Grown-Up Gigs Illustrator Printmaker

Grown-Up Gigs Illustrator Printmaker Jens Fishnet Shoes silkscreened linen bag. Aint it the cutest? I discovered Jen Hewett via ArtWall, where I was super intrigued by her bio that stated: Jen Hewett has had many careers in her life: private school admissions director, stationery company owner, nonprofit manager (to name a few). When the economy took a turn for the worse and ousted her from a tech finance and operations job a week before Christmas, 2008, she decided to switch careers once again and explore life as an illustrator and printmaker. I emailed her right away, introduced myself, told her that my home on The Interwebs needed her to tell her story! While shes not a full-time illustrator (yet!), shes kicking ass taking names to get there. You can find her on Etsy in the blogosphere. 1. What did you want to be when you grew up? A whole lot of different things â€"  an architect, a graphic designer, a math teacher, an antiques store owner, a botanist, a landscaper As a kid, I never had a distinct career dream as it seems so many other kids did. 2. What made me need (yes, need!) to interview you is your career history. Without making you feel like you have to list your resume for us, what was it that brought you to each new position, especially when you went from a traditional career (like a private school admissions director) to a non-traditional one (like the owner of a stationary company)? I was an English major in college â€" a degree that didn’t lead to any definite career paths. After college, I seriously toyed with going to law school, even going so far as to take the LSAT and prepare all my law school applications. When it came time to send them out, though, I realized that I wasn’t so sure about being a lawyer that I was willing to take on such a huge amount of debt and then be tied into a career path until that debt was paid off. While I was busy not going to law school, I worked for an educational nonprofit and then for a private high school. Those jobs were wonderful experiences for me â€" I wrote newsletters, worked on grant proposals, coordinated conferences, led trainings, did high school admissions, created databases. I got to wear so many different hats and developed a lot of skills that I continue to use today. Somewhere along the way, though, I decided I wanted to be a graphic designer. I didn’t have any formal graphic design training, and I was too junior for even an entry-level position as a designer. This was during the start of the dot com boom and lots of people were starting their own businesses. I’d always been entrepreneurial, so I decided to save up my money and start a business of some sort. A stationery business seemed like a good fit â€" I’d always liked making my own cards and stationery and I preferred to create products for resale instead of creating collateral for clients. So I quit my job and jumped into that, not knowing much about how the industry works â€" or even the first thing about how to prepare artwork and files for print â€" but I somehow made it work. Of course, I made a ton of mistakes that first year that continued to haunt me for the next three years. But I was making what had been a dream just two years prior into reality. After three years of that, I burned out, sold the business, and went to work for someone else. I was in a lot of debt and had to have a job. Plus, I was scarred enough from the experience of mishandling my business that I doubted my entrepreneurial abilities. Ironically, after being the sole artist for my stationery company, I still wasn’t qualified for a design job. I was, however, very qualified for business roles at small, creative, tech startups. I found that I loved that work, too â€" I could wear lots of hats, learn new skills and move up the corporate ladder. But I really missed being creative â€" especially since I was working with designers â€" so, on a whim, I started silkscreening. I did it as a weekend hobby until the company I was working for went bankrupt and I was laid off. By the time I was laid off, I was completely burned out on corporate life. I wasn’t happy with the path my “career” had taken. I was often too tired and too stressed to make time for my creative life. I saw the layoff as an opportunity to change directions. I admit that I was lucky because the salary at my last job allowed me to pay off my business debt and save a decent amount of money. I was in a much better position financially than many other people who were affected by the economic downturn. I could take a little time off to regroup and figure out what I wanted to do next. I started going to the screenprinting studio at least twice per week. I also continued to interview for jobs that were much like the one I’d lost; however, the jobs just didn’t feel right anymore. During that time, my silkscreen work started to get noticed. It was featured on blogs. I was asked to participate in a group show. I started to feel more and more confident about my skills â€" and about my ability to one day make a living as an artist. But I also was really concerned about my finances. My savings was running out. Right around that time, I got a full-time job that has been less intense than my old job while remaining challenging enough to be interesting. It has been a pleasant shift for me â€" I focus on just a couple of things and come home at a reasonable hour every night. I’ve often said that I don’t have a set career path. Instead, I like to find work that is interesting and challenging and which allows me to grow. Moving around has really served me well. I feel very resourceful â€" like I will always be able to find work or create opportunities for myself. I think that’s part of what being an artist is â€" consciously creating your life instead of just blindly following a path. 3. You told me that you recently got a full-time job in addition to working on your illustrations prints. Can you talk a bit about the reasoning behind this, how your day job supplements your creative life, how you balance your aspirations as an artist with having to work a day job? After my initial business-owning experience, I’d become very pragmatic about finances. I am in my mid-thirties. I may never get married, which means that I alone will be responsible for my long-term financial health. While it’s probably easier to take risks if your actions won’t affect a spouse or a child, it does also mean that you won’t have a safety net if your risk-taking fails, or if financial stability takes a little longer than you had planned. So I’ve chosen to work full-time â€" for now. I’d like to build up my savings again, while also building my art business. Having a full-time job allows me to take more risks with my work. I can also afford to participate in more shows, do more marketing, buy new screens, set up a studio at home. I’ve set my priorities â€" my art comes first (well, second after my dog) when it comes to my spending. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds. I just spend my money in line with my values. 4. Whats the biggest roadblock to being a working artist, how are you rising above it? When I first started, I felt that I had to establish my own voice and then work from there. I really thought too much about what I was going to do. Spending more time thinking than doing is a sure way to get stuck. So I started drawing whatever came to mind. I tried not to care if it was too derivative of someone else’s work or if it was just plain bad. I really have to get all those images out of my system. Not every idea that I have, not every sketch that I make is good. Most of it is uninspired. Accepting that making crappy work is a natural part of the process has been incredibly liberating. 5. If you had your present self (the one as an artist with a day job) give your old self advice (the one that lost her job in tech finance operations in 2008), what would you tell yourself? Following your passion doesnt have to be all or nothing. I used to have escapist dreams of getting a lucky break, making it big and quitting my job. I wanted to succeed in a big way, right away. But what Ive learned is that while having big goals was a good start, taking measured, baby steps and achieving small (but not insignificant) successes have built my confidence in my skills and my work enough that I can see a clear, holistic path to achieving my goals. ********************************************************************************************************* 1 person. 12 session. $0. Announcing the 2nd Annual When I Grow Up Scholarship! Get Danielle LaPorte’s Nuggets of Genius in your own home, on your own time. Announcing the Digital Firestarter Sessions from my “cult leader.” Great Giveaway! Win a fantastically awesome print from Artsyville.