2013 is a landmark year for Creative Capital—we’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of our Professional Development Program! In that decade, we’ve worked with more than 5,900 artists in 170 communities. In honor of each of those artists, we present the new monthly series PDP Stories, in which we’ll share our participants’ accounts of how we’ve impacted their careers and lives.

This month’s PDP story comes from Carmella Jarvi, an artist from Charlotte who has attended five PDP workshops in North Carolina since 2004.

I have always been an artist and a teacher. I taught public school art for 13 years right out of college while continuing my own artwork on the side. I won some grants and always had a trickle of sales. But, as much as I enjoyed teaching high school, my art and my own career always got the leftovers.

In December of 2004, I attended my first Creative Capital PDP one-day seminar, sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council. This opened up the possibility of leaving teaching and pursuing my own dreams.

In summer 2005, I attended a weekend Creative Capital PDP retreat in the North Carolina mountains. At the end, they said, “Write down a big goal.” I wrote down that I wanted to leave teaching at the end of that school year.  Continue reading →

2013 is a landmark year for Creative Capital—we’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of our Professional Development Program! In that decade, we’ve worked with more than 5,500 artists in 150 communities. In honor of each of those artists, we present the new monthly series PDP Stories, in which we’ll share our participants’ accounts of how we’ve impacted their careers and lives.

This month’s PDP story comes from Belle Boggs, a writer from Pittsboro, NC, who took the Core Weekend workshop through the North Carolina Arts Council in 2011. A year after her workshop, Belle wrote to us:

I realized today that it has almost been a year since my life changing Creative Capital workshop, and I thought with excitement about the lucky North Carolina artists and writers who will be participating this year. I wanted to share with you some of the ways that weekend has changed my work and my life.

When I began the workshop, I was exhausted from trying to balance a writing career with teaching a demanding five-­course load at a charter high school. I thought that I had somehow ruined my career by teaching high school—that ­no university would want to hire me—­and was trying very hard to build my C.V. while maintaining the job that I depended on financially (and loved, in many ways). But the balance wasn’t working; I was only writing in the summers and on holidays, and I found myself missing important opportunities. Every sick day I could manage, I used to attend workshops, give readings, and travel for my book. I knew that something had to change, and that feeling grew stronger as I listened to the Creative Capital workshop leaders present about valuing what truly feeds your work (and your life). I signed up for a one-on­-one conference with Colleen Keegan because I knew she would tell me I needed to quit my job. She did—using exactly the supportive, smart words I needed to hear. Continue reading →

2013 is a landmark year for Creative Capital—we’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of our Professional Development Program! In that decade, we’ve worked with more than 5,500 artists in 150 communities. In honor of each of those artists, we present the new monthly series PDP Stories, in which we’ll share our participants’ accounts of how we’ve impacted their careers and lives.

This month’s PDP story comes from Lillian Warren, an artist from Houston who took our Core Weekend workshop through DiverseWorks in 2003:

It would be hard to overstate the impact that the Creative Capital Professional Development Program has had on my life.  I participated in the workshop eight years ago. It was truly a turning point, a eureka event that changed my self-image as an artist, my ability to set and achieve personal and artistic goals, and my mindset, which had isolated my business life from my art life. The workshop helped me integrate the two and set me on a path to connect within the art world that I had not imagined.

As a professional artist, I expanded the venues I showed in to include exhibitions across the nation, and gained representation with a gallery. I maximized the value of my one-person shows with publicity (including several articles in the main newspaper in Houston) and public events (including talks and panel discussions with art world notables, artist from different disciplines, and business executives). One of the most personally satisfying and continuing domino effects of the workshop was the tremendous expansion of my network of friends in the art world, in Houston and around the country.

As a professional who inhabits the world of business planning/strategic planning and the art world, I became a facilitator and mentor with the Creative Capital program and have helped facilitate portions of the PDP workshop on several occasions in a variety of cities, including serving as a small group mentor in Houston this past spring. I have also had the opportunity and privilege to participate as a coach in the CC Coaching Program and work with CC grantees on their personal strategic plans.

You can learn more about Creative Capital’s Professional Development Program on our newly redesigned website: http://creative-capital.org/pdp.

2013 is a landmark year for Creative Capital—we’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of our Professional Development Program! In that decade, we’ve worked with more than 5,500 artists in 150 communities. In honor of each of those artists, we present the new monthly series PDP Stories, in which we’ll share our participants’ accounts of how we’ve impacted their careers and lives.

Our first PDP story comes from Leon Borkowski, an artist from Chicago who took our Core Weekend workshop through the Chicago Artists Coalition in May 2012:

Your blueprint has created hope for all of us and is a call to logical action. In addition to this, it has been our good fortune to have forged 23 important new relationships. Our class is representative of the creme de la creme of the Chicago art scene. The sensitivity, intelligence and accomplishments of this peer group are inspirational. I have already received many e-mails and calls from participants and I look forward to future dialogues. This form of communication is a valuable sound-board for ideas. The workshop has been an exceptionally rewarding experience. As a new wave of entrepreneurial artists, I know that we can make a reciprocal contribution by our example and through the dissemination of the principles that we have learned. How exciting!

Our path is now clear. All learning requires three things: inclination, training and discipline. The first is our birthright, the second has been defined by Creative Capital, but the third is the real challenge. As humans we sometimes fall short of goals. Thankfully, the class has endowed us with the fail-safe mechanism of Creative Capital follow-ups and the support of our group. Motivating each other when life distracts us is critical to our success.

You can learn more about Creative Capital’s Professional Development Program on our newly redesigned website: http://creative-capital.org/pdp.