Artist Websites and Social Media

Artist Websites and Social Media
Virtual program
Thursday, April 25, 5–7pm

When was the last time you updated your website? Do you have a professional mailing list? How do you engage your following on Instagram? In this digital age of SEO's and Explore pages, emerging artists have more access to self-promotion than ever. But with great power comes greater responsibility. Join PR experts Nathan Lucrisia, Director of Business Development (Threespot) and Mackenzie Spriggs, Founder and CEO (The Contemporary Creatives) for a crash course on how to make the most of your website and social media. 

About Nathan Lucrisia

IG: @threespot
https://www.threespot.com/

Nathan Lucrisia is the Director of Business Development at Threespot. Nathan drives the agency’s growth by reaching out to new clients, engaging stakeholders, and building partnerships in the community. His background in marketing and business development, combined with a focus on technology, helps him define innovative solutions for clients in the social impact space.

Threespot is a Black woman-led digital strategy agency built to fight for socially conscious organizations. Founded in 1999, Threespot aims to interrupt the status quo and reshape how organizations think and talk about themselves. That’s translated into dynamic digital strategies, custom user experiences, and enlivened brands for the likes of the ACLU, Color of Change, and the National Park Service. As a Certified B Corp™, Threespot is committed to solving complex problems by bringing diverse perspectives and voices to the table and an empathetic ear to every conversation.

About Mackenzie Spriggs

IG: @thecontemporarycreatives
https://www.contemporarycreatives.com/

Mackenzie Spriggs is the Founder of The Contemporary Creatives®, a leading marketing agency in Washington, D.C. Mackenzie and her team specialize in crafting compelling campaigns that resonate with audiences and drive engagement through authentic storytelling and sustainable strategy. Clientele includes contemporary artists, art dealers, galleries, and leading art institutions. 

There was no marketing agency specifically tailored to directly serve independent artists until Contemporary Creatives came into existence in 2020. From a background entrenched in the gallery and museum world, Mackenzie observed the pressing need for independent artists to have access to digital marketing services and educational resources. Mackenzie spearheaded the launch of Contemporary Creatives and aimed to bridge the gap in the artistic space, empowering artists with the tools they need to achieve their professional goals with creativity and marketing precision. 

Pricing, Editioning, and Archiving Works on Paper

Pricing, Editioning, and Archiving Works on Paper
In-person
Thursday, April 4, 2024
5–7pm

Join us for a conversation on collecting works on paper, featuring artists Gail Shaw-Clemons and Cory Oberndorfer and collector Phillip Barlow. The panel will be moderated by artist and gallerist Mary Early.

How do you get started collecting original works of art? How do prints and other works on paper figure into a collection of original art? We are here to help! In partnership with the Washington Print Club, Hamiltonian Artists is hosting a panel discussion to address these very questions and more.

Image: Cory Oberndorfer, Ice Cream and Pops (after Bass), 2020, screen print on paper, edition of 30, 14 1/2 × 10 1/4 inches. Image courtesy of the Washington Print Club

How to Buy Art [Internal]

How to Buy Art
In-person
Monday, February 5, 2024
6–7pm ET

Kinetic members are invited to join Hamiltonian Artists for a panel discussion on how to buy art. Hamiltonian Artists’ executive director Lily Siegel will moderate the discussion of various approaches to the art market and building an art collection. Our panelists are as follows:

Brady Doty, Senior Director of Sales, David Zwirner, New York
Lauren Hilyard, Art Advisor and Appraiser, Hilyard Art Advisory, DC
Maria Sancho-Arroyo, Adjunct Faculty, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York

This first program is open to all levels of Kinetic members. Future programs of this kind are only open to the $250 level or above.

How to Give an Artist Talk [Internal]

How to Give an Artist Talk
Internal program
Thursday, January 25, 2024

Visiting artist Nekisha Durrett is offering an exclusive talk to share artist talk best practices. Each Hamiltonian Artists exhibition involves a corresponding public talk, and this program will be helpful for anyone looking to gain insight on artist talk preparation. There will be time set aside for a Q&A and an open forum conversation.

Nekisha Durrett (b. 1976 | Washington, DC) is a mixed-media artist who employs the visual language of mass media to bring forward histories that objects, places, and words embody, but are not often celebrated. Her expansive practice includes public art, social practice, installation, painting, sculpture and design. Through deep research and material investigation, she finds historical traces in the present that are filled with stories easily overlooked. Her work contemplates biases and the unreliability of memory, as information is filtered over time. Durrett illuminates individual and collective histories of Black life and imagination, addressing her own younger self and the stories she wished she had learned.

Taxes Workshop

Taxes for Artists
Virtual workshop
Saturday, October 23, 2021
11–12pm ET

Dunia Best Sinnreich will discuss the basic tax equation; self-employment tax; the estimated quarterly tax system; audit concerns for the working artist; and other tax issues relevant to artists, followed by a Q&A session.

About

Dunia Best Sinnreich is a musician, composer, and an enrolled agent (EA), designated by the US Treasury to represent taxpayers before the IRS. She became an EA when she saw a need for more tax representation in the arts community. An enrolled agent is authorized by the US Department of Treasury to assist taxpayers with tax compliance. Her clients are globetrotting, world-renowned independent artists of all stripes. As an artist and enrolled agent, Dunia is able to recognize and address many of the unique questions artists have about tax compliance. She can contact the IRS on her clients’ behalf and prepare taxes for people with multiple sources and types of income. She focuses on the needs of independent artists worldwide who are US taxpayers, leaving her clients free to focus on their art.

Akea Brionne Brown Artist Talk

Akea Brionne Brown Artist Talk

Thursday, March 5th
7 -pm
Hamiltonian: 1353 U Street, NW 
Open to all

JOIN US for an evening with Akea Brionne Brown, talking about her current solo show "A Brown Millennial" on Thursday, March 5, at 7pm.

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In her most autobiographical installation yet, Akea Brionne Brown builds A Brown Millennial with powerful photographic portraits infused with aesthetics of Americana, vast swaths of color rooted in history and culture, and interactive texts that challenge what is personal and political.

In her own words, this work is a reflection of Brown’s world and what it means to exist as a young, black, American woman in a time where everything feels uncertain. In response to both personal events and political systems, ìA Brown Millennial exists to invite viewers into the contemplations and worries that consume the artist. Breaking away from the flatness of the photographic plane, Brown creates an immersive environment using pop culture phenomena like Buzzfeed Privilege Quizzes and paper takeaways and invites the viewer to engage with what may be uncomfortable.

Images from the past are a window into the present. Brown uses found textiles and personal history to examine contemporary politics in her own eyes: ìI open up an honest dialogue about the topics that have been consuming my consciousness, specifically the contemporary state of African Americans and blacks throughout the continental United States. The installation is built with urgent simultaneousness that can only be described as the reality of any millennial grappling with these intersectional issues. Representation and beauty within an American context are taken on powerfully through her portraits transforming textiles and the body; the overwhelming effects of mass incarceration on the black community are explored vulnerably; the diminishing awareness of ancestral practices that were erased through slavery and the great migration are alluded to through cultural signifiers from her homes of New Orleans and New Mexico. The reality of privilege is unpacked elegantly, and real questions are asked of the viewer.

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Akea is a lens-based artist whose work investigates the implications of historical racial and social structures in relation to contemporary black life in America. With a particular focus on the ways in which history influences the contemporary cultural milieu of the American black middle class, she explores current political and social themes, as they relate to historical forms of oppression, discrimination, and segregation in American history.

Akea received her BFA (2018) from the Maryland Institute College of Art, in the dual degree program of Photography and Humanities. She is originally from New Orleans, Louisiana and is currently based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Click here to read more about Akea.

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