Net Profits
By Cathleen McCarthyPHOTO:
PA- Y
ON
;^ GETTYIMAGESYOU CAN REFINE your sales and
marketing strategies, organize
your inventory, analyze your target
market. But if the product you’re
selling is jewelry you design and
make yourself, at some point you
have to make the jewelry. Creativity
becomes something you have to
cultivate and even schedule.
Defining your brand is important,
but it has to evolve. As jewelry artist
Thomas Mann once told me about his
customers: “They like you to change,
just not too much.”
You can’t keep selling the same
pieces forever. And who would want
to? The fun of creating is what got
you into this in the first place.ON DEMAND?
Once a jewelry artist is in business
and the jewelry goes from hobby to
livelihood, s/he faces the challenge
writers, photographers, and so
many other creative independents
face: how to tap into inspiration on
demand and harness your creative
spirit. There is a whole science
around this.
How do successful designers remain
both prolific and profitable? I asked
some of the most creative jewelry
artists I know, the ones who consis-
tently get into the best juried shows
and manage to surprise me with new
designs every time I see their booths.
One is Biba Schutz, a New York City-based artist who has been making
and selling her jewelry for decades.
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art
(PMA) Craft Show in November 2019,
a gallery of dangling metal sculptures
swayed gently as I entered her booth.
The installation established her and
the jewelry on display as art, and
specifically as urban industrial art.
Biba’s creativity seems endless. But
even she has to nurture the creative
spirit. “Some times are more fertile
than others,” she told me. “But I grab
inspiration from my environment.”
“Inspiration is the springboard
for creativity,” writes Scott Barry
Kaufman, scientific director of the
Imagination Institute at the University10 LAPIDARY JOURNAL JEWELRY ARTIST
Invite your muse and prepare for its presence
Cultivating
Creativity
10 NetProfits _CultivatingCreativity_MJ20.indd 10 3/16/20 3:32 PM