Dear Friends of Life Is Art,
I have a big, exciting announcement. We started Life Is Art back in January of 2009 (actually, the idea came about in October 2008). Our first show was March 2009, and since then we have produced over 60 events, big and small.
What may surprise many of you is that during that time, I have been employed mostly full-time at another job. Everything we have done with Life Is Art, Soul Of Miami and PhilanthroFest, I have had to do in my spare time, while working full-time to pay the bills. (For those of you curious what I did, please see www.henrystonemusic.com.)
As of November 1st, 2013, I no longer have that full-time job, and I am devoting myself fully to Life Is Art and my other projects.
Many people have said to me, “I thought you worked for Life Is Art (or Soul Of Miami or PhilanthroFest) full-time.†But no, everything I have done has been only in my spare time. Now, I will be doing it full time. I have some serious plans to build this organization and through it, the community. Let me briefly tell you about a few of them.
We are going to be continuing and expanding the Creative Connections seminar series we used to do. The first up on that is November 18th, Arts and the Affordable Care Act. This is an incredibly important issue for you, as self-employed artists and I cannot encourage you strongly enough to take advantage of it. The tickets are only $10, but if you cannot afford that, please contact us for a sponsorship, it is that important.
On Monday, December 2nd we are having our biggest party in years to celebrate the winner of our current t-shirt art contest and welcome in Art Basel. Live music, performance art, live painting, sponsored bar and more will make this quite the hullabaloo. The voting starts soon on all the submissions and you will be able to pre-purchase your shirt for only $10. Lots more info coming soon as we confirm the performers and sponsors. You do not want to miss this one!
Many of you remember the popular River of Art Showcase and Networker series. Every month we would feature a few of our great artists and host a really nice business networker. We are going to ramp that up. We have secured a number of promotional partners to bring in even more people. Look for that on a monthly basis starting in January.
For the bigger projects, look out! You know that PhilanthroFest was originally born out of Life Is Art, right? So, we are building on that success and creating new and exciting programs for our area. We are going to produce an art conference called Art/Work. This will be a full weekend talking about the business of art. We are finally going to make a proper music festival that promotes our local music scene. Many of these have been tried, mostly by non-locals, and failed. We are working on a large-scale art fair that combines both locals and international artists to showcase our real art scene to the world. These are just a few of our plans, we are always coming up with more.
This change is really going to allow us to do so much more. We will be able to work on proper funding through sponsors and grants, so we can do these bigger projects. We will be able to build our team. We will be able to focus on quality and do our events with better planning, organization and promotion. We are very much looking forward to all the good stuff to come. If you are interested in being a part of this, please let us know.
Thank you all again for your support. I hope to see you on the 18th!
Sincerely,
James Echols
Life Is Art, Inc.
