Tiffany LaTrice, Founder and Executive Director of TILA Studios, is championing Black Female Artists in Atlanta. Her visual arts incubator is creating a shift in action and investment in Black Women Artists.

TILA Studios empowers emerging Black Women Artists to create and showcase their art through a year-long membership and agency program. Every year 50 artists are coached and funneled into a database so that other organizations can tap into their talent. This archive was created to ensure that Black Women Artists can continue making direct connections and relationships with potential collectors.

Tiffany, an artist herself, has a superpower. She is a creative with sensational business acumen. She is able to not only see but seize upon market opportunities for artists. She created TILA Studios to be a facilitator and conduit for an underrepresented group of artists in her community. 

The Artwork Archive team is honored to share her story. Let us introduce Wonderman, Tiffany LaTrice!

 

Why did you create TILA?

Sometimes you don't come back to your “Why” often enough when you're a business owner because you're thinking about what's next and your growth.

2020 forced me to come back to my “Why.” 

I am the problem that I am trying to solve. I moved to Atlanta in 2014 and I wanted to exhibit. I was hitting every single barrier you could think of—no residences, no galleries. I was discouraged.

Amidst this frustration, I was also charting out other Black women's experiences. When I was talking to them, we all said "We don't talk to each other." There was a need to create a community space and show that there are Black women artists in Atlanta—we're here. I was the one to chart the solution. 

 

You’re an artist yourself. Can you tell us a bit about your work?

I focus on representational paintings—of Black female bodies at rest and leisure. It is a visual diary. I photograph myself when I think I am the most vulnerable and authentic. I bring them to life via oil, watercolor or acrylic. I have over 40 paintings and I just started recording them all in my Artwork Archive account. My 2022 goal is to start selling my artwork.

“That’s why I am so passionate about this work. It makes me empathize. I can talk and translate the  language of partnerships. It’s a beautiful synergy because of my business acumen.”

 

Where did you get your business acumen?

I started my first business in kindergarten. I painted my girlfriends’ fingernails for $1. I made my lunch and snack money on the basketball court. 

I’ve always been interested in stories of people that went the nontraditional route.
 

And how did you continue to nurture your intrinsic entrepreneurial skills, in school and later?

While at USC I leaned towards creative entrepreneurs. In Atlanta, I enrolled in every business class – finance, 101 marketing, etc. – and did fellowship. I was a part of the Center for Civic Innovation’s inaugural residency. Sarah Blakely at SPANX was one of the investors. 

I was in that program for four years and it was like an MBA. During that time I wrote my business plan for TILA. It helped me identify my market position and my value props. 

It was hard though. While in class, I was also working a full-time job in communications, while running TILA. From 2016 to 2019, I was straight grinding. Then the pandemic happened. I was tired. 

 

How are you sharing your business acumen with Black Female Artists in Atlanta?

For the past two years, we’ve been working on a six-month career business accelerator for artists—it’s a fast-track MBA for artists in entrepreneurship. Artists hone in on the skills to build their career roadmap. We ask:

• Which market do you want to play in? 

• How do you want to position yourself as an artist? 

• How much do you sell your art for?

Artists do that alone, but not as a cohort.

 

What would you say is one of the biggest barriers for artists?

Language is a big barrier for artists.

If you don't know if you're a contemporary artist or street artist, you need to learn the language of your practice. Having this language shows a buyer that you are prepared and you can best represent yourself and your artwork. 

When getting venture capital for TILA I had to learn that language to show that I was able to accept that capital—to grow and scale it. 

 

COVID almost put a stop to TILA. How did you survive the pandemic?

In 2020 I was stuck in Tanzania. Covid was running rampant in the US. I had the choice to stop or continue depending on the sustainability of arts in the nation (we were young, about four years). It was all about survival then.

We decided not to gather in person for community programs and everything became virtual. But the question was, how do we monetize and support our mission and artists without gathering? 

This was around the same time as the Black Lives Matter Movement. Black artists were being sought after more because of the Movement and Black artists were taking on more brand partnerships. 

I saw a market opportunity. 

We've always had an agency model. Our #ABOVE4 fund is our database of artists and we can connect artists to businesses.

 

Can we pause to describe the #ABOVE4 campaign?

#AboveFour Campaign’s goal is to increase awareness and interest around Black Women’s participation and contributions in the Fine Art Industry by elevating black women artists' stories, gathering community, and hosting conversations during Miami Art Week. ​

The #AboveFour Campaign is attached to our Garden Fellowship initiative that supports and funds five Georgia-based artists with an opportunity to exhibit in Miami. The fellowship is a one-year professional development program for emerging Black women artists.  

In an effort to sustain Black women’s contributions in the art industry during the COVID -19, TILA Studios launched a recurring monthly fund beginning at $1,000 to support Black women artists nationwide.

Photo taken from an artist talk at Sweetgreens. Photo courtesy of TILA Studios.

OK, let’s get back to the projects you initiated throughout the pandemic.

Over the past few years, we’ve instigated brand activations, curatorial projects, and public art. The brand activations are a great new business income for us. 

In December of 2020, we landed Sweetgreen. It was a large official in-market curatorial project for all Sweetgreen in Georgia. They opened their inaugural flagship store in Atlanta featuring a commission by textile artist Honey Pierre. Read more. 

It’s not just curating art. It’s about the community work. 

We're creating the artwork and creating the story. We got to partner with Sweetgreen and incorporate storytelling. 

It was a truly unique process. The store openings include the stories of the artists. We participate in their “Sweet Talks,” in which we bring in the artist and host artist talk for the senior executives and team members at each Sweetgreen location. The artist also gets featured in the local and national Sweetgreen newsletter. 

 

Your partnership with Sweetgreen has also grown into new advisor roles, can you speak to that?

We’ve been advising Sweetgreen on how to work with other local Black-owned business partners. We’re connecting them to nonprofit groups that are working on urban food scarcity to help with donations and connecting low-income neighborhoods to healthy food.

 

You’re making such an incredible impact locally. Do you plan to engage beyond Atlanta?

Our goal has always been to scale past the borders of Georgia. I'm hyper-local in the Georgia community right now, though. If you’re serving people, go shallow and deep, not wide and thin. 

How do we stay narrow and deep?  Am I giving each artist enough attention to give them what they need? Am I actually doing it or saying that I am doing it?

 

How is TILA supporting Black Female Artists?

In a number of ways. We have an artist going to Ghana for a residency. We are sponsoring her.

We support artists that attend Miami Basel. We provide coaching on how to present their artwork, speak with potential clients, and how to keep those connections alive. We are by their side when they are in our cohort. Now, we see a lot of artists going back to Miami Basel on their own.

There is year-over-year growth. We’re seeing how the artists have connected with the people we have connected them with. They are sustaining their own relationships and not relying on us. They are bringing other women up with them – that’s sustainability. That’s slow sustainable growth.

 

How do you measure success for your artists and your organization?

We track both economic impact and the stories shared. 

We're tracking dollars. We’re looking at how much money artists are making through the support of TILA. 

Our fellowship should be your highest income opportunity. As mentioned before, we support the artists in Miami Basel. 

A great example is actually an Artwork Archive user, Ellex Swavoni. She is a TILA 2018 Community Member. She joined the 2019 Garden Fellows. She went to Miami Basel and did not sell her artwork. We got clear on where she wanted to grow. From the dialogue, we decided that the public realm was best for her and her practice. She didn’t want to be in a gallery. She wanted to be in the public art space. We got her connections in the public art space. We connected her with Dashboard and she had her first paid sculpture—a Sci-Fi monument to Atlanta’s Black heroines. Then she went on to win a city commission for Decatur, Georgia. 

It was great to see her grow.

We also keep track of the stories. Storytelling and archiving is a big piece of what we do. I’m interested in where people are going. 

 

 

What lessons learned would you share with artists and those seeking to start their own art business or nonprofit?

I have a bunch, but here are some that stand out:

Take free work up to a certain point. You want to take everything to prove yourself. Take free stuff to prove people wrong. But by year three, you’ve established d a proven track record to sustain your business. Because most businesses fail in two years.

Know your value. Ask yourself, “are clients undermining your value, or are you undervaluing your value?" I talked to the founder of a company about her contracts to better understand my value. She helped me with TILA’s pricing model. We broke it down. I needed to understand the value of our project management and the intellectual property behind it. This advisor helped me price our services and showed me where to grow. 

Don’t underestimate legal support. I’ve saved so much money on contract negotiation. Hire a lawyer sooner rather than later if you're going to engage with partners.

Compartmentalize your work to compartmentalize your brain. For instance, finance is often the looming task for many creatives because our brains don’t work in numbers. Assign days for each area of your business. Monday is my admin day. Tuesday is my internal/team meetings day. Wednesday I am looking at marketing and project management tasks. Thursday is for my client calls. Friday is finance. 

I don't do everything at once. This helps me compartmentalize my brain so I don’t get overwhelmed.

Lastly, every stage of growth is hard. It doesn't get easier. Embrace the hard. Lean into it. Accept it. Don't be afraid to ask for help. 

 

How has Artwork Archive helped you fulfill your mission?

I love it! We use Artwork Archive to organize, manage and showcase the artworks, artists, and mission of TILA, but I also use it for my own personal art practice.

Here’s a recent example of why I love Artwork Archive:

We're trying to figure out if we get a physical space if we should maintain the overhead of a gallery.  Every week I get asked if TILA has a gallery. People ask if they can see the artists’ work.

What's great is that I give them access to all of our artists' works, virtually, through Artwork Archive. I don’t need to commit to the overhead of a physical space. I send them a link to the artist’s Artwork Archive portfolio and all of the artwork can be viewed via that link. 

With Artwork Archive, sales can be facilitated between the artist and the collector. There is transparency and the artists manage it. And, we see the insights. 

We can continue to help coach and facilitate too. Sometimes artists don't see the buyer’s inquiry form on Artwork Archive. We help them. 

We see a lot of artwork sell to collectors on the Artwork Archive Public Profile. Artists update their inventory in their Artwork Archive account and then it is reflected publicly on their Public Profile. It makes the art inventory management easy and successful. 

And, I love how Artwork Archive’s Public Profile also functions as my personal website. I am not going to make a website. I love the tracking on the backend. When I go to market with my works, I know what I created.

I don't have any record of art before 2015. I lost a contract because I was not organized before Artwork Archive. A movie studio wanted one of my prints from 2010 for a TV show. I had no idea where they were, who owned them, and I did not have a high-res image of the work. 

I learned my lesson. I scan all my work to date. Now I can easily produce replicas. 

 

What is TILA’s impact on the Black Female Artist community? 

Going back to the conversation around language, I see the language we've been pushing to be a popular, natural conversation around equity and access. And, we are brought up as an example.

When you're an early disruptor, you’re considered exclusionary because you’re not thinking of everyone but our work affects everyone. People are now hyped on Black women curators and artists due to the social and racial reckonings that exploded in 2020.

We've seen our art leadership change.

We've seen people that don't work with Black artists come to us and ask, how can we do better? They want to champion Black Female Artists. I’ve seen a shift in action and investment. 

 

What does 2022 look like for TILA?

We’re trying to hire a strong program manager to run our virtual career support called Homegrown. We have to monitor the impact of 50 artists over a year. Then we need to pipeline them into the agency and the fellowship. We need to be intentional about supporting our artists. 

Hopefully, other cities can take this on. I'd love to license this out to a program so that there is more reach.

 

Start pursuing your creative passions with the help of Artwork Archive and our online art inventory management tools.