Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hannah Demma. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Hannah, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?
I think a lot of artists feel pressure to commit to a “regular job.” I spent my late teens and all of my 20s working several jobs at a time. When I was 22 I had 7 jobs and I loved the excitement of a crazy schedule and being busy all the time. I worked in retail, food service, catering, and bartending –often all at once. There was a point when I asked myself how long this could be sustainable. I figured I needed to grow up, but after taking a few courses at community college at age 24, I thought there was no way I could get a graphic design or business degree and not hate my life and wish for more creative flexibility and control.
I didn’t go to college for studio art until I was 28. Being an older student was amazing. I had learned some serious time-management skills over the years and I was able to be a student full time as well as work full time (at three of the jobs I had decided to keep) and maintain a 4.0 gpa for the 3 1/2 years it took to graduate (also not a sustainable life model for long, but manageable).
There was a 1 1/2 year period after I finished my BFA degree where I worked part-time as a studio assistant for a prominent local artist, bartended, and made and sold art–I’d started a pet-portrait business during this time and it had started to really pick up. I was offered a graduate assistantship at my alma mater somewhat out of the blue, and decided to take it.
This year, after finishing Grad School in the spring, I have found myself at a crossroads in life again. I’ve spent the last 7 months building my own freelance career and finding myself surprised at how many opportunities come up that you’re able to say yes to when you’re not “held down” by a 9-5 job (or 7 random hour jobs). Though I’ve also found myself very stressed trying to figure out how to get personal health insurance and how to save for and pay taxes. There isn’t really a guidebook for how to do this successfully because there is no ONE correct way to go about being a freelance artist. They also regretfully did not teach me any of these professional skills during either of my art degrees because they figure everyone wants to be a full-time professor (even though those jobs are few and far between even if I did want to do that).
Spending my time comparing my life and choices to those of my peers has often made me question if I would be happier working for someone else and not having to use so much of my brain power making adult choices and letting my employer send off my money to all the right spots (taxes, IRA, 401k, insurance etc).
The answer is no. I have learned through many years of working for other people and now for myself that I thrive when I have a lot going on, but also when I have all the power to decide how and when to go about getting things done. I feel a freedom right now that I haven’t ever felt before, and an excitement about all the possibilities there are out there. Every experience has led to another via my network of other talented and supportive artists that I’ve been building.
I am sometimes nervous about the future, I wonder if I can continue to support myself and save for the future. Luckily I love what I do and I never want to retire from it, so there’s no waiting for my “real” life to begin at 65–we aren’t promised anything in this life and I want to love every aspect of mine, even if it means learning to use accounting software.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I consider myself a multi-media artist, though most of my professional training has been in printmaking and papermaking. I took a circuitous route through my schooling, and now find myself with a BFA and MFA in studio arts.
I teach art in public schools part-time through our local Lincoln Arts Council, coordinate an arts program at a biological station through my alma mater, teach papermaking workshops at my mentor’s studio here in town, as well as maintain a busy studio schedule making and selling original artworks, pet portraits, and handmade paper.
I love to do commission works because it gives me a chance to make something and explore themes I maybe wouldn’t have attempted without being asked. I primarily make abstract art as my personal practice, but thanks to my pet portrait business I get to work figuratively on a regular basis (a skill that is quick to leave if you don’t practice routinely). And since my own work is rooted in abstraction, I bring a more fearless color palette and looseness to my portraits than when I made very academically “correct,” observational drawings in school.
When it comes to papermaking, I fell in love with it during my undergraduate degree and was fortunate enough to have full access to equipment after I graduated through a studio in our community. I love to be able to control every variable in papermaking which means I get the exact paper I want for every project, and I am able to make exactly what my papermaking customers ask for. This is not always possible when shopping for paper for particular projects. Color, weight, transparency, inclusions–it can all be incredibly customized which is a really fun problem to solve, and the challenges of which are very enjoyable for me.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Before I went to college for art in my late 20s, I worked at a music bar. I would sit at my door shift each night and in between checking IDs and taking cover, I would draw the customers at the bar on the backs of beer coasters. Customers started buying these from me for $5 each which was the first art I ever sold. I learned how much people enjoyed seeing their likeness rendered by hand and over time I got better at drawing people and I started drawing their pets too. Soon customers at the bar started asking me to draw their pet specifically and over the last 12 years I have gone from selling dog and cat faces on coasters for $5 to full 11×14″ portaits for $250-$350 a piece. Those customers at the bar would buy portraits and for every portrait I sold it seemed they had told a few friends and I would receive more commissions. Now I have to have a limited Christmas queue for portraits which has sold out for the past 4 years. I paid for a lot of grad school with pet portrait money and I couldn’t believe I could get paid doing something so fun. I don’t even have to advertise much for these commissions as word of mouth has gotten me to a point that I can still handle. I worry that if I were to advertise a lot I would spend more time on commissions than on personal projects. That is the power of a very supportive local community such as mine.
This past summer I had a booth at my first art festival. Our Lincoln Arts Council supports emerging artists by giving juried festival first-timers a booth/table/displays for free as well as advertising and signage. I sold so many original artworks, and took deposits on pet portraits, and made my first large sum of income. I didn’t even know about the festival circuit and the great potential for sales it entailed. I did have to invest a fair amount of money up front for packaging of my pieces for sale, framing, and for purchasing a few commercial pieces with my art on them (coffee cups, sketchbooks etc), but it was my first illustration of spending money to make money and I learned so much from that experience that I will apply to future festivals.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
The myth of the starving artist and the idea that art has to come from suffering, and artists aren’t allowed to make money or they’re. a “sell-out.” Here in the midwest, I grew up hearing these sorts of ideas that are ingrained in our culture. Overall, I believe our society tends to underestimate how much the arts impact and enrich their day-to-day life. Elements of design go into every structure built around us (no one is out here trying to make ugly buildings–not to say it doesn’t happen…bad art happens!), and art adorns the walls of many institutions we visit daily. We watch movies and tv, read books and magazines–what is all of that if not art that someone somewhere is being paid to do. I don’t think a lot of people see the arts as a viable job unless it’s the teaching of art, and even then it’s very underfunded because it’s tremendously undervalued.
A lot of my work comes from a place of joy and enjoyment of my craft. Of course I’m going to have to always be self-promoting on social media, and yes, I do commissions and give the customer everything they ask for (to the extent of my abilities) because I want to make money doing this so I don’t have to do anything else ever. My commissions pay my bills, and also help fund my more personal projects, research, and conceptual work that is a harder sell, but necessary for my practice.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hannahdemma.com/
- Instagram: @hannahdemma
Image Credits
Documentation by Katie Voelker, Photographer