Business of Art Workshop with Olga Yukhno

Please direct any questions to our workshop coordinator, Carol Blackwood, at carolblackwood@yahoo.com or 803-603-8634.

Workshop Description (from the instructor)

The Business of Art is an online workshop hosted by Olga Yukhno designed to address a wide range of topics about the practical specifics of making art into more than a hobby. It is an excellent opportunity for artists of all experience levels to translate their passion into professionalism. Olga is currently a Gallery Director at the University of South Carolina, and has hosted and curated multiple personal and group exhibitions. Combined with being an artist herself, this course takes what she has learned from these experiences and distills it into useful advice and best practices for artists across all types of media. Topics will include how to prepare not only your work, but yourself to be ready to exhibit your art in galleries and other types of exhibitions, how to navigate the process of actually participating in these events or maintaining a relationship with a gallery, and common pitfalls and problems that can arise in these processes, and how to avoid them. So whether you’re an artist who wants to launch into a career, or a long time artisan taking their work to the next level of exposure, there will be a great deal to be learned in this workshop!

Topics covered:

• Finding, selecting and applying for Calls for Submissions;

• Preparing Exhibition Proposals and avoiding common mistakes;

• Artist Statement, Bio and CV overview;

• Working with the exhibition venue;

• Packing and shipping your artwork;

• Promoting your work: online and in person;

• Finding and working with a gallery;

This will be a 3 hour long workshop with an hour lunch break in the middle (1.5 hour + 1 hour lunch + 1.5 hour)

About the Instructor

Olga Yukhno is an artist originally from Pyatigorsk, Russia. It was in Russia her passion for art began. Inspired by the culture of her home country, she started by working with batiques, stained glass and enameling. She studied under world renowned enamellist, Nikolai Vdovkin for several years to hone her skills, before moving to the United States in 2008.

In the US, she no longer had access to the tools needed to continue with her enameling, and quickly started expanding into any and every new medium she could get access to. What she fell in love with was ceramic sculpting. It allowed her to experiment, and fuse together old-world artistry with her skills and abilities across a wide variety of art forms to create totally new and unique mixed media pieces.

Over the years, Olga has traveled to over 40 countries across Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and the Americas, and visited museums ranging from the world famous Louvre in France, to the smallest unnamed art displays in towns and villages few outsiders have ever seen. It is in these travels she gets the most inspiration, drawing on the uniqueness and culture of every new place she visits, she finds ways to incorporate those cultural nuances into each new piece she makes. The colors, shapes, and ideas of everything from tribal masks to modern street art can be seen woven into her work. She loves juxtaposition in her art, old and new, lustrous and weathered, and it’s in these contrasts she finds beauty.

Currently her work is a mixture of three dimensional ceramic and mixed media wall pieces, figurative sculpture, and larger scale installation works. The process used to create many of her signature looks is achieved by hand pressing each individual impression into the clay using small custom made metal tools. She hand makes all of these tools herself out of repurposed architectural metal scraps. She also loves to incorporate found objects, as well as utilize techniques from other art forms she’s studied and practiced, such as weaving, encaustic and metal working. The result of this process, different incorporated elements and techniques are what create her unique and visually interesting personal style. Her degree in psychology shapes the ideas and concepts behind many of her pieces, with the intention that observing her work encourages the viewer to think more about what they’re seeing, and the emotions it evokes.

Workshop Supply List

This one is easy - no special supplies required.

Registration

Registration is open to CCAL members for $35.

Registration is open to non-CCAL members for $50.

Note: This is an online workshop. Zoom link information will be provided after registration.