Volume 31 • Issue 09 • September 2006

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Creative ventures
How local artists make a business of selling their craft

by Megan Lum

The majority of beachgoers stroll the sandy shores for pleasure and relaxation. Some bring picnic lunches, others bring Frisbees or volleyballs, and still others bring blankets on which to sunbathe. It’s about enjoying the sunshine and the saltwater breeze. But for Richard Nevels, self-proclaimed professional beachcomber, trips to the beach are about business.
Nevels, an energetic 56-year-old, says he has always had a driftwood collection, but it wasn’t until 1982 that he began to turn his beach-pickings into art.
Nevels is one of many regional artists whose business is selling his craft. Artists may have day jobs to help support themselves, but their artwork remains their true passion, no matter how much – or how little – they gain financially.

Finding inspiration
Nana Thebus, a ceramic and mixed media artist who lives in Bellingham and works out of a garage-turned-studio, received an art education degree from Western Washington University in 1995. But instead of teaching, she jumped into the world of craft and began her studio ceramics business while helping her husband Robert start a home brewing and winemaking supply store in Bellingham.
Initially Thebus’ art was a secondary job while she worked in an art gallery and helped her husband with his business, but it soon became a full-time job for her.
Now she is co-owner of Honey Moon, a small winery in Bellingham, with her husband, while she continues to create and sell her art.
“[Robert and I] are both natural entrepreneurs,” Thebus says. “Though it’s hard not having security through a job, we love the flexibility and sense of mission you have with your own venture.”
Darlene Klister of Anacortes commutes to Bellingham for her day job as a litigation paralegal. Outside of work, she is a painter and jewelry maker for her art business FireLight Designs. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a double major in art history and philosophy.
Much of Klister’s jewelry is created with lampwork beads – which her boyfriend makes – and pearls or other natural elements.
She began painting at age nine when her mother gave her an oil painting set; Klister has been an artist ever since.
“I am an artist because I have no other choice,” Klister says. “I am driven to be creative. It is my passion, it is part of my life.”
When Nevels moved from Montana to San Juan Island in 1980, he started collecting driftwood from the beach, but didn’t know what to do with it until he met a man named Michael Moss selling wooden boxes in an art gallery in Friday Harbor. Moss, seeing Nevels’ interest, volunteered to teach him how to make boxes out of his driftwood.
Nevels has a background in marketing, which began in his early 20s when he handled major accounts for the Illinois Bell Telephone Company in Chicago. Combining his business knowledge with his newfound knowledge of box making, he began selling False Bay Boxes at arts and craft shows as well as galleries.
Nevels and his wife Kathy moved to Bellingham in 1987. He brought his driftwood collection with him and continued to make boxes, but on a much smaller scale.
In 2001 he wanted to re-enter the art business by marketing his driftwood boxes and nautical-themed prints to people who are interested in nautical things – boat show attendees.
Nevels says he found a lack of, and a demand for, arts and crafts at boat shows. He saw an enormous amount of women at the shows, but there was nothing targeted specifically at the female boater or buyer, he says.
“Women would come up into my booth and go, ‘I’m so glad you’re here! Finally, something for me to look at besides anchors,’” Nevels says.
By 2003 Nevels had started the Boat Show Gallery, a nautical art gallery featured at major boat shows. Since his first boat show in 2003 at Shilshole Bay, the number of artists participating in his gallery has grown from 24 to 135, and he’s still recruiting.
“This truly is a story of somebody taking lemons – that is, driftwood – and turning those lemons into lemonade,” Nevels says.

The art of combining business with pleasure
It can be challenging for an artist to become comfortable with the selling aspect of his or her art business. Thebus says she had to learn to be more outgoing, but she appreciates business in addition to creation.
“Just when I’m burning out in the studio, I have to come in and do invoicing or desktop publishing to redo my catalogue,” she says. “It keeps things interesting and changing.”
One drawback to being an artist/businessperson, however, is Thebus has less time for personal art.
“I feel like I have no time to pursue art that is just for myself,” Thebus says. “When I’m in the studio, I’m filling orders, not experimenting and exploring as much.”
Nevels, with his background in business and marketing, says he has no problem being both an artist and a businessperson. The Boat Show Gallery is successful because he was sensitive to the market and evolved with it, he says.
“I make a business out of art by targeting niche markets that are not overcrowded,” Nevels says. “I’ve created two products – False Bay Boxes and the Boat Show Gallery – both of which have virtually no competition, and both of which speak to a very specific niche market.”
He wants to help artists succeed as small businesses, and the best way to accomplish that is by having his own gallery, he says. He sees the 135 artists who participate in his gallery as 135 small businesses, he says,
“The Boat Show Gallery is not only my way of making money and staying in the art world, but this takes care of the altruistic side of my personality,” Nevels says. “I like to see artists make it. The Boat Show Gallery is the vehicle by which I’m able to help a lot of artists succeed in their business, as well as be successful myself.”
For an artist to be successful, he or she must be able to reproduce his or her artwork to meet demands, Nevels says, by making prints or making many products rather than actually reproducing.
“I’m a box maker, and I make things one at a time – I can’t reproduce myself,” Nevels says. “So, the gallery becomes the way I reproduce myself. Rather than being just one artist, I am now literally 135 artists. How do I reproduce myself? By selling others’ work.”
Klister says she is in a detail-oriented profession that has helped her face the business aspects of FireLight Designs by giving her legal and math skills, analytical abilities, organizational and interpersonal skills.
“It is a balance of the practical business side with the creativity of the art form side,” Klister says. “Both sides – business and creative – need equal attention to make a successful venture.”
She has been a paralegal for more than 20 years and an artist for longer, so both have become second nature, she says.
“It is hard sometimes to have the energy for a full-time job and then have the creative energy to develop a painting or jewelry, but I try to just push through,” Klister says. “My first love and passion is to be creative, and I have promised myself I will always do that.”

The artists’ market
A new artist’s options for selling his or her work are usually initially limited to arts and crafts shows or Web sites.
Shows are energy-intensive and time-consuming, Nevels says. But the upside of selling at a show is the artist makes full retail price, minus the amount owed to the show’s producers.
Selling through galleries or shops is less stressful, but generally the artist must be established and in-demand before a gallery will represent his or her work. An artist who sells through galleries and shops can basically stay home and create art, ship it to a gallery or shop and a month later a 30-days-net check arrives for the artist, Nevels says.
However, the percentage taken by the store or gallery can be high, Klister says, because the store allows space for the artist’s product and markets it for him or her.
A yet-unestablished artist can also sell on consignment, which means he or she gets paid only when the artwork sells.
“It ties up the product so the artist does not have an immediate income or sale,” Klister says. “But on the flipside, for one-of-a-kind pieces of art, it affords the artist the opportunity to wait for the ‘right’ person to come along who can’t live without that piece.”
Nevels deals almost exclusively in wholesale, and he does some consignment for friends’ stores. He says he’s not dependent on False Bay Boxes as a major source of income.
“It’s kind of gravy at this point,” Nevels says. “We get a little check from a gallery for consignment and I’ll take the family out for dinner. I’m not looking to pay the mortgage with the boxes.”
Because Klister has a day job, she says she doesn’t need to make a living from her art, though it is her passion. She says the hardest thing for her is marketing her product, but she does that at her day job to some extent by wearing a piece of her own jewelry or displaying a framed piece of her own art in her office.
“There should be a consciousness that every time you, as an artist, are out and about, your creativity, art or end product must be promoted, marketed and made available to people,” Klister says.
Everything an artist hands out to people should have the artist’s contact information on it, says Klister, who markets her creations through galleries, stores, museums, arts and crafts shows, word of mouth and her Web site.
“Just people wearing my jewelry is an advertisement,” Klister says. “Every time I send someone a note card, it is one of my own cards. It is all part of the artist constantly being aware and seizing the opportunity to market.”
Thebus sells her artwork primarily to wholesale galleries and craft shops nationwide, and they market her art to the public. Some of her work is also available online.
“When I was deciding what pathway to take with making art,” Thebus says, “I consciously decided to pursue making smaller, less expensive items that had more of a clear marketplace – as opposed to higher end, one-of-a-kind work that was harder to sell without a name or reputation.”
Thebus attends a few wholesale shows every year, where galleries connect with her and place large orders, which she finds more efficient than doing many shows for small sales, she says.
“I’ve streamlined my wholesale offerings to a set number of items that I know I can make in quantity in a fairly efficient production,” Thebus says. “The drawback is I have to sell each item at a lower price than I would get from a retail sale.”
Thebus attends retails shows once in a while because she misses having direct contact with individual buyers, she says.
“You get a sense of what people really like or respond to,” Thebus says. “Also, people can be very enthusiastic and encouraging when they like your work, and it’s always nice to get an ego boost!”
Klister, who has an online gallery, says an artist’s Web site should be dynamic and change as his or her work changes.
“It’s helpful to monitor your Web site traffic to find out when high periods of traffic occur, which pages of your site people view the most,” Klister says. “It helps to develop your marketing to do that research.”
Nevels doesn’t sell his boxes online or in catalogs – only at shows or galleries, in person.
“In a high-tech world, people are looking for things that are high-touch, and False Bay Boxes are very high-touch, which means no two are alike,” Nevels says. “You need to see them, to touch them, to smell them. You need to have the tactile connection to the piece before it’s going to sell.”

Dedicated to art
In Nevels’ workshop, three windows are open to the warm, summer air and a light breeze blows into the room; the smell of red cedar is pervasive. Looking out the west-facing windows, purple flowers grow up to the windowsill while trees and tall grass shiver in the wind in the field beyond.
A bottle of Elmer’s Wood Glue and an amber-colored ashtray sit atop one of his workbenches, and another bench is surrounded by tools, rubber bands and clamps. A friendly, purring tabby cat named Thule is curled up on the old couch next to the workbenches. Across from the couch is a wall lined with shelves, and the shelves are full of a couple dozen False Bay Boxes in progress.
“My production is very, very limited,” Nevels says. “But it still does remain my first love, as far as art goes – the creation of the boxes. Art has provided me with an exceptional lifestyle, amazing amounts of freedom and a means of expressing myself creatively. What else could a guy ask for?”


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The False Bay Boxes created by “professional beachcomber” Richard Nevels has grown into a business venture as he markets his boxes and other artists’ creations through his Boat Show Gallery.







Darlene Klister of Anacortes owns Firelight Designs. Klister says her day job as a paralegal helps her with the detail-oriented aspects of running her art business.






Bellingham ceramics artist Nana Thebus says she appreciates the balance between working in her studio and keepnig track of her business.