We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Laura Kalina a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Laura, appreciate you joining us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

I am originally a photographer from right outside DC. I struggled to find work there; my experience was that everyone saw everyone else as competition. There was no community. In 2017, I followed my parents down to Wilmington, NC when they retired. I decided to open my own multimedia business, which became Mossy Fox Studio. My specialty became pyrography, which I had been doing as a hobby for a couple of years at that point.

I started doing pyrography on a whim back in 2015. I saw it on tv and thought it looked like fun. I went to my local craft store and bought wood and a basic woodburning unit. I was *immediately* hooked. It was so relaxing and fun!

What started as simply a hobby very quickly grew to a love and appreciation of the medium, to the point that when I moved in 2017 I decided to just go all in and open a new business for my art. I had zero idea if I would succeed or not, but chose to risk it.

Within a few weeks of moving to Wilmington I found a place called theArtWorks, which offers studio rentals to working artists inside a huge converted warehouse. I moved in within a few days. Meeting all of the 40+ artists that also worked there, I was immediately struck by how friendly everyone was. Literally no one felt like competition!

After living in Wilmington for a few months, I realized how much a supportive, thriving art community it is. Everyone was so, so incredibly welcoming and kind. It REALLY threw me for a loop because I had always experienced the opposite. Over the years I have met many other Wilmington artists working in pyrography. It became a learning process within me to learn to see them as community, not competition. I tell everyone that the greatest thing I did for myself as an artist was move to Wilmington.

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 multimedia artist specializing in pyrography, also known as woodburning. How I got into the medium I’ll admit isn’t very exciting: I simply saw it on tv one day and thought it looked fun! It began as a hobby but very, very quickly I realized I had a knack for it and after a couple of years decided to make it into a business because I felt that I could create pieces that people would love.

Despite being perhaps the very first artistic medium ever practiced in history, pyrography is a very specific medium and an uncommon one, particularly when its done completely by hand, like mine is. Many people think what I do is done by lasers and computers. While laser engraving is a form of woodburning, what I do is entirely by hand.

Each piece starts out as an original drawing by me on a slice of wood. All of my pyrography is done by hand using a metal tipped tool that can heat to over 1000 degrees. Color is sometimes added at the end.

My specialty when it comes to not just my pyrography, but my art as a whole, is that I specialize in animals. Art and animals are my two loves in life, and I combine them whenever I can. My “bread and butter” with my pyrography is custom pet portraits. People very early on started asking me about it, and so I incorporated it into my business. My business is now split into two parts: custom pet portraits and regular, more “inventory” pieces that I sell at shows. Having a balance between the two I find really important. Sometimes I will be completely burned out (pun intended) with one, so its always nice to be able to change it up and go back and forth.

One thing I am proud of with my work is seeing the joy it brings people. I would say roughly half of my pet portraits are memorial portraits of pets that have passed. I get messages all the time from people who were gifted one of my portraits of their late pet, and how much it means to them. Being able to immortalize these pets is a great honor, and I always hope that my portraits help the owners remember happy memories of their beloved pets. A lot of extra love goes into memorial pieces, and it means a lot when the recipients can see it.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Word of mouth quickly became vital for my business, particularly with the pet portrait side of it. People who were happy with a portrait would tell their friends and family, and that word of mouth spread exponentially. I now have a list of return customers where I am their go-to when it comes to gifts.

I also do 3-4 vendor markets a year around where I live (Wilmington, NC). They are not only great for marketing myself and my artistic services, they are also a lot of fun! I get to talk with hundreds of people about my medium and how I do it. The feedback from folks is overwhelmingly positive. I get tons of people who tell me they did woodburning as a kid and are absolutely tickled pink to see my work. Having done markets for years, I now see a lot of the same people coming out to show support, which means a lot.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

One of the sales that meant the most to me was when I made a small platypus piece for an Instagram account that meant a lot to me.

There was a dog I found on Instagram who I quickly fell in love with after learning his story and seeing how wonderful he was. He was a rescue who was saved from a dogfighting ring. Having worked for a rescue back in 2015-2017 his story really touched my heart.

His owner found me through a mutual acquaintance, and commissioned me to make a small platypus piece. I ended up making not only a platypus, but also a second small piece of the dog just as a gift because I loved him so much. I shipped the pieces off not telling the owner of the gift. About a week later she ends up posting my pieces that I made her on the dogs Instagram. I was floored (in the best way!). I did it just as a gift, and was not expecting at all for her to post them! The dog had a huge following on Instagram, and her post ended up being the biggest boost to my business. I gained 750 followers in a few weeks and the commissions came flooding in. It was the most unexpected surprise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mossyfoxstudio.com
• Instagram: @mossyfoxstudio
• Facebook: @mossyfoxstudio