Age: 33
Home: Minneapolis
Job: Editor-in-chief for l'etoile magazine, an online arts, culture and fashion blog (www. letoilemagazine.com); arts editor for Secrets of the City, a local arts and culture online publication (www.secretsofthecity.com); event producer; freelance publicist.
Salary: A lot of my work is volunteer. [l'etoile] is volunteer. The richness of the experience and being able to help the community is a lot more rewarding [than money].
Background: I used to have a job in accounting. [And I was] an artist on my own, too. I started out as a photographer.
Art publicity is completely different from accounting. How did you get involved in each field? I sort of just fell into this weird accounting job. And while I was working there, I started an art studio in northeast [Minneapolis]. One year, we brought in a bunch of other artists to show and I just got bitten by this bug, like "I want to produce an art show, I want to have shows here." And then [the studio] spawned into an art gallery that showed a lot of up-and-coming local people that were a little bit more cutting-edge. After doing that for a couple of years, and losing a lot of money, I closed that down. But in the meantime, I had made all of these really amazing connections with people. And having to do all of my own public relations work for the art gallery, I kind of got bitten by that bug, too. So I started doing a lot of publicity.
What was it like to quit your accounting job and pursue your art publicity career? It was kind of a crossover [process]. While I was working [as an accountant], I started my art studio and then I started the gallery and then over a year and a half span [the art] stuff just started encroaching on my life so much that I eventually just said I can't do this anymore. I was working on my own stuff during my work hours more than I was doing my actual work.
Did you always know you wanted to do something in the art field? My mom was a fashion designer and a costume designer. I always kind of had that artistic streak to me. And I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do and I still don't know. I could end up being an event producer or a publicist or a photographer or a magazine editor. I do all of these different things and I love all of them.
Do you think your career is specific to Minneapolis? I think Minneapolis is kind of unique. There might be a few other cities where that might be possible, but when you look at a bigger city like Chicago or New York, those places are huge and they have amazing communities there. ... Here it's all very grass-roots, so it's kind of easy to get into a community. Everybody is so interconnected here; it's really cool. But in a bigger city, not so much. I think Minneapolis is a collaborative community as opposed to a competitive community. And I think it's the perfect size. It's not too big. It's not too small. It's got all the resources you could imagine.
SARAH GORVIN