This is Aquil Rowe, owner/creative force of Ubiquitous Ink/Repercussion Agendaz interviewing Mr. Ernest Camel in his apartment to pick his brain on a few things in the small business art world with a quick seven hitter quitter question session, if you will:

 

AR: 1. How has your upbringing in Detroit mold your skill as an artist?

EC: Well, I’m from New Orleans and I came to Detroit two years ago and since moving here I kind of fell in love with the city. I’m an army kid, my parents are from New Orleans and we always went back so that’s considered home. Since being here I’ve seen a lot of similarities between how things happened after Hurricane Katrina and how things are going on in the city now – I guess you can call it a reconstruction period for the city yet there’s still this love in city of Detroit I feel and I like there’s a big community for the arts here and a lot of people being supportive of each other because you could feel the city becoming greater than what may have been expected.

AR: 2. Whom do you seek advice when you feel that you’re inspirationally stuck?

EC: My process is kind of weird……I have so much stuff going on, I mean I’ll be actually painting and looking at it every day wondering “How am I gonna tackle it?”, but for times that I don’t know what to paint I guess is the question or what place I want to come from I listen to music, and movies, in fact the other day I watched The Jimi Hendrix documentary played by Andre 3000 (of Outkast) and another movie for the next series of work named “Eye Way Way” focuses on a Chinese artist/activist who structures his work to provide the Chinese government and he’s been beaten, arrested and all kinds of stuff because of it. Sometimes after work and time between the gallery and other things there’s times where I don’t feel like painting so reaching out to a friend or art buddy for words of wisdom in the struggle.

AR: 3. Once you make your profits, how do you expand your brand?

EC: Well, if you make a profit as an artist, after you pay your bills and other expenses you always want to re-invest into yourself, which for a long time I didn’t do because I wasn’t painting like I should have. However if one is serious about it I would say purchase some paint, purchase even better paint brushes and in general upgrade everything you already have to produce work because that’s what your job is – and the quality of paint matters, for example it determines whether the artists blending will be super smooth or choppy. By studying your craft and then re-investing in yourself you should soon see a profit.

AR: Say you don’t have the money for a particular month, but you’re still feeling the urge to want to get some things off your chest, would you go to a re-sale store for a cheaper brand, do the project and then re-do it later on a better quality down the road?

EC: Basically how I pinch pennies, like if I don’t have it I usually use primary colors there you can mix them out with the cheap ones and get better results with different with different shades then rely on cheap brushes until the next batch. What people don’t realize is the great amount of time and quality tools invested in the art to demand a higher price and the buyer may feel different so they may try to lowball you. For those who are struggling like most of us are, sometimes we’ll cave in and say “If I can get $200-300 for this it’ll take care of a bill”, but at the same time if you’re trying to be serious you don’t want to give your art away, you know?

AR: What about local pow-wow events like the Arts, Beats and Eats – Do you get into those?

EC: I’ve been working my way into that – I do jewelry also last year I did the “Dalley In The Alley”, The Hazel Park Festival and was featured as a top ten artist in the Bombay and Sapphire Artist Services, The Day Of The Dead for the Mexican Community at the DIA and most recently the ‘Art Hard 2’ on 314 E. Baltimore. Mark Anthony and Phil Simpson extended me the opportunity to do some live painting that night on a female canvas and then another future project that me and my buddy James Johnson aka Johnny Goldfingers was discussing was doing a paper show concept with chemical drawings on large paper with him doing watercolor on the same paper because were visual artists – I feel I don’t have one style. I consider myself to have a subject matter I deal with – Women/ancient religion concepts and tie the two together.

AR: 4. When your market dries up how do you create other streams of income?

EC: So….basically what I’ve been trying to do since day one was doing art shows. At a certain point you realize “Wow, I’m just a budding artist in a new city” and customers may not want to support your art prices or they just don’t sell so I started making jewelry with a co-worker of mines and he was like “Hey, look at what I did with your painting.” I have a sticker from one of my solo shows and it contained one of my paintings on it and he took a photo of it, put it on a computer etched in a certain design and I was like “Whaaaat” so I was like “What can I do with this?” because I have an undergrad degree in graphic design so I’m able to do my promotional work and online media, but I was able to do necklaces and earrings. I made a little bit of income from it last year by working at fairs and not only that, we’re still trying to open the new gallery by bringing people into shows and whatever profits goes right back into whatever we had to invest to get it started – basically just thinking of different ways to use the talents we have to do different things that you might not think you would be doing. (The new gallery is called Junction Hall located on 5629 Michigan Avenue at the corner of Michigan/Junction. It’s an exquisite lounge for good convo, good gallery space and a work station basement area for various product projects.)

AR: 5. As an artist/businessman, what’s the biggest business mistake you’ve made so far this year and what did you learn from the mishap?

EC: At the moment I don’t think I’ve made any yet – We’re still in the process of completing several projects that’s in the ground work phase. It’ll be a process perfecting type of situation – I would say one of the decisions I’ve made – Not that I consider it bad because they lead to other opportunities if you recognize – but I feel like I jumped into the jewelry making process last year and things ended up working well, but I didn’t necessarily do as much research about what I was getting into as I should have so I ended up being reliant instead of being in a position of power to produce the product fully. Whenever you have to rely on someone else to sell a product, it can be not a bad situation, however it may not be sustainable because if it dissipates then you have to start over again and figure out how to get back there. In fact I was blessed to meet Bill Foster who’s been helping me figure out that process and provide me with an opportunity to create it and in places to do it from a hands on perspective.

AR: 6. Any charitable causes do you donate towards for certain causes?

EC: I do like to give back; I used to be a big activist in the occupy movement in Mississippi for awhile, but recently I went to Cody High School and a friend of mine through the City Year program taught there at the time and was part of a panel discussion on our careers, what we are doing currently and fielding any other random questions for us. There were three or four students that were interested in what I did as far as the jewelry went so I told them I would donate some jewelry to those students and I did that a couple of months ago. I have opinions on a lot of different things that I’m passionate about, but kids in general are so precious we [as a city] can try to work towards making useful human beings, adults and keepers of our society or leaving them to be whatever they become and that may not be productive for anyone one of us involved.

AR: 7. Where do you see your business headed in the next three years?

EC: Hopefully I’ll be established with the art gallery having our ducks in a row and turning over a profit while putting money into each of the members’ pocket. As far as the jewelry goes, I just hope to be able to make consistent income. One of the things I’m also looking into is trying to get the jewelry in boutiques, shops, etc and at one point I was trying to get in Whole Foods stores within the whole body department so hopefully it’ll be selling in multiple locations making money.

As far as the art goes maybe I’ll have more recognition as a professional artist and garnering more income I create and from future commissioned work. The ultimate goal is to make it to the Art Bazzle or to have a major showing somewhere to be taken seriously as a professional artist.

Thank you for your time Ernest. Much continued success. This is Aquil Rowe, signing out.