Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dan Holoubek. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Dan, thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

The name of my business started as my Instagram handle. After brainstorming with my wife for a bit we came up with skullbutterarts. Combining my love for drawing skulls and my wife’s love of cooking we came up with Skullbutter as my pseudonym. I now refer to my art vending business as Skullbutter studio as I like to create a traveling stuio environment when I setup at shows.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a lifelong artist. I started getting more serious about selling art 5-6 years ago with my first vending experience, Pittsburgh Freaky fair. I’ve always been a little embarrassed about how weird and sometimes personal my art was until I started putting it out to the world through social media and in person. The “business” side of things has been a slow process but I’ve started picking up a lot of steam in the last 2 years. I’m a multimedia artist and my art that I sell reflects that.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My wife is my business partner. We met In college and her honest feedback has kept me grounded and helped me create a more successful “business”. We had biochemistry class together and I also drunken tried to teach her pool in front of her soon to be boyfriend at the time 😚. My wife helps with typography on signs, discuss business strategy with and helps me determine if a piece of art is done or needs more attention.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

You can’t make a living on art/ my art is too weird. Art as a business is incredibly difficult but extremely rewarding. The too weird thing was more of a personal, inner voice that I still battle with from time to time. I haven’t quit my day job but I foresee a future where I may be able to feed my family with what I make. I’ve found that there is quite a call for weird art and plenty of opportunities to sell it. I’m not in one of the major cities but Pittsburgh has enough size to support a great deal of functions and art is definitely something that has a place in the city. Putting your stuff out there, owning it and working on it is the first phase. The more I’ve shown my art/ vended, the better I’ve done. Plenty of people connect with the weird and you just have to find them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://skullbutterarts.bigcartel.com/products
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skullbutterarts/?hl=en