonlong.wordpress.com
- Instagram: brandonlongartist
- Facebook: Brandon Long Artist
Image Credits
Photo of Art Local mural with artist on ladder is by Mark Wilhelm.