We were lucky to catch up with Lulie Wallace recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Lulie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
This is a great question! I think in being a entrepreneur there are so many different roads to go down to grow a business. There are so many tips, tricks, advice now-a-days that it can be daunting for someone who is just creative. I feel like social media has such a huge influence on business these days, that it can be overwhelming and hard to stand out. I think if you keep just trying to do the best quality work you can, and keep being consistent (easier said than done) is a better goal than making the best tik tok out there.
Lulie, 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?
My name is Lulie Wallace, and I’m a fine artist and textile designer. I went to the College of Charleston where I majored in Studio Art, and a couple of years after beginning my painting career, I started to explore surface design and more specifically, textile design. I’m about 12 years into Textile design, and it truly only gets more interesting and fun to explore. Textiles are such a neat extension of art and I feel like our textile line is now truly hitting a stride as far as making patterns, using different textures and layers and compositions that I feel are getting more visually complex and interesting. When i first started doing textiles in my early 20’s, i almost didn’t appreciate it like i do now! Something about being in your 30’s, its cool to reach a point where i feel like i am starting to invest in custom fabric pieces for my own home, and I’m often my own top client. Not that i purchase a lot of my own fabric, but I am trying to make fabrics that I’m in love with, that i can picture for myself, and it really is so fun, limitless and an interesting task!
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
I run my business with two other women: Megan Simon and Louisa Dunn. Megan is my very best friend from college! We roomed together for four years and she knows me better than anyone else (besides my husband:). I consider it a huge previledge to work with her everyday. She takes excellent care of our business and everything would pretty much fall apart without her. She’s the right side to my left brain. When i first hired her, she walled into my 200sqft studio and i had a bean bag chair, and a flat piece of cardboard for her to put her laptop on (i’m surprised she didn’t run for the hills). I was fearful that working with a friend would have a chance of ruining our friendship, but it has pretty much done the opposite! It has been a major gift to our friendship and I know i couldn’t even come close to running this business without her! She is my graphic designer and overseas studio operations
Louisa Dunn was a past intern for us when she was a student at Savannah College of Art and Design and was a textile design major. She is a ball of creative joy and I have loved having her on our team these past two years! To hire someone in a creative field whose design eye is similar to yours is a hard task, and she definitely fit the bill! I’m thankful to have found her and she has added an skill set to our team.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
I have a side hustle, and its my family. I have three girls, a six,four, and two year old. I think one of the biggest gifts of my job is how flexible the hours are and how understanding my boss is about it (I’m the boss). I also appreciate that my job allows me to create deadlines far out. For instance, my paintings are usually painted pretty far in advance so that if something goes crazy at my home, or it is a season where a child needs more time/attention, i can afford that. I also have been lucky to have relationships with other artist mamas who have done it different ways. I feel like i am currently in a season where my child’s schedules are crazy and demand more of my attention, but for much longer, and i feel thankful to know that my art is there even if I’m in a season where i can’t spend as much time creating. And hopefully it will be there in a couple more years when i can devote more time.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.Luliewallace.com
- Instagram: @luliewallace
- Facebook: Lulie Wallace Art