As Jackie Battenfield points out in The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love, business tactics such as planning, assessment, time management, and negotiation are seldom offered to artists in ways that are relevant to their individual practices. Lacking fundamental business skills, many of us ignore career strategizing in favor of fantasizing about gallerists and curators knocking down our studio doors and launching our careers for us. The Artist’s Guide reminds us that no one is coming to save us—that we must instead carefully plan for a successful, sustainable art career and overcome the doubts and fears that have the potential to derail us. Battenfield recently welcomed me into her Williamsburg, Brooklyn studio and shared with me her clearly defined approach toward career development for artists.

Jackie Battenfield is an artist and the author of The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love, a NYFA fiscally sponsored project just out from Da Capo Press. For over twenty years Battenfield has supported herself on the sale of her own artwork and teaches career development programs for visual artists at the Creative Capital Foundation and Columbia University.

To read a full interview with Jackie Battenfield in NYFA Current, please copy the following link into your browser: http://www.nyfa.org/nyfa_current_detail.asp?id=272&fid=1&sid=17&curid=779

David Court, NYFA Source Research Intern: Editing and Uploading
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More Information at NYFA.org and artistcareerguide.com