We recently connected with Kelly Olshan and have shared our conversation below.
Kelly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
As an artist and arts manager, I see both of these endeavors as creative work. In that sense, I earn a full time living from my creative work. However, I’m not a full time studio artist.
Financially, I make the majority (~80 – 90%) of my living in arts management, working as a Program Officer for the nonprofit arts service organization New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). There, I focus on professional development for artists,
building structures, initiatives, and programs to better support individual artists nationally and internationally. My second stream of income comes from more traditionally “artistic” labor: art sales, public art commissions, speaking engagements, etc. This accounts for 10 – 20% of my income, depending on the year (as arts opportunities fluctuate!).
I’m a bit of a rare case in that it’s never been a goal of mine to be “full time” studio artist. I see arts management as a way to contribute to the field–namely, advocate for the value of individual artists and create systems to better support them. I feel compelled to tackle some of the structural barriers preventing artists from thriving, as I believe artists are so immensely undervalued in our society.
The network, skills, and information gleaned from this arts management work ultimately feeds back into my creative practice. To give a couple examples…
1. A huge part of my job is to create programs and hire guest speakers to give talks on information artists need to thrive: marketing, art law, finance, fundraising/grantwriting, artist statements, how to build relationships with curators/gallerists, etc. I learn so much from these programs and guest speakers, and work to apply that insight back into my own creative practice.
2. Put simply, I get to meet very cool people in the arts I wouldn’t have a chance to otherwise. Given our field is so relationship-based, this has been such an asset. Often I’ll meet people through my arts management work, we’ll connect, and then take things “offline” to work together on artistic projects. Recently, someone who attended a professional practices workshop I ran years ago contacted me, as she now runs exhibitions at a museum show and thought my work would be a good fit for their space. This culminated in my first solo museum show (upcoming in Jan 2026)!
It wasn’t always this way. After graduating with a master’s in arts administration, I received a job offer that was in line with the artist service work I wanted to do. However, it was really not a living wage in NYC. After receiving the offer, I requested a meeting with the Executive Director and asked for more money. That turned out to be a 30 minute, $10k phone call.
Negotiations wise, I did this 1) by landing another job that was less in line with my interests, and asking my preferred employer to match it, and 2) emphasizing why is in their best interests to raise compensation. In my case, I explained I be more positioned to accomplish their goals by working full time. My advice: let them fall in love with you, give you the offer, and then negotiate. Emphasize how you can sole a problem for them. I’m a big advocate for the importance of negotiating and communicating your worth, especially in this field.
Artistically, had I known two things, it would have saved me a lot of time and energy:
1. Focusing on relationships instead of spinning my wheels applying to hyper-competitive open calls. I’m not anti-open call, but generally speaking, if you apply to an open call, you are one of hundreds or even thousands. If you have a direct conversation with someone open to working with an artist, you are one of one. Every opportunity I’ve ever gotten as an artist has come through a relationship. Even in instances I have landed an opportunity through an open call, I’ve known someone on the jury or took the time to build a relationship with the residency/program manager/curator. As described above, some of those relationships bear fruit years later in pleasant, unexpected ways.
2. Not bothering to apply to things until you’re ready. Alternatively put: working in seasons. In terms of art career development, I’ve found it really helpful to focus on one thing at a time. I now have “making” phases, and “applying” phases. Initially, I was constantly putting pressure on myself to apply to things. This was really overwhelming, and also inefficient. I was trying to go back and forth between the headspace of making and the more analytical of one of cultivating opportunities. In turn, I found I wasn’t doing a great job at either. Now, I’ll focus on making a body of work for a few months. Then, I’ll document it and have a polished artist statement that speaks to that work. Then, I’m ready to apply to residencies, solo show, opportunities, etc. I’ve found that to be more successful in terms of landing opportunities, but also protecting my time in the studio.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
ABOUT ME
I am a Brooklyn-based visual artist, arts manager, and artist advocate. As an artist, I create abstract landscapes. As an arts manager, I build programs and resources that empower individual artists. Both are about ideating and constructing an imagined reality.
HOW I GOT INTO THIS FIELD
I grew up in Birmingham, AL, where I attended an incredible arts magnet high school (shoutout to Alabama School of Fine Arts). Free to accepted students, this was a lifeline at the time, as my family couldn’t afford alternatives. From 7th – 12 grade, I grew up surrounded by artists of all disciplines: dancers, theater artists, creative writers, visual artists, and musicians. This made it abundantly clear how smart, hard-working, and completely undervalued artists are in our society.
In college, I elected to major in studio art. I was debating between art and business at the time, and had arts management been more of an option when I was in school, I likely would have gone that route. As a student, my biggest accomplishment was graduating Valedictorian from UNC Asheville. To my knowledge, this was the first time an art major received this distinction within the UNC system. I love the idea of highlighting that artists are intellectuals just as smart, worthy, and accomplished as their counterparts in STEM, business, etc.
I always had a sense that I wanted to understand the ecoystem of the arts and support artists, which led me to pursue graduate work in arts administration: I went to Columbia’s Arts Administration program. There, I was kind of the token artist of the cohort. I was constantly asking about and advocating for the artist’s perspective, rather than the institution. At that time, I discovered the field of artist services, and started and working with organizations that support creative practitioners through grants, professional development, etc.
ABOUT MY ARTWORK / CURRENT PROJECTS
My artwork responds to the idealism and anxiety of endless striving, grappling with a relentless fixation on a better elsewhere. The 3D paintings, installations, and public art invite the viewer to navigate towards an imagined landscape. Abstracted staircases defy spatial logic: rendered impossible to climb, they provide false pathways to an inaccessible place. Disjointed but interconnected, these structures weave through imagined skyscapes, waterscapes, and distant horizons that never arrive.
Trained as a painter, in the last 5 years I moved off the canvas and into site-specific installations. Since my work is about navigating imagined worlds, I’ve shifted from making standalone paintings to creating immersive environments. To date, this “navigation” has been implied: impossible staircases ascend from the floor, as if to challenge the viewer to attempt climbing. My paintings likewise prompt a mental exercise: negatives and positives of the same geometric shapes emerge, instigating viewers to “complete” the puzzle. In the next phase of my career, I hope to create more public art: durable and large-scale works that audiences can literally explore.
To that end, I’m currently working on a debut solo museum show at Long Island Children’s Museum, which will open in January 2026. The plan is to invite children to co-construct an imagined world: to directly touch, play with, and rearrange its components. Building upon my previous work, the pieces will reference impossible architectures, both man-made and naturally occurring: abstracted staircases, otherworldly rocks, and geometric, puzzle-like shapes.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
My artwork has been exhibited nationally, most recently in solo exhibitions with Chashama (NY, NY) and the Garment District Alliance’s Space for Public Art (NY, NY). I am currently preparing for my first solo museum show at the Long Island Children’s Museum — forthcoming in January 2026. This is a pivotal moment for me artistically, as I’m increasingly moving away from making rectilinear paintings and into the realm of installation and world-building.
As an arts manager, I currently serve as a Program Officer, Career Advice and Training at New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), where I manage professional development programs for artists globally. These include providing artists one-on-one career advice through the NYFA Coaching and Consulting program, professional development workshops, as well as the Artist as Entrepreneur, a 3.5 day professional development program administered in partnership with arts organizations, arts councils, and colleges/universities internationally. I’m proud that, through this work, I’ve been to cultivate partnerships all over the country to serve 50k+ artists of all disciplines and career stages.
A career advisor for artists, I frequently give professional practice talks for artists at art schools and organizations nationally, including at School of Visual Arts, Rhode Island School of Art and Design, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and Columbia University, among others. As a reviewer, I serve as a frequent panelist for artists’ exhibition, residency, and public art opportunities, and sit on the NYC DOT Public Art Advisory Committee.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
That working harder will always yield better results. I’m pretty hardworking, which is partly my personality but also because I care so much about this field. This myth is perpetuated — by capitalism, by the arts, by our society — and says that if you only work hard enough, you will be rewarded. In the context of a field that already doesn’t pay people enough or provide artists/freelancers the basic systems they need to operate as humans and business owners in the world (health care, retirement, training, etc), this has potential to be really exploitative. I’ve definitely gotten burnt out before, and had to learn to set priorities at different stages of my career. Moreover, I’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of artists, and I can’t think of one whose issue was that they didn’t work hard enough.
Additionally, if the only proposed solution is expecting yourself to work harder (and then all your dreams will come true), that doesn’t acknowledge structural barriers or set you up to recognize when the solution isn’t more work. This goes back to my open call example: I didn’t need to work harder applying to 100s of open calls, but take time to make a recent, coherent body of work. Or be strategic about which open calls I’m applying to that really fit with my work.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, specifically the Blue of Distance essay: in it, she talks about how, because of the way light scatters, faraway distances always appear blue. That’s why the horizon is always shrouded in blue. Once you close the gap between the near and the far, that space ceases to be distant and ceases to be blue. Thus, blue becomes the color of longing: the color of where you want to be, but can never go. This whole concept of visualizing an unattainable space — of wanting to be somewhere that, by definition, you will never arrive in, really informs my work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kellyolshan.com
- Instagram: @kellyolshanfineart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kelly.olshan
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-olshan-177a6a68/
- Twitter: @kellyolshan
Image Credits
Image #7 (Amethyst Staircase): Photo by David McCreery
All other photos courtesy of the artist.