How does an Artist Residency Work?

How does an artist resident work? Is something you might be asking yourself if you have never been to an artist residency before. Artist residencies work by giving you uninterrupted time as an artist to make your art. So how does an artist residency work and where can you apply? What are the benefits of participating in an artist residency? I will let you know and share my experiences of the artist residencies I have been to below! 

I have been to two artist residencies

A paper making artist residency at the Women’s Studio Workshop - click to read more

And an artist residency at Vermont Studio Center -click to read more.

How does an artist residency work?

Each experience was different and you can read more about the individual experiences by clicking the links above. Generally, an artist residency is for 1 week - 12 weeks long (sometimes longer). Artist residencies are in a new place which is great inspiration especially if the place, landscape or the environment inspires your work like it does mine. Usually, your accommodation is covered in the residency, sometimes it’s a private or shared room. Usually the bathroom is shared with others but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes your meals are included and other times you have access to a kitchen where you can make your own meals. You can apply to residencies in places like Akimbo and ResArtis. Some residencies are paid where you pay to attend and other times you can win grants or scholarships to help reduce the cost or to be able to attend for free! Usually there is a time and price commitment to think about before applying. Only apply if you have the time and the money to go.

What are the benefits of an artist residency?

• Private time to work no distractions

• A new location to inspire your work

• 24 access to a studio, tools and equipment

• Space to hang and present your work

• Other opportunities like presenting an artist talk or participating in an exhibition while you are there

• A chance to network and meet other artists and arts professionals

• Since usually you are paying to attend you are focused and produce a lot of work! 

Other types of artist residencies

Recently, with Covid-19 some residencies have moved online. Some have virtual meetings on Zoom to share your work and get feedback. Some residencies are transitioning to online exhibitions or galleries on their websites. There are different types of artist residencies including: writing, music, performative arts, drama, textiles, papermaking, painting and more! 

How to Find the Perfect Artist Residency for you

• Plan when you have time off to do it 

• Plan a budget on how much you would like to spend or ways to fundraise/apply for grants

• Make a list of places you would be interested in travelling to 

• Search for opportunities based on your criteria 

• Pick one that speaks to you and is best suited for the type of art you make 

Good luck with your applications. I am definitely interested in doing another artist residency soon! Check out some of the helpful links below! 

Related Articles

Read my interview about my residency here! 

Here is another great website to help you find the right artist residency for you! https://resartis.org/covid-19-updates/

Akimbo

How to get artist grants 

Vermont Studio Center Residency

Women’s Studio Workshop Residency

Be sure to follow me on social media by clicking on one of the icons below!

My Art Goals Examples

Here are some tangible art goals examples to feel inspired when it comes to making your own art goals. You can change and adjust your art goals through out the year. You don’t need to wait for January 1st to make your art goals happen! Check out my art goals examples below! 

My Art Goals Examples 

Post consistently to social media (5x a week to instagram, 3-4x to facebook, every day to Pinterest, twice a month to my email list, blog post 3-4x a month, YouTube 2x a month), TikTok weekly 

Social media takes time. I recently started a tiktok - Jackie Partridge Art.  I would like to try paid ads this year 

Apply to art calls twice a month - I want to have more exhibitions this year!

I have been getting more exhibitions and artist grants since I have been consistently applying to art application calls. 

Spend time in nature for inspiration- I find this really helps with my art practice.

Once a month Gordie and I made it a habit of hiking, campinging or walking outside. I’ve taken lots of photos that I have shared on Instagram

Make consistent art sales- I would love my art to be my main source of income. I would like to match my current teaching income before the end of 2022. These are my current streams of revenue:

1. Art grants/awards and artist fees

2. Art workshops and coaching 

3. Selling art teaching resources on Teachers Pay Teachers

4. Selling my original art 

5. Selling my cyanotype prints on Society6

Set boundaries for teaching for more work life balance- no work on Friday nights and Saturdays, no emails past 5pm, no marking on the weekend. No working camps.

This past summer I worked the month of July at a day camp at my school. I was very intentional not to start working on school stuff until the end of August so that I could have a break from school. Make art during school breaks- I plan on not working at camps this year so that I have more time to focus on my art and business. 

Make art each month- I want to get back to making art each month. It is something that I put off like exercising. I want to be able to prioritize both. 

2022 Goals 

• Exercise 2x a week

• Match my teaching salary in my art income

• Purchase a Home 

• Have 5 exhibitions or publications 

• Grow my mailing list by 500 people 

• Grow my YouTube to 500 subscribers 

• Have 200 products in my TPT store

Related Articles

6 Tips for Hitting Your Art Goals

5 Tips to Stay Motivated as an Artist 

5 Tips to Sleep Better as an Artist

If you found these art goals examples helpful please leave a comment below. Be sure to follow me on social media by clicking one of the icons below! 

How to Make Time for Art

How to make time for art is an ongoing question I ask myself. I’m sure other artists ask themselves how to make time for art and maybe you do too. I want to share my tips with you for how I have time to make art and how I find pockets of time in my busy schedule to get creative. Learn how to make time for art below!

How to Make Time for Art- tip #1 

Track Your Time:

In order to have more time to make your artwork it is important that you understand how you spend your time. You can do this by tracking your time. Create an Excel sheet or grab a pen and some paper and start making note of how much time you spend on typical tasks. Once you have totalled how you spend your time you will be able to assess if there is any room for improvements that could give you more time to make art. 

For example, check your screen time usage on your smartphone. It is amazing to see that we spend hours (2-3) even more scrolling on our phone. Ask yourself how you can reduce it. Maybe set a timer. Check your email only once or twice a day, have an intention before going on social media so you avoid mindless scrolling. 

Another time waster is mindless tasks like folding laundry, or doing the dishes. I try to listen to a podcast or audiobook during this time or I give someone a phone call. 

A big culprit is watching TV. Again, it’s important to have an intention and limit your TV time. What could you be doing instead? Working out, painting, reading, making art?

How to Make Time for Art- tip #2 

Make a Plan

Now that you have tracked your time and have a better understanding of how you are spending your time you can begin to make a plan. Your goal is to make more time for your art. So ask yourself what can you give up or shorten the time to give you more time to make art.

You could agree to have a night with no TV and this day of the week could be a painting day. You could reduce your screen time by an hour a day. You could leave work earlier instead of staying late all of the time. You could wake up an hour earlier than normal. 

See how much time you can give yourself to make art. Start small with 30min. to an hour and see if you can add more time to make art later on.

How to Make Time for Art- tip #3

Make a Habit 

If possible try to block off time in your online or paper planner to schedule yourself time to make art. When making art make sure to limit your distractions. Put your phone on airplane mode. Tell your loved ones this is your uninterrupted time and they should respect that if this is something you truly care about and value!

Bonus Tip:

Habits help to stick when they are goals. Make sure you are clear about why you want to make art and why it is important to you. Does it bring you joy? Is it stress relief? Once you have established why making art is important to you -you should continue to want to strive to make time for it. Realizing why art is important and giving myself art goals has helped me to stay motivated in making art. For me the process of making art calms me down and makes me feel more relaxed so I try to fit it into my schedule whenever possible. You can check out my article about tips for achieving your art related goals - here! 

There will be days or weeks that you don’t make art and that is okay. Give yourself some grace and know that you will make art again! You can read this post about tips for adding freshness to a stale art practice here! 

Need some accountability to make art for your portfolio application - try my art portfolio coaching so you can create an application that stands out and gets accepted without the stress and overwhelm!

Related Articles:

6 Tips for Hitting Your Art Goals

How to Add Freshness to a Stale Art Practice

How to Stay Motivated as an Artist 

Sleeping Tips for Artists

If you found these artist tips make sure to join my community in the box below! I send tips, exclusive painting tutorials and special bonuses to my members every two weeks! 

What it’s Like to Be Vermont Studio Center Alumni

Being a Vermont Studio Center Alumni is a part of joining an online community. I attended the Vermont Studio Center art residency in Johnson, Vermont in November, 2017. I stayed at the artist residency for two weeks. I follow them on instagram and I am a part of a private Facebook group similar to the Women’s Studio Workshop residency -which you can read about here! Vermont Studio Center Alumni have been recognized for tons of achievements as the Vermont Studio Center is a top residency known globally.

Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont

Although I am grateful for the experience at Vermont Studio Center and to be a Vermont Studio Center Alumni I don’t think I would go back to this artist residency. As an artist, I like to travel to new places to see how place impacts my work. Vermont Studio Center is a more pricey artist residency as the fee does include your food. Since I am a paper maker the Vermont Studio Center is less appealing as they do not have a paper making studio.

For anyone who has not been or is needing a quiet space to work I would recommend this residency as I was very productive and got a lot done. Everyone is friendly and there are options to sing karaoke or enjoy a campfire while you are there too! 

While I was there, I worked on some projects for my thesis exhibition that happened in February, 2018 at Concordia University. I had a large studio with a window and a couple of tables. I worked on pieces that later became projects in my exhibition including:

• Patched

• Piled Up

• What is and What Was

• Precariously Perched

What I Worked on at Vermont Studio Center

Piled Up installation tested out at the Vermont Studio Center

While being at the Vermont Studio Center residency I worked on altering books for my project What is and What Was. I used the leftover cut-outs to make Piled Up. I tested out the installation for Piled Up on a shelf that was in my studio. I later built a shelf for my exhibition display in my thesis show at Concordia University. 

With my series Patched that is still an ongoing series I arranged photographs of Patched into patched quilt formations. After the residency, I sewed them on my sewing machine. I worked with plaster casts of leaves during my Vermont Studio Center residency. I took advantage of the beautiful scenery in Vermont (it is very easy to be inspired) and I took more photos for my series Patched. 

I enjoyed having a lot of wall space so that I could test out Precariously Perched. In this piece I balance twisted thin strands of maps on straight pins and nails. You can see more of Precariously Perched here! 

Accommodations at Vermont Studio Center

I stayed in a room by myself and had a shared bathroom. There was a few other people living in the house I was staying at. I had a separate key to my bedroom so I felt very secure while living there. At the residency all of your meals are provided in the dining hall. The food is really good and there are a lot of options. All of the food is made by the chef. Having your meals provided is nice during an artist residency because then you don’t lose time cooking, getting groceries or doing dishes and you can have more time devoted to making art. 

Again, I don’t think I would go back to this artist residency although I am grateful for the experience at Vermont Studio Center and to be a Vermont Studio Center Alumni. Experiencing new places to make art is important for me and having access to materials like a paper making studio is also extremely important.

Winter view out my studio window at the Vermont Studio Center

With that being said Vermont Studio Center is a great relaxing and quiet place to work. The beauty of Vermont is incredible and I had such a productive two weeks! 

Patched installation I worked at while at the Vermont Studio Center

Patched installation for my thesis exhibition at Concordia University inspired by being at the Vermont Studio Center

How to Become a Vermont Studio Center Alumni

Here is more information about how to apply to Vermont Studio Center so you can become a Vermont Studio Center Alumni - one day too! 

https://vermontstudiocenter.org 

https://vermontstudiocenter.org/residenciesinfo 

Precariously Perched installation tested out at the Vermont Studio Center

Related Articles 

Women’s Studio Workshop -artist residency

If you are mom you can check out this motherhood residency: http://www.artistresidencyinmotherhood.com/how-it-started 

Here is another great website to help you find the right artist residency for you! https://resartis.org/covid-19-updates/

Stay connected with me by following along on social media -click on one of the icons below!

Precariously Perched installation part of my thesis exhibition at Concordia University inspired by my work at Vermont Studio Center

How I Increased my Art Views on Pinterest by 200% (5 Tips)

How I increased my art views on Pinterest by 200% - if you are curious you will want to read on! I quadrupled my Pinterest views doing a few quick changes – here are my tips below! They are all very simple changes to make! By doing these easy changes I increased my art views on Pinterest by 200%! Learn from artist Jackie Partridge and check out my Pinterest here!

This content has been updated for Pinterest for 2023/2024.

First of all it is important to think of Pinterest as a search engine and not social media – people go on Pinterest to get inspired and look for particular things. People see pins in their feed based on key words they search for.

If you want to improve your Pinterest and that is one of your goals this year - click here for tips on achieving your goals as an artist here!

Tip 1 – Switch to a Business Account

If you have a business -switch to a business account to track how your pins are performing! Check out your analytics weekly to see which pins are popular and what needs improving. Try changing graphics, adding photos or plain text, choose different colours and fonts or ones that reflect your brand. You can even use pin templates online. You will also begin to notice what keywords are popular and when is a good time to post to Pinterest so more people see your pins!

Tip 2 – Use Key Words 

You need to use key words everywhere in titles, descriptions, file name of the photo and board descriptions. The more key words the more chances of people finding your pin. Do your research to plan what key words people might be searching for and that best describe your pin. Brainstorm and research your key words by making sure they describe what the pin and linked website are about.

Tip 3- Create High Quality Content

The first 5 pins you pin should be your own content and you should try to pin every day to attract more viewers and followers. You can pin from your website, blog, instagram and you can repurpose old content that was popular in the past. You can create new content using canva.com or choosing beautiful high quality images. Content that does well on Pinterest is DIYs, how to articles and tips and tricks. You can use your own photos or stock photography.

Tip 4- Pin to Reflect Your Target Audience 

If you are an artist you should definitely have a board dedicated to your own artwork. You should also be thinking of what your ideal customer might be interested in and create boards to reflect that. For example, does your ideal client have kids? Do they like home decor or cooking? You need to delete or hide pins that are irrelevant and delete pins where the link is broken. Keep your personal pins private as secret boards.

Tip 5- Play with New Features on Pinterest

Just like Instagram Pinterest favours new features in their search algorithm. You can try story pins, collection pins, video pins. You will probably see better results by playing around with them. It is also important to share FRESH content (new links and new graphics). I love using Canva to create my pin graphics. Pinterest also loves idea pins and video pins so make sure to use those too!

Related Articles to Help Your art business

6 Tips for hitting your art goals this year

Why I became an artist

10 Lessons I learned in art school

Pinterest is the number one way I drive traffic to my website! You can see my Pinterest profile here! to get more ideas! Follow me on Pinterest to see more helpful resources.