Co-Pilot Stories: "I'm tired of shipping and packing from so many orders!"

In this fun podcast episode, we sit down with Miro Kenarov, one-half of the talented Bulgarian-born artist couple behind the unique Canvas on Clay project.We delve deep into their artistic journey, from their early days in Bulgaria to their inspiring life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and how their contrasting backgrounds have come together to create an extraordinary fusion of art forms.Miro shares their insights on the creative process behind Canvas on Clay, the importance of maintaining a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives, and the impact of their experiences at the Tamarind Institute on their artistic practice.They also discuss the challenges and opportunities of working with mixed media, the significance of being designated as a "Trusted ART Seller," and their recent record-breaking Mother's Day sale with ASF's new Co-Pilot Service.This episode is packed with valuable advice for artists looking to collaborate, explore new mediums, and achieve recognition in the art world. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Miro and Maria's experiences and gain a fresh perspective on the art of collaboration. If you're interested in Co-Pilot, be sure to sign up here!

Podcast Transcribe

Brandon:Foreign Brandon here with Art Storefronts, guest hosting for Pat on this morning's Art Marketing Podcast. I've got a really special guest this morning—Miro Kinnarov is here. He's a customer of Art Storefronts that I've worked with for almost two and a half years. Super interesting story—a husband and wife duo with a really unique style that's worked for them. Welcome to the show, Miro!

Miro:Thank you, Brandon. Nice to see you.

Brandon:Yeah, yeah. So, let's give a quick background on you and Maria. We don't have Maria today, but maybe she'll pop in and say hi. So, you were in Bulgaria, and essentially, in 1989, during the Cold War, the wall fell, and you just had your firstborn son. Is that correct?

Miro:Yes, and now he’s part of the business, working with us as well.

Brandon:Very cool. So, family-owned and operated. I love it.

Miro:Correct.

Brandon:Tell me a little bit about the origin story.

Miro:It's all strange. We belong to the generation that really lived through a lot of changes. When the Berlin Wall fell down, perestroika started in Russia, and we touched the Free World. I started traveling, showing my work in Western Europe, and was invited to a lithography workshop in Finland, where I found the Tamarind book of lithography. I was a printmaker first, working with etchings and gravure on metal. I was deeply interested in lithography and wanted to continue my education and gain experience. That's how we ended up in New Mexico. I applied and was accepted into their Master Printer program at Tamarind. All of this is history. I learned later that I could apply for a green card based on my skills as an artist, and once it worked for me, we knew we were staying in this country. We moved from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, where we still have our studio and home. Thirty years later, we're members of every art organization in town, doing a lot of shows on the road, mostly in the Southwest. My work became Southwest-oriented, which you can see on our website.

Brandon:Tell me a little bit more about that. What's really cool about your story is that sometimes artists have work they love but struggle to market it. Sometimes there's not a market for it. I teach a lot of artists and photographers to keep that creative outlet but also listen to the market and use their talents to meet the market in the middle. A lot of your and Maria's work is Southwest-oriented. Was that the case when you guys came over to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, or was it vastly different? I know there's some Tuscany influence in your work as well, which I love.

Miro:I've lived more in the Southwest in this country than in Bulgaria. As a well-trained professional with a Master's in book illustration and graphic design, I'm pretty much project-oriented. When we came, there was no internet, and even the American Embassy in Sofia didn't have a single book about the Southwest. We were amazed when we saw it because my impression of America was New York skyscrapers, and here we were seeing mud houses in Santa Fe. Luckily, we became part of the second biggest art market in the country. The mixture of cultures—Spanish, Native American—all reflected on us and changed our art and vision. The art festivals we attended and our travels in the Southwest also influenced our work. That's how it happened. I created this one-touch-of-a-brush style, and as new media emerged, I adapted, learning how to do Giclée with computer printmaking. We do everything in-house except for the open editions, which are done with Graphic Dimensions. It's time-consuming and requires professional skills. In our family, we have this mixture of two different media—my wife does ceramics in the garage, and I work with paper and canvases. A few years ago, we came up with the idea to do a collaborative project called "Canvas on Clay," which turned out to be our most unique and best-selling product.

Brandon:For the listeners, Miro does the canvas side, and Maria does the ceramic pieces. You guys combined those into one project, and it's become a series that's done quite well for you, right?

Miro:Yes, it's fragments of the painting that we turn into square or rectangular pieces. We have collections like the Southwest collection, Countryside collection, and Italy collection. Most of my work is imaginary, except for some historical places. Everything else is inspired by what I see in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the Aspens, or traveling to Arizona and Utah. We bring life with Southwest birds and animals. You never know what will pop up from your imagination. We have the painting and the printed edition, and with ceramics, we can't go big because they start curving. So, we create small, easy-to-hang pieces that complement each other.

Brandon:I love that. As you experiment, you find the pieces that sell and hit a note with your audience. You can take that same piece, break it up into smaller focuses, and sell those for a reduced price. Essentially, you're turning one piece into four or five bestsellers.

Miro:Correct. My work is detail-oriented, and I try to incorporate some story or interesting details in the picture. Even a fragment of it can stand on its own and draw attention. You can collect three pieces from the same painting and create a nice decorative piece for the wall.

Brandon:How do you ensure the quality and longevity of the artwork, given its mixed media with canvas and clay?

Miro:It goes back to our professionalism. Maria was 14 when she started studying at the High School of Art in Europe. I was 14 when I was accepted into the Fine Art school for five years, then university. We learned the materials, but being in a new country, all materials were new. We had to go through a learning process, testing and learning from others. We use the right materials for the right job. Other than a few breakages during shipping, we don't have many returns or disappointed customers. Most people are happy with what they get.

Brandon:I can imagine. Seeing the pictures, I think with this mixed media, you need a 3D viewer to really grasp the detail and craftsmanship. I didn't realize the years of practice you guys have had. One thing I'm curious about is the joys and challenges of working with a spouse. How do you balance the professional side and set aside time for non-work stuff?

Miro:It's hard to explain. We came here with a lot of challenges. Being accepted to Tamarind, I knew where I was going. We started from scratch with a three-and-a-half-year-old boy, three suitcases, and my broken English. At that moment, you rely only on your abilities and skills to learn and move forward. As a family, we work in two different media, so there's no competition. Other friends argue about who's the better painter or ceramic artist, but we don't have that problem. We just came up with creating something, and when it started working, people responded to it. It's something unusual they've never seen, and we continue in this direction.

Brandon:I love that answer. Just for my time working with you and Maria, you both are very kind, open-minded, and practical. I love the line you said: "Here we are, we got to figure it out, so let's just move forward with solutions." That brings me to your Art Storefronts story. If I remember correctly, you joined Art Storefronts during COVID or right after. Talk to me a little bit about that time—what happened, why you ended up going to Art Storefronts, and we'll get into our new service, Co-Pilot, which you emailed me about.

Miro:Yes, you're pretty good at marketing. You bombarded me with ads, and I checked it out. I had an idea what it was about, but it was pricey for me. I wasn't sure I needed that much. Then COVID hit, and there was no question—this was the way to go. That's when we got in touch and started from there. It was a great experience. I've been in marketing departments, working as a graphic artist and art director, but never had someone helping me with my own work. The new media—Instagram, Facebook—came up, and I had to learn. COVID cut off all our ways of selling artwork. We had a studio gallery in Art Canyon, but it was a ghost town. The new studio setting gave us a chance to do digital art shows online. I was on every meeting with Patrick, learning, and it was working great. We sold a lot online and felt comfortable that this thing might work. Then COVID was solved, and we went back to shows. My marketing time became lower and lower until it almost disappeared. The website is still working, but these are occasional sales from people who see us at shows and come back to the website.

Brandon:Just to recap, you guys were making most of your sales offline through shows in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and throughout the Southwest. COVID hit, and everything shut down. You saw one of Art Storefronts' ads and decided to join. During that time, we saw a spark in sales because people were at home more, looking at bare walls. As COVID started to come down, the country opened up, and you went back to shows, but the online side took a hit.

Miro:Yes, and at the same time, we didn't want to lose what we already knew how to do—marketing online and promoting our work. But physically, we couldn't do it. That's where Art Storefronts helped so much, especially with the latest program, Co-Pilot. The moment I read about it, I said this is what we need. I couldn't lock myself in staying on the computer and doing the marketing as much as I could, but at the same time, live contact with people, especially selling art, is something we enjoy. It's one-to-one contact directly with the customer who likes your work and will have it on their wall in their home. There's no middleman, and it's exciting. We do shows in Santa Fe, Arizona, Texas, and Palm Springs. Both online and offline have advantages, and they should be combined. After an art festival, people should be able to find you easily and finish what they were buying or planning to buy. Sometimes, it leads to collaboration projects with customers who have a particular thing in mind. I don't mind doing commissions—it's another interesting part of producing and selling artwork. Again, we're talking because of Co-Pilot, your latest idea, which I adopted the moment I saw it. It's the missing piece we didn't have in this new situation.

Brandon:That's a great intro. For the listeners out there, Co-Pilot is a service we've been working on at Art Storefronts for two years. Our goal is to create the best technology for an art-selling website, but that's not everything. You need to do the marketing, and as your story talks about, as soon as there's no effort put into it, it can take a hit. We've tried to buttress that with great marketing education, the Art Marketing Calendar, daily workshops, and our Niche Course. We've taken mental models from our educational stuff and put them into Co-Pilot, where we do a lot of the marketing for artists. We host on social media at a pace and consistency that's impossible for an individual artist to keep up. If you're on the ASF platform, we can post on your behalf multiple times a day, resurfacing older work and engaging with your audience. We're just putting the art out there and engaging with your audience. The other cool thing is that we handle a lot of the email marketing as well, which works in perfect pairing with the social media. Miro, you sent one of our Co-Pilots an email this morning, and it made me so happy. You said, "The Co-Pilot service works great so far. I've got tired of packing and shipping all online orders for the Mother's Day sale. This is my record sale campaign since I started with ASF." We've heard a lot of testimonials with Co-Pilot, and it's been a game-changer. I'm so happy to hear that you and Maria are finding the service valuable.

Miro:In our case, because we're more shy people, usually, I put my work in front and stay in the back. If somebody engages me, fine. But with Co-Pilot, you're actively approaching, which is the big difference. When you're an artist and you create something, it's not easy to switch daily or during the day from one thing to another. You need your time in the studio, and sometimes there's not enough time to finish everything you plan, including packing and shipping. You don't want to hire somebody at home to do it. One of the things the guy who got the original said was, "Perfect packing." It takes me two to three hours to pack something properly the way I'd like to receive it. So, your time goes into a lot of logistics in this kind of business. Most people think artists just get their brushes and canvas and enjoy life, but it's not that simple.

Brandon:Say hi to Maria, Brandon. We've seen you before. It's been a while. Good to see you. You're on the Art Marketing Podcast, so say hi to all the listeners out there.

Maria:Hi, everybody!

Brandon:I closed the door, so she didn't know we were talking. She said, "You're talking too much. I can't hear from you. You gotta go make sure he's working."

Miro:[Laughter]

Brandon:Awesome. Well, we can wrap it up. I just want to ask, in terms of Co-Pilot, we're going to continue to make that service better and better. Bye, Maria. Good to see you. Your feedback is amazing. For any listeners out there not on Art Storefronts, go to our website, artstorefronts.com, and request a demo. We'll show you everything behind Co-Pilot and the platform. I'd love to see if it could help you out. If you're an artist that doesn't have time managing a bunch of things, or if you're not a full-time artist and have a full-time job, this is an incredible service at an affordable price. Miro, you used to work with our agency, and we used to have agency-level prices, charging several hundred dollars to cover labor costs. I'm happy to see you're getting even more traction with Co-Pilot. Before we started, they just counted 31 sales in seven days. Some of them were multiple sales. People were ordering three or four pieces, which require different packaging. The biggest seller was the biggest canvases and the original. I'm happy with it. One thing I really like is engaging customers with emails from my behalf, which is great. This is something I couldn't do physically. I'm getting responses back, and they're usually responding with some problem or question, so this really helps engage me as an artist with the customer. You're the middleman who makes the contacts.

Brandon:I'm a big angler. I love fishing. When dads take their little ones fishing, they do the casting, set the hook, and then give it to the little one to reel it in. That's how I think about Co-Pilot.

Miro:Exactly. And it works.

Brandon:I love that. So, you're enjoying the actual email marketing. For our listeners, we handle a lot of the email marketing, which works in perfect pairing with the social media. Miro's talking about when we send out campaigns, he's getting responses back from interested parties and helping close the sale. I love that. We're getting your time, and I appreciate you being so generous. For listeners out there who might be struggling artists, starving artists looking for a niche, or just getting started, what advice would you give to them?

Miro:It's always the same—never give up. There have been so many disappointments, but I enjoy what I'm doing. This country has unlimited spaces and markets. It doesn't matter what you do as an artist; if you believe in yourself, there will be an audience. People will respond to your artwork. Even at a show, somebody passing by might like something I'm not there for, and then there's somebody so excited they want to buy everything. You really help spread the word and show the quality of the art to more eyeballs. So, never give up, and sign up for Art Storefronts and Co-Pilot. I'm so happy I did it, and I didn't regret it a single day. I really enjoy the way you're thinking and changing the program depending on what's happening. You really have the artists in mind, so I feel a real collaboration. On top of this, great customer service—anytime you have a problem, you can reach directly, and people will tell you what to do. I'm not frustrated with customer service. I've been with other places, and I think you do a great job. I'm a happy customer of Art Storefronts and could recommend it to anybody involved in art, photography, or something close to what we do because it helps us a lot.

Brandon:Well, it's quite a time already. We certainly appreciate that testimony. Thank you so much, Miro, and Maria, if you're still around, for your time. It's a beautiful story, and I'm so happy you guys are getting so much traction and sales. We look forward to seeing what the journey looks like in the future. For everyone out there, that's our episode for the Art Marketing Podcast. We'll catch you next time. Pat will be back. See you next time. Thanks, everyone!

Miro:Thank you.