{"id":103002,"date":"2026-05-12T19:57:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T02:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=103002"},"modified":"2026-05-14T20:14:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T03:14:31","slug":"the-other-half-of-the-job-professional-development-workshops-for-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-other-half-of-the-job-professional-development-workshops-for-artists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Half of the Job: Professional Development Workshops for Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artist development workshop at the Springville Museum of Art.<\/p><\/div>\n

There is a persistent myth about what it means to be a serious artist \u2014 that the work is everything, that the studio is the whole world, and that attention paid to anything outside it is a kind of compromise.<\/h4>\n

\nAsk anyone who advises working artists about how they actually spend their time, and a different picture emerges. According to coaches and consultants in the art-business space, financially successful artists tend to spend roughly half their working hours on the business side of their practice\u2014marketing, correspondence, applications, bookkeeping, the unglamorous logistics of a creative career. Half. That figure tends to produce a knot in the stomach the first time you hear it. It also tends to produce a knot of recognition.<\/p>\n

The Mellon Foundation’s National Survey of Artists, released last November and one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, puts some harder numbers around what artists already sense. More than half of American artists\u2014 57% \u2014reported being worried about at least one form of financial vulnerability, whether that’s affording food, housing, or medical care. Eleven percent juggled three or more jobs in the past year. And 84% are either fully or primarily self-employed, which means the vast majority are running a small business whether or not they think of themselves that way. The infrastructure question\u2014how to sustain a practice, navigate institutions, communicate your work, manage money\u2014isn’t incidental to being an artist.<\/h4>\n

\nThat context is worth keeping in mind as two Utah organizations\u2014the Utah Division of Arts & Museums and the Springville Museum of Art\u2014offer a concentrated run of professional development programming this month. Taken together, the sessions address the parts of an art career that most arts training programs never touch, and that artists are largely expected to figure out on their own.<\/p>\n

A Series for Working Artists
\nUA&M’s Professional Development Series has offered workshops as part of the Utah Artist Fellowship Program for several years, but this year’s offerings have expanded in number and sharpened in focus. Peter Hay, UA&M’s visual arts program coordinator, describes them as “intermediate level\u2014to support working artists striving for the fellowship, or whatever might be the next step in their creative career.” The range is deliberately broad. “I hope there is something for everyone,” Hay says, reflecting the diversity of Utah’s artist community itself.<\/p>\n

The series addresses, with some consistency, the territory that formal arts training tends to leave blank. While MFA programs are touching business and professional topics more than they once did, Hay notes that “these are also ever-evolving topics both from the perspective of the art world and the artist’s personal studio practice”\u2014which is why artists who attended Hannah Cole’s tax session in previous years keep returning. “We’ve had folks attend the taxes workshop for years and say that they learn something every time.” Keeping all sessions virtual and free is itself a policy choice: “while not a perfect accessibility fix,” Hay says, “artists all across the state can take part.”<\/p>\n

Three sessions run this month. On May 19, All About Artist-in-Residencies pairs firsthand experience from artists Pablo Cruz-Ayala and Mitsu Salmon with broader context from Hay himself\u2014less a how-to than a demystification of a world that rewards those who already know it. The residency landscape has grown substantially: programs worldwide increased by 25% between 2018 and 2023, and competition has intensified to the point where many now charge application fees simply to manage volume. Knowing which programs are worth pursuing, and why, has become its own skill.<\/p>\n

On May 27, Hannah Cole, an enrolled agent and founder of Sunlight Tax, leads a two-hour session on taxes for artists, freelancers, and creative businesses, taking on the questions most self-employed artists quietly defer: deductions, receipts, quarterly payments, the home studio. For the 84% of working artists who are fully or primarily self-employed, this is not supplementary knowledge.<\/p>\n

Running across three evenings in May is a series with Robin Cembalest, former longtime editor of ARTnews and a specialist in professional training for the digital era, covering Instagram, artist statements, and self-promotion. Hay sees a direct line between these sessions and concrete outcomes: Cembalest’s workshops “can help artists refine how they present themselves, which can directly impact the success of their future Utah Artist Fellowship applications, exhibition proposals, residency applications, grants.” Ninety percent of artists under 35 already consider social media integral to their professional growth; the question Cembalest addresses is how to use it deliberately rather than just persistently. All three sessions are free.<\/p>\n

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER<\/a><\/h4>\n

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The Springville Museum of Arts round table format encourages group discussion.<\/p><\/div>\n

\nThe Conversation in the Room
\nThe Springville Museum of Art’s Artist Round Table operates on a different model. Running twice a year, the program brings together six expert presenters per session to address topics ranging from accounting, marketing, and legal considerations to the psychological terrain of an art career\u2014overcoming rejection, avoiding burnout, finding a sustainable niche. Attendance is free. So is the exchange that follows.<\/p>\n

The format reflects a deliberate philosophy. “One of the driving forces of everything we do at the Museum,” says museum director Emily Larsen, “is how can we foster connection and community, especially among our key audiences\u2014and one of our most important audiences to serve is Utah artists.” The round table structure emerged directly from listening: the museum heard, years ago, that artists needed not just information but community\u2014camaraderie, the sense of not being alone in navigating a difficult field. Research on participatory programming informed the design. “Events that include conversation and participation are much better at fostering a sense of connection than lectures alone,” Larsen notes, “so we designed it to be participatory and encourage conversation to hopefully drive more meaningful senses of connection and belonging.”<\/p>\n

That philosophy extends to how expertise itself is framed. “There is not one expert or only one point of view,” Larsen says. “Everyone has insight and meaning to give to a conversation and there are often many right answers.” The round table does feature expert presenters on each topic\u2014but the room is designed to talk back. Other artists share their own experience, ask the questions most pressing to their practice, and contribute knowledge that no single presenter could supply.<\/p>\n

Artists who have participated describe something that goes beyond professional utility. Steve and Tonya Vistaunet, Utah artists who have attended both as participants and presenters, capture what the program offers that a workshop or webinar can’t: “By meeting other artists it helps us know that we are not alone in this, that there is actually a very supportive art community in Utah.” They leave, they say, with pages of notes\u2014but also with relationships, and with a clearer sense of the community they’re part of.<\/p>\n

This month’s session reflects the breadth that has made the program valuable. Pam Baumeister addresses marketing from studio to sale. Julian Acosta speaks to career pivots and expanding your focus. Elizabeth Bishop Wheatley takes on the rarely discussed challenge of sustaining an art practice alongside parenting\u2014a logistical and psychological reality for many artists that almost never surfaces in formal programming. And Clark Goldsberry brings what may be the most contested topic in the current art world: AI from an artist’s point of view.<\/p>\n

That conversation is worth having carefully. Recent surveys find that nearly three-quarters of artists consider AI’s scraping of artwork to be unethical, and 89% believe current copyright laws are inadequate to address it. At the same time, 74% of artists have already experimented with AI tools in some capacity. Wariness and experimentation are happening simultaneously, and the questions\u2014about authorship, compensation, and what the technology actually does to creative practice\u2014are far from settled. A peer conversation among working artists is precisely the right format for a topic this live.<\/p>\n

The session also includes a Depicting Diversity panel featuring Rose Datoc Dall, Rocio Cisneros, Jorge Rojas, and Esther Hi’ilani Candari. The panel’s existence is its own quiet argument. Studies of major U.S. museum collections have found that 85% of represented artists are white and 87% are men; Hispanic and Latino artists account for roughly 2.8% of museum holdings, against a population in which Latinos make up nearly 20% of Americans. That gap reflects who gets collected, who gets shown, who gets written about, who gets hired to make those decisions. Four artists speaking from their own experience of working within and against that structure have something to say that statistics alone can’t.<\/p>\n

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER<\/a><\/h4>\n

\nThere’s an argument, sometimes made in earnest, that learning to talk about your art, or understand your taxes, or navigate the residency world, is a distraction from the real thing. The argument has a romantic appeal. It also describes, fairly accurately, how many artists end up\u2014doing serious work in conditions that make it increasingly hard to sustain.<\/p>\n

Peter Hay puts the goal more plainly. He hopes these workshops help artists achieve something specific: “selected for a show, awarded a grant, selected for a residency.” Or as he puts it, simply “fueling their gumption tank to keep honing their creative endeavor.” It’s a modest and accurate description of what professional development at its best actually does. Not a transformation. Not a career pivot. Just enough knowledge, and enough community, to keep going.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a persistent myth about what it means to be a serious artist \u2014 that the work is everything, that the studio is the whole world, and that attention paid to anything outside it is a kind of compromise. Ask anyone who advises working artists about how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hints_n_tips","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1T6A2834.CR2_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 05:40:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103006,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103002\/revisions\/103006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}