We recently connected with TJ Solzsmon and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, TJ thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights 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?

I have been self employed now for five years. The last year has focused almost exclusively on my art and photography, while the entirety of that time has been spent with creative endeavors.

The biggest milestone was dropping everything to pursue it. Taking the risk. It’s grown exponentially larger in a shorter time than I had ever fathomed.

Within a couple months I moved my concentration from my personal chef to almost a full time focus on my art.

Honestly, my biggest regret is that I hadn’t taken the risk sooner.

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

For as long as I can recall, I’ve tried to immerse myself in knowledge. I’ve anyways enjoyed working with my hands and despite attending a university, trade work always appealed to me more. It’s been my goal, over the years, to learn as many skill sets as I can and constantly broaden my experience.

Cabalchemy started as a screen printing endeavor over covid lockdown. I started to long for the limited print, budget friendly t-shirts like I’d amassed over the years from punk shows and so I employed the knowledge I gained printing for bands in the past, to create shirts for my friends and me.

While this was happening, I’d been avidly searching for oddities and curiosities and thus frequented antique malls and thrift stores weekly. Whenever I could find special pieces, the prices were exorbitant. My partner had taken taxidermy classes at a local community college and passed a lot of knowledge on to me. So, I started to make my own. We filled our home with unique pieces and started to give them as gifts to friends. Those friends suggested we try to sell them to others, but we weren’t sure on the medium.

To gauge any interest I signed up to vend at a craft market, selling screen printed shirts and taxidermy oddities, and it was a wild success. I sold out of most of my work and had a blast doing it.

Around this same time, riding the euphoria of having a new medium recognized and appreciated, I decided to try to sell photography.

That was the biggest leap, because I had been fantasizing about it for about ten years and lacked the confidence to pursue it further. Knowing many artists and photographers, I knew it was a pipe dream but eventually I figured I’d regret not trying it far more than if I tried and failed. I used my entire savings and sourced frames, matting, and small batch prints which I then put up for sale. I had been bothered by other photographers selling photo print editions of 200 for $200-300 apiece so I vowed to do small editions that were budget friendly. I made my money back and turned a profit in a few weeks.

All of these art forms combined to create Cabalchemy, which strives to be budget friendly, high quality, unique, and inclusive. All values I felt had been largely forced out due to the trend of commodifying art. With these values came the idea to up-cycle and use reclaimed and found items for pieces as much as possible. It’s nice to preserve their existing uniqueness while adding to their story.

What I’m proud of is that Cabalchemy has been welcomed into an artistic community made up of hyper talented individuals. We’re now friends with people we’ve admired, and it’s extremely humbling and invigorating.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Cabalchemy’s ultimate goal is to boost the artistic community and help others rise. We’re big on inclusion and not very hip on pretension, which seems to be a guiding position in the art world.

I firmly believe that art is a reflection of self. We create to communicate; to manifest things that were unable to put into words. Art is cathartic and expressive and freeing and if every person is different, then their art should be as well.

We want to appeal to those people who resonate with the work Cabalchemy produces, and we want to do so without anyone feeling like a robbery has taken place. It’s an exchange much larger than a buy/sell transaction. Art is the very essence of what being human is. When that connection is made, we should all cherish it.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m still trying to figure out social media. Instagram is the main platform currently used. I try to post often, and I love to share what others do. We follow most of our followed and engage with them regularly. We use our platform to showcase the talents of others. To us, it’s not a competition since art is so subjective, but it is a community that, when nourished, can sustain itself pretty well.

We post our own videos and photos regularly, and even have playlists we share with music that reflects our inspirations.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @cabalchemy