If Kate Farrall has her way, there will be no more starving artists.
As a visual artist, Farrall knows it’s hard to make a living. But as an experienced marketer and art business coach, she also knows the right tools and skills make all the difference.
“So many artists are so capable,” she says. “We can build walls, put colors together and problem-solve like nobody’s business. All of those skills are very transferrable.”
Farrall built her skills through school and various jobs. She majored in art history and photography in Maryland and worked at a Baltimore art gallery.
After grad school at California College of the Arts, she got a marketing job. A career path quickly came together.
“It was super fast paced and I learned so much,” Farrall says. “I really started to see how technology was coming into things. It was a great pivot point where the internet was coming online and the way we could access the world was different. It was really a shakeup.
“Going from offline to online has really changed the dynamics of things for artists. There used to be only a few paths to success: Be a teacher, an art star picked up by a gallery or go into graphic design illustration. Now, you can interact with collectors directly and build more community so differently.”
Even with marketing technology, Farrall says artists struggle with “the never-ending question of how.”
At first, she helped one artist put together a spreadsheet to track sales leads. The process evolved into a coaching business that helps her clients learn to promote themselves.
“I didn’t want to be a marketing agency,” Farrall says. “I wanted to empower people to understand the system and put it in place themselves.”
Farrall launched her coaching business in 2011. Clients range from fine artists to yoga instructors. Her goal is to help people who juggle scattered income sources to streamline and have cash flows “without burning out or selling out and be able to stand tall with integrity in their work.”
Her own work proves the point. The Tahoe Park resident found a method to create camera-less photographs in college by exposing photo paper to light sources in creative ways, including through the mail, with glow-in-the-dark toys, and bioluminescent organisms (think fungus and algae).
“It got me thinking about what is a photograph? What does it mean?” Farrall says. “It’s recording a moment in time. It’s a monoprint. It’s not designed to be reproduced, like an original painting.”
Farrall works with other types of paper, from collages and sculpture to weaving. Woven paper will be featured in a collaborative exhibition at Axis Gallery in October.
As a coach, Farrall launched the Artist $5k Collective, a membership-based training program. She has 16 participants learning to apply her blend of expertise and encouragement to their art businesses.
“I’m so confident in saying that reaching out to get support in your practice can make a huge difference,” Farrall says. “Art is designed to be collaborative, for us to show up to help each other. To be witnessed and seen as you’re growing this business is so helpful. Every artist needs community.”
For information, visit katefarrallcoaching.com or @katefarrallcoaching and @katefarrall on Instagram. Visit her studio at Arthouse Gallery, 1021 R St., on Second Saturdays from 5–8 p.m. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
