We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Rangel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Sarah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
One thing I am continuing to learn while turning my art business into a full-time career is that taking risks is such a necessity, but it’s also so much easier said than done! I cannot count the number of missed opportunities that came my way because I was too scared and intimidated by the fear of rejection, disappointment, and disaster, so I would literally just run the other way instead of just understanding that art really isn’t anything without rejection, so what’s the problem? I let my fear of failure outweigh my fear of success and in turn realized that failure is only a lack of desire, so what do I really want?
What I really want is to produce, present, promote, and sell my art. To do this, I needed to figure out how to approach art itself as not only a subject or an experience, but as a business. I needed to focus my approach on fine art shopping, which meant entering more art markets and art shops versus making proposals to only art galleries. I did my fair share of research on many gallery storefronts and decided to shoot my shot and reach out to the ones I believed my work would be a good fit in. I emailed multiple shops and curators with an introduction to myself, my art, and my understating that art finds itself involved with capital.
These actions were the biggest risks I’ve ever taken regarding the completion of my art. A lot of galleries did not respond; but surprisingly some did -one being The Shop at Atrpace in San Antonio. Now my work is available at the shop and is also featured on the official website!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Sarah Rangel and I’m a ceramicist based in San Antonio, Texas. I create small-scale colorful and fun abstract statement pieces that serve as decorative art and have recently begun to experiment with adding functional roles to the pieces, focusing particularly on catch-all bowls. I enjoy taking the idea of a vessel and artfully manipulating the clay in both traditional and conceptual ways. I take comfort in the core idea of ceramics -that cooperation between composition and ground.
I didn’t find my calling to create art until I attended college! I went into St. Edward’s University Undeclared and experimented with many majors, including Creative Writing and Philosophy. I ended up taking a beginner’s clay class as an elective, and the rest is history. I remember staying at the studio for hours just exploiting all this hidden creativity and ideas into the clay. Having so much control over the material gave and continues to give me rushes of adrenaline.
The bright colors I use to glaze my pieces set my work apart from others. There’s so much going on with each one-of-a-kind piece -different textures, colors that highly contrast with each other, and an almost crude style and technique. One of my college professors once told me that she could admire my style and work because “you use colors that you think go together, and somehow you make it work in the end.” A customer at an art market told me that she liked my work because “it’s so disgusting and crappy,” immediately following up with “Does that offend you?” It’s all so funny because after that she ended up buying two of my catch-all bowls!
I’d say that I’m most proud of not letting rejection define me anymore. It sounds so cliché, but rejection is just another way of art doing exactly what it’s supposed to do -it’s that subject, experience, and form of communication that we cannot seem to reach any other way. Rejection now only fuels me to keep good faith in creating, showing, and selling art. I want to remind any artist to continue using art as a social practice and in turn encourage new generations to contribute to and care about art.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My main goal is to turn my creative journey into a fulltime career. It’s going to sound selfish, but for me it isn’t about necessarily getting solo shows at a local gallery anymore; instead, it’s about tackling the infrastructure of visual art and its role in the economy to gain financial power. Art always ends up finding itself in the service of wealth, and I am constantly trying to learn new approaches to fine art shopping to make a stable profit. I want to be able to make enough money to pay for health insurance, rent, vehicle payments, etc. without settling for an unfulfilling 9-5 job.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Post, post, post! I consider digital art the largest and fastest-growing art movement right now. The internet has so much more territory just waiting to be discovered -many galleries and art stores are taking new ecommerce methods to fine art shopping using virtual techniques and resources. The more you post on social media, the more chances you have of your page getting viewed and discovered. Interacting with your audience on social media is important, too. Reels and stories go a long way -the bigger your internet presence, the bigger exposure of your art and your brand.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sarahrangel.com
- Instagram: @sarahrangelart
- CONTACT: sarahrangelart@gmail.com