Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: Painting Women, Color & Working Outside of The Traditional Gallery System
Today I am excited to introduce you to the artist Lanie Wurzel. Lanie is an artist and teacher living and working in Cambridge, MA. In 2007 Helena received an MFA from Boston University. After this, she set off on a path of adjunct teaching. This led to seven long years of working multiple jobs, driving long distances, and scraping by. Despite this, she persevered, learned a lot, and continued to paint. In addition Lanie has found successes outside of the traditional gallery sphere. In 2011, she started working with the online start-up www.20x200.com, which sells high-quality archival prints of her work. It was through this venue that a design director at Kate Spade saw her painting “My Butt” and asked Helena to paint an ad campaign for the promotion of their new Saturday line. Helena worked with the company from their launch in 2012 until they closed in 2015. Jonathan Adler, the design guru, saw her work in a Saturday store and she displayed her paintings in his retail stores in Los Angeles, Miami, and online from 2015-2018.
In this episode, we talk about the inspiration for her work, working with Kate Spade and Jonathan Adler, working to support your practice, being a mom and advice to artists negotiating contracts.
Thank you to artist Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax for sponsoring this episode! Check our her site for her workshops specifically for artists and her free newsletter w tips for artists doing their taxes!
