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Creative Conversation: Wearing many hats at home, work, and in your practice

  • Da Vinci Art Alliance 704 Catharine Street Philadelphia, PA, 19147 United States (map)

Every quarter, DVAA hosts Creative Conversations to get into the nitty gritty of professional development within our artistic practice. We discuss topics like how to write a CV, best practices for photographing and uploading artwork, maintaining a studio practice without burnout, how to build a digital portfolio, and more!


Wearing Many Hats? How Do You Manage Your Art Practice and Business?

A Creative Conversation for Artists Navigating the Creative-Practice Balance

In today's art world, professional artists must navigate multiple roles beyond creating their work. From marketing and social media management to bookkeeping and grant writing, artists wear many different "hats" throughout their careers. This Creative Conversation explores practical strategies for managing the diverse demands of a sustainable art practice while maintaining your creative focus.


Guest speakers include Amze Emmons & Tiernan Alexander

What to Expect:

  • Role-Playing Activity: Don different hats representing various aspects of your practice (artist, marketer, accountant, curator) and explore challenges from each perspective

  • Guest Artist Presentations: Learn from two established artists about their approaches to managing multiple creative roles on top of being people

  • Collaborative Resource Building: Work together to create a comprehensive list of tools, apps, and strategies that participants can take home and reference


About the Speakers

Amze Emmons is a Philadelphia-based, multi-disciplinary artist with a background in drawing and printmaking. His research interests include walking and noticing; the politics of architecture; vernacular design; everyday evidence of community; games, play, and generative systems; and tracking the ways Print and Material Cultural history inform our current digital age.

Emmons received a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. He has held solo exhibitions in, Austin, Berlin, Boston, Madrid, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, among other locations as well as group exhibitions in innovative commercial galleries, artist-run spaces, and museums. He is currently an Associate Professor and Printmaking Program Head at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Tiernan Alexander is an artist, educator, and writer. She has taught tufting, design, and ceramics in the United States and Mexico. Her commitment to art as a tool for self-expression, community, and healing informs her mixed-media artwork and has led her to conceptualize and oversee nationally recognized large-scale community art-installations. She received an MFA in ceramics from the University of the Arts and an MA in Material Culture from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program.⁠