July 6, 2009

The ACE Newsletter

Guest Working Artist - Kathy Iverson

In my travels to art shows and individual specialty shows such as dog or horse shows, I run across vendors whose little niche businesses I admire. Some are artists who, like Steve and I, create their own art product. Many of these artists I meet have overcome obstacles of all kinds to get to where they are today. Some have been at their craft for decades and others for a much shorter period of time. But they all have one thing in common and that is perseverance and the willingness to experiment and take risks.

So what does else does it take to create art that expands into an art product that allows you to make a very comfortable living? Is it talent? Good luck? A stable of artists working for you?

Our ACE guest artist is Kathy Iverson from Durham, NC.

Kathy's story is unique. With no art training and with nothing but a concept born of necessity, Kathy developed her signature style, a Scribble Horse, and applied it to a line of sportswear. Scribble Horse Designs came about a little more than 5 years ago after Kathy's twin and artist sister, Summer Frost, who runs her own profitable sportswear business outside of Lexington, KY, was unable to develop an idea for Kathy due to time restraints. Summer is also owner and promoter of Kentucky International Equine Expo, a company that sets up and manages horse related exposition events.

Undaunted, Kathy took a concept that she had toyed with for years but had never expanded upon because "she wasn't an artist." She began to formulate that idea into a sketch and her "scribble horse" theme was born!

Kathy's sister, Summer, is the trained artist. Growing up in a family of 10, the girls enjoyed a love of horses. Required to supply their own feed and supplies, the girls took on odd jobs to pay for those supplies. While attending a horse show, Summer saw a vendor selling T-shirts with horse designs on them and thought "I can do better than that!" And she did! She learned to silk screen and developed her own style. After graduate school came corporate jobs that eventually led to a career change. About that time, Kathy found herself in Alabama where her husband's job had relocated the family. Kathy felt she was stagnating in suburbia, with three small children and no outlet for her creative and bored mind. Her twin came to the rescue with her fortuitous career change. Moving to Alabama, she taught Kathy how to silkscreen, and the rest, as they say, is history.

"I love what I do," said Kathy. "We started small. I remember going to those first shows with exactly 30 T-shirts because that was all we could afford. We sold them from the back of a Datsun and sold out at that first show. So we bought more T-shirt, silk screened them and built upon that."

Kathy still has the first screen press they used. When I walked into the room in her garage that is her studio, shirts and paint cans were stacked to the ceiling. "It works fine for black and white." she says. "Now I can order shirts with the artwork printed on them. I also use a local company to embroider my designs on the shirts."

She laid a shirt on the press, lowered the screen and quickly pulled the squeegee across the screen where she had laid her design. And in 60 seconds, a shirt was ready!

Kathy still helps her sister out at shows but heads out to her shows as well. She has a following among the horse world with her reasonably priced sportswear and has trademarked her signature style. Her travels take her all over the U.S. She enjoys painting on large canvases and sells them as well at the shows she attends.

During our visit, Kathy was surrounded by her little chihuahuas who accompany her as she goes about her daily tasks. In an Art world where the traveling can be tough but the financial returns rewarding, just walking to your studio from your house to begin the art jobs at hand has its own kind of reward!

More of Kathy Iverson's work can be found on her website, www.ScribbleHorseDesigns.com.

Her sister, Summer Frost's work, can be found at links on her expo website at www.kentuckyinternationalequineexpo.com.