Building and maintaining a website as an artist can be daunting. It’s a lot of work, especially if you aren’t naturally inclined to digital space, digital creation, or marketing yourself. It might be so daunting that you wonder if you need an artist website in the first place. So, why do it in the first place?

There is a lot of art-related work that just can’t happen in your home. You might need more space, more equipment, or a more professional atmosphere. When you come across those kinds of work, you’ll need to find a studio space. You might just need an extra space for a few hours for a photoshoot or private dance class. You might need to rent space weekly to host meetings or rehearsals. Or, you might need to pay rent on a fully-fledged studio space where you can come and go as you please.

Selling your artwork can be an important revenue stream for you as an artist. It can help you support your work, spread the word to new audiences, and grow your practice overall. Within the context of capitalism, it can also be a way of legitimizing your work. If people will pay for work, it might be perceived as more valuable. If you’re an artist who wants to sell you work, one of the first challenges you’ll encounter is figuring out how much to charge for it. Trying to figure out pricing for each individual piece in an ad hoc way can be exhausting and stressful. We recommend building yourself a system or framework to help you price your work. If you’re selling work, you need to know why you’re pricing a piece the way you are. That way, you can move forward with more confidence and ease.

When you’re looking for support for your artwork, you’ll need to think broadly about the kind of support you need. You’ll probably be fundraising, which might entail crowdfunding, applying for grants, building a sustaining donor base, or even exploring corporate partnerships. Building the support structure for your creative practice is about more than just bringing in cold hard cash. It’s about building a community of people who are invested in your work, and who are able to help you bring your work from vision to reality.

The Fractured Atlas team reviews well over 500 grants from fiscally sponsored projects every year. Whenever one of our fiscally sponsored projects uses us as a fiscal sponsor in a grant application, we review that grant application. We have a full grant review request procedure that our team uses to ensure that our fiscally sponsored projects submit strong grant applications when seeking funding.

Crowdfunding campaigns are time-limited, goal-oriented fundraisers where you seek donations from your personal network. They are great ways to get financial support for your work using small, individual donations that can add up to something much bigger. Crowdfunding campaign donations tend to come from within your expanded network–your friends, family, and community–rather than strangers.

In this digital age where our cellphones are our computers and Twitter gives us the news of the day, it can feel very refreshing to hear a live person on the phone when you are trying to get in touch. At the same time, it can be a bit frustrating when you cannot get through nor receive an instant response.

Grants! Grants! Grants! Everyone loves the idea of receiving a nice juicy grant award to subsidize their project’s expenses. Who doesn’t?! Grants can give you access to way more funding than you might be able to raise through individual donations or a crowdfunding campaign. They can even sometimes give you access to institutional support or advice in addition to funding.

Artist residencies are designed to give you time away from your everyday life to concentrate fully on your creative practice. Artist residencies can actually vary widely. Residencies can be in cities or in the countryside, they can be medium-specific or open to all creators. They can be big or small, designed to facilitate solo work or collaboration. Residencies can take place over the course of weeks or months.

Artist residencies are an important part of the arts ecosystem. They give artists across disciplines the time and space away from their regular life to concentrate deeply on your work and to collaborate with one another. Especially for artists who are juggling other jobs, caregiving, and other responsibilities, it’s hard to find time for your work. You need the mental and physical space to create, and residencies are one of the tools that you can use to give yourself that space.