How to Start an Artist Salon

Guest blogger Judith HeartSong shares how an art community is built – and her idea to help you start your own.

Salon – an Artful Conversation is a monthly meeting of artists, writers, and arts professionals who come together to bond, network, and get out of their heads for a little while. It is a conversation, a support group, sometimes a counseling session, always a networking extravaganza, an experimental lab for new ideas, and a place to learn and grow by leaps and bounds as an artist and professional.

I founded salon more than three years ago in my artist studio in the town of Glen Echo, Maryland. For several years before that I had considered the landscape of the DC art world, and its many small but separate artist communities….. much in need of some something to bring them together.

Community-building was needed and with my history as the membership chair for the Central Florida chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art, organizer of community art shows and events, and PR expertise built over a long and successful art career – I knew that community-building was something I had a good working knowledge of and expertise to share.

I started doing research of artist discussion groups around the country online, took lots of notes and talked to lots of people. Some common threads started to emerge in what people were doing and what was working, and I got excited about the prospects of putting a group like this together. I then brainstormed with a lot of friends and supporters to hash out some specifics before going any farther with this idea, and that work took months.

When it was time to take the idea public, I created a survey and asked artists friends what they were interested in – what would bring them out of their studios and homes on a weeknight to attend a discussion group. It turned out these painters, photographers, jewelers, pastel artists, ceramicists, sculptors, fiber artists, mixed media artists, poets, writers, performance artists, designers, and more, all wanted COMMUNITY!!

So, Salon – an artful conversation is . . . a conversation. It is always free to the public. It’s held on weeknights, or during the work day in a studio center; it can be brunch on a Saturday; it can be a free-flowing talk about what is going on in the studio; an informal critique group; an organized discussion with a presenter. It can be people of like profession, or a wide-ranging group of people with different practices and backgrounds.

With this long running proven business model, I decided it was time to share the formula for creating your own salon discussion group where you live. I created the Salon Starter Kit for artists all around the country who also have a dream of creating bonds and building community where they live. This 27-page kit gives you every bit of information that you need to start your own successful group with your artist colleagues in your own community.

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