How Artillect Works

Artillect is a virtual arts incubation program for visual artists who want to make a sustainable living as an artist making the art they want to make.

Artillect focuses on a 20-week cohort program, but ongoing opportunities to engage with Artillect, experts, and artists from across North America continue after the 20-week cohort program finishes.

Artillect is intended for visual artists who want to make a sustainable living with their art. Often our best clients have an academic training in the arts, but it is not a requirement for the program. Artillect works best with artists that have something they want to say with their art. Fine Artists, Photographers, Graphic Designers, and artists interested in public arts programs are encouraged to sign up!

Artillect focuses on helping artists understand who their best customers are and how to develop the relationships necessary for customers to repeatedly buy art from artists. Our clients will graduate from the program with a better understanding of their own art, feel empowered to make the art they want to make without sacrificing artistic integrity for sales, and feel prepared to run their own arts business. Our goal for every artist we work with is that they are able to sustain themselves in a meaningful way with their art.

All of our business counselors are academically trained artists who continue to make their own art and excel at their personal artistic ambitions. Frankly, if you can make a living with your art in Wyoming, you can do it anywhere there are people, too!

Our founder, Fred Schmechel, is an artist who worked to create more than 100 innovative businesses in the extremely rural landscape of Wyoming. He strongly believes in the connections between the arts and cultural sector and the rise of entrepreneurship in rural communities. The pinnacle of Fred’s artistic career came when he hung a picture of a toaster in the National Wildlife Museum. It was a show on landscape.

While we tend to pair our clients with counselors who work in a similar media, the relationship matters more than that superficial aspect of matching. We ask some specific questions during our onboarding process that helps us best pair up personality types as well.

If you're feeling stuck with your art career, artist business counseling can be 100% worth it!

Just make sure you hire a good artist business counselor — make sure you know if you might be learning from people who speak business or learning from people who speak art. Be wary of programs that are just dressed up opportunities to sell you a website, a one-size-fits-all template, or are seemingly built around a “guru” or other cult of personality.

Also, most good artist business counselors (Artillect included) offer money-back guarantees. This can enable you to try this with minimal risk. Get in touch to learn more.

Artillect focuses only on individual visual artists at this time. We are exploring programming for artistic teams and musicians, but we won’t deploy those until we understand the program fully.

We'd love to have you!

This is an informal and friendly conversation that assesses where you are in your artistic career and helps us to understand what it is you have to say with your art. We have some specific questions that we will ask of you as a starting point, but these often go off on unexpected and fascinating tangents.

You will meet with your artistic business counselor approximately 10 times over the twenty-week period for 45-50 minutes each meeting. The two of you will schedule these meetings at a time that works for the both of you.

This varies from artist to artist, but there is a focus on understanding your artist statement, your portfolio, and a heavy focus on understanding who your best customer is and how to best reach them.

You will have your dedicated Artist Business Counselor who you will meet regularly with and discuss your art and progress. Yes, we have a framework that we work from, but everyone goes through it at their own pace and differing focus.

While we occasionally visit some of the locations our artists are in for special one-off meetings, all of our one-on-one counseling sessions and cohort sessions are virtual in nature.

Unless you’re here in Laradise, Wyoming with us of course!

Cohort meetings are your Artillect team, but are organized under our partner organization Artifex, a non-profit organization (currently seeking 501c3 status). Each cohort meeting starts with a quick overview and a Q&A session with an expert where you can ask anything and everything! Professional artists often need guidance from an accountant or lawyer, or they want to hear from another successful artist that is living the life they want to live with the art that they want to make. 

Our cohort programs always have a new angle and are followed up with guided peer cohort meetings with your artist business counselor. For graduates of Artillect we offer continuing support and a nationwide networking group and have a suggested $10 donation to Artifex per session you attend.

Our cohort meetings occur regularly on the first and third Wednesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. (Mountain Time Zone) and run approximately 90 minutes.

A portion of all Artillect sales goes to Artifex, our partner 501(c)3-pending organization that supports arts & cultural organizations who are doing amazing engagement with their communities in the northern Rocky Mountain Plains states (NE, ND, MT, SD, & WY). Artists build communities, and several arts and cultural organizations in rural states need some financial assistance in their efforts to help build those communities; Artifex exists to provide that assistance.

Relationships matter. We have a handful of artist business counselors, and our first step is to ensure that we have the right match for you. If things still aren’t quite what you we’re hoping for, we’re happy to return your unused payment.

Neolithic handprints, left by those who roamed the earth thousands of years ago, whisper long-forgotten stories of human expression and creativity. They’re more than just leaving a mark behind, they reach out from our collective past to connect us to it. Hands connect us to our past, to our present, to each other, to our loved ones, and to our art. Need a hand with yours?